Water under the bridge....NOT

[Carolina]

Why Hillary Clinton’s Iraq Vote Does Matter by Stephen Zunes http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/23/7245/

In response to ...comments such as the following:

“The only mistake Hillary made was to believe what the President told her... and... the intel presented to her... GET OVER IT! It is water under the bridge” reality ... Hillary Clinton’s decision to vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq in fact is of critical importance and should disqualify her... from ever becoming president.

In the months leading up to the Iraq war vote, Senator Clinton was briefed by a number of arms control specialists, former arms inspectors, strategic analysts... who informed her that the Bush administration’s WMD claims were not to be taken seriously and that Iraq had achieved at least qualitative disarmament. Despite this, ... Senator Clinton insisted that Iraq’s possession of chemical and biological weapons was “not in doubt” and was “undisputed...”

Similarly, ... despite the 2001 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that confirmed there was no evidence that ... work on Iraq’s nuclear program had resumed, Senator Clinton also ... claim that, “If left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will . . . keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.” In reality, Iraq had completely eliminated its nuclear program a full decade earlier.

Clinton’s supporters have defended her ... by citing the public summary of the 2002 NIE... However, ... this NIE was compiled in a much shorter time frame than is normally provided for such documents and ... expressed far more certainty regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities than all reports from the previous five years, despite the lack of additional data to justify such a shift... There was much stronger dissent within the intelligence community than about any other NIE in history and the longer classified version, ... available to every member of Congress, included these dissenting voices... NIE also challenged the notion of any operational ties between the Iraqi government and Al-Qaeda and questioned some of the more categorical claims by President Bush about Iraq’s WMDs. However, Senator Clinton didn’t even bother to read it... claimit wasn’t necessary ... because she was briefed on the contents... However, since no one on her staff was authorized to read it, it’s unclear who could have actually briefed her.

... After the U.S. invasion and the formal acknowledgement that Iraq neither had any WMDs or WMD programs nor any ties to Al-Qaeda, Senator Clinton declared, “I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote” and was one that “I stand by.”

... despite her much-touted “experience,” Senator Clinton has demonstrated... a profound ignorance of the reality of the Middle East and an arrogant assumption that peace, stability and democratic governance can be created through the application of U.S. military force.

[ClassWarrior]

1. More like blood under the bridge.

NGU.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. And after all that, maintaining that Bush overstepped the authority

given him by congress, why did she not immediately condemn him for doing so upon his illegally going to war? Why did it take three years for her to oppose the war?