Hillary Clinton did not vote for the IWR in hopes war might be averted by UN inspections.

[Occam Bandage]

I have seen this line repeatedly. It is bullshit. There was an amendment to the resolution, offered by Sen. Carl Levin, that would have ensured those inspections while providing a safeguard against Bush going off to war. The amendment would have required two things:

First, for the United Nations to specifically authorize force if inspections failed.
Second, for the President to return before Congress after failure if the UN did not vote to authorize war, and to request a specific unilateral resolution authorizing war.

The measure failed, 75-24. Among those voting against it was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY). The reason? She didn't want to "subordinate" our foreign policy to the United Nations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/us/politics/02check.html

[JVS]

1. She voted for it in hopes that it would work to her political advantage.

Don't reward her cynicism!

[SoFlaJet]

2. she thought it would be over in two weeks

playing politics like you said-no pass sorry

[Cha]

37. Right... easy as pie. vote with bush look

tough and then OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOps! The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men.

[Windy]

9. and the hell with the troops.. as long as she looked "strong" to the repubs!!!

This is why she does not have may support!

[Cha]

36. That's why she voted for it without even

reading the 90 page NIE report.

[Avalux]

3. Agree. Her language after the vote supported Bush's assertions about Saddam.

She talked about his WMDs, how he was a madman that had committed terrible atrocities against the Iraqi people, how he was a terrible threat to the world. She thought he needed to be taken out and in a meeting with Code Pink, refused to do anthing to stop inevitable war.

She bought the Bush bullshit hook line and sinker and by all accounts, was as hawkish as those in the WH.

OR.....

She was thinking about her presidential bid.

[tabasco]

4. Everybody with an IQ over three knew it was a vote for war.

Anyone who says they thought Bush was going to use diplomacy is a liar.

It was a vote for the political career of Clinton and a vote against our troops, innocent Iraqis, and national security.

[Occam Bandage]

6. But yet a quarter of DU seems to have bought the line that it was a vote for diplomacy.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Like he said...

IQ over 3...

[bigtree]

21. admitting that 'everyone knew' actually buttresses the argument about inspectors

09/12/2002
On September 12, amid increasing speculation that the United States is preparing to invade Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, President Bush delivers a speech to the United Nations calling on the organization to enforce its resolutions for disarming Iraq. Bush strongly implies that if the United Nations does not act, the United States will"a message that US officials make more explicit the following week.

Four days later, Baghdad announces that it will allow arms inspectors to return "without conditions." Iraqi and UN officials meet September 17 to discuss the logistical arrangements for the return of inspectors and announce that final arrangements will be made at a meeting scheduled for the end of the month. The United States contends that there is nothing to talk about and warns that the Iraqis are simply stalling. The Bush administration continues to press the Security Council to approve a new UN resolution calling for Iraq to give weapons inspectors unfettered access and authorizing the use of force if Iraq does not comply..

09/10/2002
IRAQ: AZIZ SAYS IT IS RIDICULOUS FOR INSPECTORS TO REENTER IRAQ
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-2161314_ITM

09/17/2002
Iraq agrees to weapons inspections
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/16/iraq.un.letter

-------
Saddam saw the six month buildup and placement of the U.S. military ground forces and the U.S. Navy in the region, but this agreement to weapons inspections would of been no better than it was in 1998 and would not have inspectors with "unfettered access", the inspectors would of followed the guidelines set in <1998> MOU


HANS BLIX: Well, we have now established that there is access to all sites. We are not making any differences between any sites except that the <1998> MOU concerning presidential sites is separate, is regulated separately.
http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/iraq/press-conf-oct1.htm

10/10/2002
IWR VOTE

11/08/2002
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 is a resolution by the UN Security Council, passed unanimously on November 8, 2002,

11/13/2002
Iraq agreed to the Resolution on 13 November

11/27/2002
Iraq agreed to the Resolution on 13 November. Weapons inspectors returned on November 27, led by Hans Blix of UNMOVIC and Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The inspectors had been absent from Iraq since December 1998 when they were withdrawn immediately prior to Operation Desert Fox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Security_Council_Resolution_1441

[Occam Bandage]

23. So, what would the problem have been with forcing Bush to finish the UN process before war?

[bigtree]

25. There would be no forcing

Bush was determined to invade Iraq (said so), no matter what Congress decided, or if they decided at all, just like Clinton deployed troops to Haiti without waiting for Congress to act.

