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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHillary: 'I Couldn't Break Faith With' The Military To Renounce My Iraq War Vote
Explaining her hesitation to renounce her vote in favor of the Iraq War, Hillary Clinton said Monday that she didn't want to "break faith with" the U.S. military.
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Clinton wrote in her new book that she "got it wrong" on Iraq with her 2002 vote. But she said on Monday that her apparent hesitation to recant the vote was not a political calculation.
"I kept trying to say, 'Well if we knew then what we know now it would not have ever come for a vote,' all of which was true, but just sort of avoided the fact of my saying, 'You know I just got it wrong, plain and simple. I made a mistake,' she said. 'I thought a lot about that, because people said well -- 'Youre not saying you made a mistake for political reasons.'"
"Well, in fact, in the Democratic Party at that time, the smart political decision, as so many of my colleagues did, was to come out and say 'Terrible mistake, shouldnt have done it,' and you know blame the Bush administration," she said.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-iraq-war-vote-explanation
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)earthside
(6,960 posts)She is not a very good politician -- when she says stuff like this it reeks of insincerity and looks 100 percent self-serving.
She might get the Democratic nomination, and considering the field of potential Tea Party-Repuglican nominees, she might just get elected President.
But it will be without my help and I think without the enthusiasm of a lot of liberals and progressives.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)And you can name the broken ones: the military, for sure. There was no mission, nothing that would say, "We won" when achieved. Millions across the country and around the globe expressed well-founded skepticism about administration rationales for invading Iraq. Turns out they were completely right, and they didn't even have access to all the classified stuff that was supposed to make the case.
The invasion broke faith with our nation's system of laws. There was no threat to the United States, no legally cognizable reason for invading Iraq ("they tried to kill my daddy" isn't recognized as a "just war" reason). The tell - if anyone was paying attention - was that the casuses for this belli kept shifting around, depending on what Curveball was saying to his handlers on any given day, or what Halliburton's stock price was doing, or what the threat level color was manipulated to be that week.
It broke faith with the American people, the good folks who paid for all this. We were manipulated, diverted, lied to, and scammed about the invasion of Iraq. It required elected officials with courage to stand up to the multi-pronged onslaught of war talk. Elected officials who did stand against it more often than not found themselves standing alone, abandoned by their colleagues who knew or suspected they were right, but who lost heart at the thought of standing against the administration and its media mouthpieces. A profile in courage it was not for many, many Representatives and Senators who abdicated their responsibility.
Yes, the Bush administration was and is largely to blame. We will never know if they could have been stopped if more voices, and more "respected" voices, had spoken. They surely did not, and for the dead, maimed, and traumatized, it doesn't matter a tinker's damn what the political calculation was or is. The money, the lives, and the nation's credibility have all been wasted. There are lots of fingerprints on the blood-stained levers of the war machine.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)... the troops" is ridiculous. Being faithful to the troops means not sending them into unjust wars, or at least advocating for the war's end the moment you realize the war is wrong.
And getting it wrong in the first place is a disqualifier for President. Almost all of DU had it right, why couldn't Hillary get it?
4now
(1,596 posts)that I somebody else to vote for last time.
Who is this we she keeps talking about.
Nay
(12,051 posts)you send armies into a bullshit fucking war for no reason. Damn. It's that simple.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)Once all those kids started dying for nothing, I had to pretend it was still a good idea, even though it's clear it wasn't. And, of course, all those other Congressmen/women and Senators, including some from the REPUBLICAN PARTY, who admitted the war was a pile of shit, well...THEY were the ones being political, see? Well, she (like LBJ before her) has failed the commander in chief test right here.
dflprincess
(28,091 posts)She thinks this makes is okay?
neverforget
(9,437 posts)stupid, unnecessary fucking war along with some other Democrats.
And then had a hard time admitting it was a mistake because of politics. Where's her moral center?
Response to neverforget (Reply #9)
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