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WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR
"‘I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,' Mr. Obama said. "What would I have done? I don't know..'”
WHAT OBAMA SAID
"He opposed the war in Iraq, and spoke against it during a rally in Chicago in the fall of 2002. He said then that he saw no evidence that Iraq had unconventional weapons that posed a threat, or of any link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
"In a recent interview, he declined to criticize Senators Kerry and Edwards for voting to authorize the war, although he said he would not have done the same based on the information he had at the time.
"‘But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,' Mr. Obama said. "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.'”
"But Mr. Obama said he did fault Democratic leaders for failing to ask enough tough questions of the Bush administration to force it to prove its case for war. ‘What I don't think was appropriate was the degree to which Congress gave the president a pass on this,' he said.”
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WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR
In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Obama noted that once the war began, "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage.”
WHAT OBAMA SAID
"Obama, the U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois, said he believes the Bush administration has lost too much credibility in the world community to administer the policies necessary to stabilize Iraq. ‘On Iraq, on paper, there's not as much difference, I think, between the Bush administration and a Kerry Administration as there would have been a year ago,' Obama said during a luncheon meeting with editors and reporters of Tribune newspapers. ‘There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute.'... The problem, Obama said, is the low regard for Bush in the international community. ‘How do you stabilize a country that is made up of three different religious and in some cases ethnic groups, with minimal loss of life and minimum burden to the taxpayers?' Obama said. ‘I am skeptical that the Bush administration, given baggage from the past three years, not just on Iraq. . . . I don't see them having the credibility to be able to execute. I mean, you have to have a new administration to execute what the Bush Administration acknowledges has to happen.'”
WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR
Asked how John Kerry and John Edwards could have been wrong on the war and he could have been right, Obama said, "I think they have access to information that I did not have.”
WHAT OBAMA SAID
RUSSERT: The nominee of your party, John Kerry, the nominee for vice president, John Edwards, all said he was an imminent threat. They voted to authorize George Bush to go to war. How could they have been so wrong and you so right as a state legislator in Illinois and they're on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees in Washington?
OBAMA: Well, I think they have access to information that I did not have. And what is absolutely clear is that John Kerry said, "If we go into war, let's make sure that we do it right. Let's make sure that our troops are supported. Let's make sure that we have the kind of coalition that's necessary to succeed." And the execution of what was a difficult choice to make was something that all of us have to be concerned about. And moving forward, the only way that we're going to be able to succeed is if, I think, we have an administration led by John Kerry that's going to allow us to consolidate the relationships with our allies that bring about investment in Iraq.
RUSSERT: But if you had been a senator at that time, you would have voted not to authorize President Bush to go to war?
OBAMA: I would have voted not to authorize the president given the facts as I saw them at that time.
RUSSERT: So you disagree with John Kerry and John Edwards?
OBAMA: At that time, but, as I said, I wasn't there and what is absolutely clear as we move forward is that if we don't have a change in tone and a change in administration, I think we're going to have trouble making sure that our troops are secure and that we succeed in Iraq.
WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR
BLITZER: "Had you been in the Senate when they had a vote on whether to give the president the authority to go to war, how would you have voted?”
OBAMA: ‘You know, I didn't have the information that was available to senators."
WHAT OBAMA SAID
BLITZER: Had you been in the Senate when they had a vote on whether to give the president the authority to go to war, how would you have voted?
OBAMA: You know, I didn't have the information that was available to senators. I know that, as somebody who was thinking about a U.S. Senate race, I think it was a mistake, and I think I would have voted no.
BLITZER: You would have voted no at the time?
OBAMA: That's correct.
BLITZER: Kerry, of course, and Edwards both voted yes.
OBAMA: But keep in mind, I think this is a tough question and a tough call. What I do think is that if you're going to make these tough calls, you have to do so in a transparent way, in an honest way, talk to the American people, trust their judgment.
WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR
Asked by NPR about John Kerry and John Edwards voting for the war, Obama said: "I think that there is room for disagreement in that initial decision.”
WHAT OBAMA SAID
BLOCK: I've read about a speech you gave in the fall of 2002. It had to do with the looming war in Iraq.
Sen. OBAMA: Right.
BLOCK: It made quite a splash. Can you tell me about that?
Sen. OBAMA: I delivered a speech to a couple of thousand people at a anti-war rally in Chicago. And I said, 'It's not that I'm opposed to all wars. It's just that I think this is not the right war to fight.' I don't consider that to have been an easy decision, and certainly, I wasn't in the position to actually cast a vote on it. But what I do think is that we need a foreign policy that is less ideologically driven and pays more attention to facts on the ground.
BLOCK: This ticket, obviously, John Kerry and John Edwards, both senators voted for the war.
Sen. OBAMA: Yeah. Well--and I think that there is room for disagreement in that initial decision. Where I think we have to be unified is to recognize that we've got an enormous task ahead in actually making Iraq work. And that is going to take the kind of international cooperation that I think the Bush administration has shown difficulty pulling off, and I think that the Kerry-Edwards campaign is going to be better prepared to do.
WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR
In "Audacity,” Obama allowed that he was: "sympathetic to the pressures Democrats were under” (p. 293), adding: "I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried.” (p. 294)
WHAT OBAMA SAID
"And on October 11, 2002, twenty-eight of the Senate's fifty Democrats joined all but one Republican in handing to Bush the power he wanted.
"I was disappointed in that vote, although sympathetic to the pressures Democrats were under. I had felt some of those same pressures myself. By the fall of 2002, I had already decided to run for the U.S. Senate and knew that possible war with Iraq would loom large in any campaign. When a group of Chicago activists asked if I would speak at a large antiwar rally planned for October, a number of my friends warned me against taking so public a position on such a volatile issue. Not only was the idea of an invasion increasingly popular, but on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and-dried. Like most analysts, I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear arms. I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UN resolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences. That Saddam butchered his own people was undisputed; I had no doubt that the world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
"What I sensed, though, was that the threat Saddam posed was not imminent, the Administration's rationales for war were flimsy and ideologically driven, and the war in Afghanistan was far from complete. And I was certain that by choosing precipitous, unilateral military action over the hard slog of diplomacy, coercive inspections, and smart sanctions, America was missing an opportunity to build a broad base of support for its policies.”
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