"Use of Force" without congressional authority

Panama in 1901;
Dominican Republic in 1904, 1914, 1965;
Honduras, 1912;
Nicaragua, 1926;
Lebanon, 1958;
Cuba, the naval quarantine, 1962
Grenada, 1983;
Libya, 1986;
Panama, 1989;
Somalia in 1992;
Sudan, Afghanistan, August of 1998.
Desert Fox in December of 1998,
Kosovo in March of 1999

[Occam Bandage]

27. So you are suggesting that Hillary voted against an amendment for diplomacy before war

because she thought Bush would ignore it? Shouldn't she then have voted for both that and the Durbin/Byrd amendments?

[bigtree]

29. she voted for her own version of that diplomacy

. . . which was consistent with her input and that of Kerry and others in including the language of restraint and a return to the Security Council in the bill.

[Occam Bandage]

30. Then why not vote on an amendment demanding Bush actually engage in that diplomacy?

[bigtree]

32. that's what the language in the bill about exhausting peaceful means

and a return to the UN Security Council was all about.

[tabasco]

45. Anyone who thought Bush was going to use diplomacy to save lives was a fool.

Proven by history.

It was all about the oil, not the UN sanctions.

[sampsonblk]

46. To this day, she hasn't said out of her mouth that it was wrong to invade Iraq in March of 2003.

She had an opportunity to object to what was going on and she never once did it. She had a responsibility as a United States Senator to step up to the microphone and say "we aren't being told the truth. We should not be invading Iraq." She failed us big time.

[Sensitivity]

5. Please, allow Hillary her little "WHITE LIE." She needs it so badly

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. LOL

And that's the same reason George Bush signed it.

To avert a war.

:crazy:

[speedoo]

10. K&R.

Thanks for posting this. Accountability sucks, doesn't it Hillary?

[bigtree]

11. It's your privilege to think what you want,

but, the Levin amendment, if passed wouldn't have brought Bush back to Congress. There was no way he was going to submit himself to a congressional vote which restrained him from exercising his assumed prerogative under the War Powers Act (as he ultimately did) to mobilize and deploy troops for a period of time without prior congressional approval. But, you go on and dream that Bush would have regarded the will of Congress any more than he did the provisions in the Iraq resolution which passsed; even to imagine that Bush would have returned for the judgment of a Congress hostile to his stated intention to invade.

[Occam Bandage]

13. So you propose that Bush would have ignored the explicit law and bombed Iraq despite a Congressional

prohibition? If that were the case, why did he need an IWR in the first place? And why, exactly, do you have a problem with Congress standing up to what Bush wants?

[bigtree]

14. I don't think they would have gotten to an actual vote if it wasn't already in the bag for Bush

But, Bush didn't need, and didn't use the resolution as a trigger or a green light.

[Occam Bandage]

16. Uh, yeah. Of course the Republicans would not have proposed a war bill that would have failed.

So...we shouldn't oppose the war...because the Republicans won't propose war bills...that we oppose? And that's...um...bad...because...God damn, your head must hurt.

And really, your assertion that Bush "didn't need the resolution" is the most laughable last resort I've yet seen. "Okay, yeah, so she voted for the war, and voted against the amendment that would have ensured diplomacy before war...but, um...IT DOESN'T COUNT!"

