Reply #77: Edwards spent the 04 debate with Cheney criticizing the Iraq adventure

[struggle4progress]

EDWARDS: ... And it's not just me that sees the mess in Iraq .... Republican leaders .. have said Iraq is a mess and it's getting worse .. because of the incompetence of the administration .... Paul Bremer said yesterday .. they didn't have enough troops to secure the country. They also didn't have a plan to win the peace. They also didn't put the alliances together to make this successful ...

Mr. Vice President, there is no connection between the attacks of September 11th and Saddam Hussein. The 9/11 Commission has said it. Your own secretary of state has said it. And you've gone around the country suggesting that there is some connection. There is not. And in fact the CIA is now about to report that the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein is tenuous at best ...

IFILL: ... You and Senator Kerry have said that the war in Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time. Does that mean that if you had been president and vice president that Saddam Hussein would still be in power?

EDWARDS: ... It means that Saddam Hussein needed to be confronted .. the right way. And doing it the right way meant that we were prepared; that we gave the weapons inspectors time to find out what we now know, that in fact there were no weapons of mass destruction; that we didn't take our eye off the ball, which are al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the people who attacked us on September the 11th ....

... We also thought it was wrong to have a $20 billion fund out of which $7.5 billion was going to go to a no-bid contract for Halliburton, the vice president's former company ...

... And .. if we need to, we can take Iraqis out of Iraq to train them .... It's so dangerous on the ground that they can't be trained there. We can take them out of Iraq for purposes of training. We should do whatever has to be done to train the Iraqis and to speed up that process ...

... They sent 40,000 American troops into Iraq without the body armor they needed. They sent them without the armored vehicles they needed. While they were on the ground fighting, they lobbied the Congress to cut their combat pay. This is the height of hypocrisy ...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/05/debate.transc... /

JE was still in the Senate at the time; he was taking a respectable "Pottery Barn" position; and he was saying a lot of the right things then. But political realities and moral consciences limited the speed with which one-time war supporters could reposition themselves to call for immediate withdrawal. The required time for such repositioning was predictable in advance, and it was clear in advance that JE was headed for the position he finally took in November 05:

It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake — the men and women of our armed forces and their families — have performed heroically and paid a dear price. The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth ... http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/12/17191/214

Of course, I tore my hair out and cursed constantly through all of this -- but politics is politics ...