Reply #37: He gave a few speeches and appeared on a PBS program. He wasn't on the front lines. [View All]

[MADem]

Cindy Sheehan, though she annoys me in some ways with her Hugo hugging and histronics, WAS on the "front lines" with regard to this issue.

You probably will be surprised to know that I was against this war from the beginning, and I argued vociferously with no number of senior military leaders AGAINST it--I was a rare and lonely voice, unfortunately. And I have reasonably recently retired from a very long military career.

I do understand what Congress was trying to do--they were giving the Commander in Chief a tool. The Commander in Chief misused the tool, broke it, and broke our damned military along with it. Some senior military leaders, yes men and toadies all, share that blame, putting visions of cakewalks in SECDEF Rummy's/VP Dick's heads (Rick Shinseki was NOT one of them).

Here's an excerpt from Wilson's endorsement. I agree with his views completely: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-wilson/the-real-hillary-i-know-_b_77878.html

...A number of us, like then Illinois state senator Obama, opposed the second Gulf War. My own opposition from the beginning has been well documented. I fought the fight in the arena itself, Washington DC, against a ruthless administration and its supporters while the senator's opposition came from a far distance and carried no risk, given that he represented in Springfield, Illinois the district encompassing the University of Chicago. As an obscure but safe provincial political figure, he never was granted access to the distorted intelligence that was used to drive the Congress and the media. When I looked to the left or to the right for support, I never saw the state senator. In fact, I never heard of Barack Obama until he announced his intention to run for the Senate in the 2006 election.

After he came to Washington, Obama's views were thoroughly conventional and even timid. In 2004, he said about the 2002 congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force: "I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don't know." On Iraq-related votes in the Senate, Obama's record identically matches Senator Clinton's--with the exception that Senator Clinton voted against the confirmation of General George Casey as Army chief of staff. Obama's vote was typically passive.

In the run up to the war and thereafter, I was in frequent discussions with senior Democrats in Washington, including Senator Clinton, and I was keenly aware of her demand for the full exercise of international diplomacy and allowing the weapons inspectors to complete their mission. Many of the most prominent early opponents of the war, including former General Wes Clark and former ambassador to the United National Richard Holbrooke support Senator Clinton for President, as do I. We do so because we know that she has the experience and the judgment that comes from having been in the arena for her entire adult life--and from close personal participation with her in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. And we have trust in her to end the war in Iraq in the most responsible way, consistent with our national security interests.

We know that she has won and lost but always fought for her beliefs, which are widely shared within the Democratic Party. The battles she had been in have been fierce--and the battles in the future will be no less intense--and she has proven her steadfastness and is still standing. She does not have a cowardly record of voting "present" when confronted with difficult issues. She does not claim "intuition" as the basis of the most dangerous and serious decision-making. What she has is deep and vital experience, more important than ever in restoring our country's place in the world.