[bigtree]

28. You can't go back and produce enough votes, even if Kerry and Clinton voted against the bill

to have stopped Bush. He was determined to press forward. What you seem to be obscuring with your ridicule of reality, is that, the 'authority' Bush used to press forward with his invasion wasn't inherent or original to the resolution. It doesn't matter that it was inserted in the bill as 'authority'. The resolution actually states that nothing in the Iraq bill is to preclude EXISTING provisions of the War Powers Act. The provision in the WPA is what Bush used to mobilize and deploy troops to Iraq.

In fact, the first time Congress actually weighed in on his disregard of the Iraq resolution and his preemptive invasion was in the first $87 million funding bill, not in the resolution which Bush ignored.

[Occam Bandage]

31. We're not talking about whether it would have passed. We're talking about Clinton's vote.

[bigtree]

33. right.

Myopic.

[Usrename]

18. You are missing the point.

This is about Sen Clinton, not about Bush. Even if the Levin amendment failed to pass into law, the excuse that she is making today would at least be honest excuse, if she had voted for it.

As it sits, she voted against it. But her new excuse is that she wanted what she voted against. It's dishonest.

[bigtree]

34. The Levin amendment wouldn't have performed as promised. That's the point.

[Usrename]

40. Sure it would have.

If she had voted for it.

We would be able to believe her NOW when she says that it was what she wanted.

Even if it failed to pass. Get it?

[Tom Joad]

12. billy clinton was already at war with iraq when bush succeeded him.

little fucker. someday he will rot in denver.

[HeraldSquare212]

15. Remember what Lincoln Chaffee said - some Dem senators were afraid it would be a quick war

and the price of oil would drop, and they didn't want to be on the wrong side of that.

So, not only were they calculating and self-serving - they were stupid.

[Occam Bandage]

17. Pity they never once played "what-if" for the possibility that Bush might be wrong in his judgement.

[AtomicKitten]

19. You don't call a measure that has "WAR" in its title diplomacy.

[Occam Bandage]

20. Hey now, technically it was called the Authorization for Use of Military Force

Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. So I can totally see how someone might think that was a diplomatic measure.

[AtomicKitten]

22. totally

:P

[bigtree]

39. sure, why bother to read the thing? Bush obviously didn't.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

24. Dude, you're losing your shit...

You are defining the Levin amendment as "That which one must have voted for if one had any hope of Inspectors forestalling war."

You know that's bullshit. Your supposition is that 75 senators hoped that war would NOT be avoided, and you surely know that's false.

You can say "voting for the Levin amendment was evidence of wishing to avoid war" but you cannot say that failing to vote for the Levin amendment demonstrates that one did not hope war might be averted by UN inspections.

It's republican logic... if you don't vote for amendment X then you are in favor of Y, as defined by whoever is doing the arguing.

Why not say "Obama is in favor of sex shops being next to schools"? He isn't, of course, but it's the same sort of logic you're employing here.

I wish folks who promote fallacious syllogisms would not drag poor old Occam's name into it.

I would not have voted for the IWR, but that doesn't mean I have to be comfortable with people re-writing history about it. Before the IWR vote, nobody in the world (especially Cheney) thought Iraq would let the inspectors back in. After the vote, the inspectors were back in within six weeks.

Personally, I would have been working to impeach Bush at the time.

It's a HORRIBLE vote for her, but it's dishonest to say she did not see the IWR as instrumental to the possibility of averting conflict. (You do know the IWR was six months before the war, right?)

[Occam Bandage]

26. I am not suggesting that this amendment was the only means possible of avoiding war.

It was only one of them. One might have tried a number of things. She did none of them. There were a number of amendments aimed at limiting Bush's war powers in a number of ways; she voted against Levin, she voted against Durbin, she voted against Byrd.

Am I saying she voted for war because she wanted to see Iraq destroyed? No, of course not; contrary to the implication of your sex-shop allegory, I am not declaring any particular motive (and, to turn that around for a second, if Obama had claimed he had voted with specific intent of keeping sex shops away from schools, it would indeed be valid to use that vote to counter his claim of motive.) I am suggesting that her given motive is undercut by her vote against a bill specifically created with the intent of bolstering the motive that she now claims. That motive is further undercut by her given rationale: that such a vote would subordinate the war process to the international community. That, in fact, would have largely been the intent of diplomacy.

