Hillary has repeatedly dismissed Obama's opposition to the war as "just a speech in 2002" but we have forgotten what it was like in 2002. I remember Scott Ritter appearing on Paula Zahn and trying to speak against going to war. He was ridiculed, scorned, and insulted for "drinking Saddam's kool-aid". Any opposition was treated as "nut cake leftie rhetoric". Flag pins on everyone in the public eye from dog catchers to meteorologists, yellow ribbons on every car, the networks all created jingoistic "war" graphics and theme music to go with their pre-war coverage. Families (including mine)were torn apart if anyone dared speak against the war. Dixie Chicks getting death threats, Toby Keith singing about "boots up their ass". The courageous and wise speeches given on the floor by Paul Wellstone and Robert Byrd were drowned out voices in the wilderness. I remember this country becoming a nation of mindless zombies in the march to war. How many average Americans even knew who Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz were at that time or what a neo-con was in 2002? Obama was warning us in his speech, he was on to it from the beginning. Yeah I know, he was not in the Senate, he was not voting, but he was someone just beginning a political career and risking political suicide to tell us the truth.
Forget about who is answering the phone at 3 A.M. I want someone who sees the problem and makes a call at 2 A.M.
http://www.barackobama.com/2002/10/02/remarks_of_illinois_state_sen.phpRemarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq
| October 02, 2002
"What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars."
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