I do not provide a motive. I'm simply saying that this vote is wholly inconsistent with the motive she gives.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

35. But her motive was stated, and is even in your OP

"...if Obama had claimed he had voted with specific intent of keeping sex shops away from schools, it would indeed be valid to use that vote to counter his claim of motive."

Yes. Precisely.

But he says voted to preserve the Constitution, which means his vote had nothing to do with being pro or anti sex shops.

And Hillary said her vote on Levin was to preserve US autonomy in matters of national security, which means her vote had nothing to do with being pro or anti invading Iraq.

You can say it's lame... you can disagree with her analysis... but that was her stated motive.

Personally, I might have voted against it too. As a precedent, it is legitimately problematic to tie US action to UN approval. In the case of Iraq, it would be fine. But it is easy to imagine situations where Russia or China could block an action the US believed was imperative as a matter of national security. There's a complex debate to be had about those issues, so I can't call it black and white.

But, unlike Hillary, I would have voted for anything that forced a second congressional review before hostilities. That keeps the war-starting power with Congress, where it belongs. I fault here more for those votes than for Levin. I think the IWR was probably unconstitutional because it punted Congresses war-starting power to the executive.

Seriously, Hillary should NOT have voted for the IWR, but the bottom line is that it DID get inspectors back in (which I didn't think was possible at the time) and the inspectors DID show that there were no WMD, and if Bush wasn't a sociopath that would have been the end of it.

I recognize the political interest some have in blaming Hillary for the Iraq war, and if we hadn't all voted for Kerry/Edwards I might take those objections more seriously.

But the passage of four years hasn't made the IWR vote any smarter or dumber than it was on the day it was cast, and a lot of people voted for it who I do not believe to be wicked or stupid... Kerry, Edwards, Biden, Clinton, etc.

(I wrote extensively and daily throughout that period about the fact that there weren't going to be any WMD, and that the war was indistinguishable from Hitler's invasion of Poland, and it breaks my heart that our nominee will not be Al Gore because I really, really didn't want another IWR supporter.

But it didn't work out that way. I do not consider Obama a bad idea because of his war stance. I consider him a bad idea DESPITE his war stance, and it's not easy for me. My opposition to this war was unambiguous and as prescient as anybody's.

But the ultimate bottom line is that there is no reason to think it would have ever even crossed Hillary's mind to invade Iraq had she been President, the office she is seeking.

[BootinUp]

38. So let me understand your position

You think an unloaded gun to Hussein's head would have scared him into allowing unfettered inspections?

[Occam Bandage]

41. What would have made it "unloaded?" The gun was just as loaded,

it just would have required either UN approval or a specific vote on unilateral action before it could be fired.

[BootinUp]

42. lol nt

[VotesForWomen]

43. actually, yes, she said exactly that at the time. mind you, i think it was ass-covering, but she cla

claimed that she was voting for the resolution to make war 'less likely.' look, i voted for nader in 2004 because of IWR, but that time has come and gone. if dems supported the war in 2004, what is to be gained by making IWR a litmus test now, fer christ's sake. and more importantly, there's no difference between O and hillary on the war. those who believe there is are just believing what they want to believe.

[Ravy]

44. So she didn't want to UN to be able to order our troops into combat.

Good for her and the rest of us who like our soverignity.

And as far as going back to congress, what kind of message is that to Saddam after umpteen different resolutions. "Comply now or we might think of doing something to you later!!!!"

Bush shouldn't have invaded. Period.

[Occam Bandage]

47. UN authorization is not "the UN ordering our troops into combat." Take the Hannity tinfoil off.

We were going to get UN authorization before it looked like the vote was going to go against us, remember?