Hillary Clinton Lied At The DNC (Matt Browner Hamlin at HuffPost)

[marmar]

Matt Browner Hamlin


03.15.2007
Hillary Clinton Lied At The DNC (17 comments )

Last month I attended the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting. I saw every presidential candidate speak about their vision for America and what they would do if elected president, including Senator Hillary Clinton.

Clinton made two major statements about Iraq in her DNC speech.

First she said, "If I had been president in October of 2002, I would not have started this war." This counterfactual elicited strong cheers from the audiences Clinton supporters, but was notable in that it was demonstrably wrong, not an apology for her pro-war vote, and irrelevant.

Clinton did vote to go to war and she has never apologized for that vote. No electoral scenario existed whereby Clinton would have been president in 2002, so statements about what she might have done had she held an office in 2002 that she did not run for in 2000 are not worth the breathe she spend making them, let alone the applause that they inexplicably garnered.

Clinton also addressed a conceivable future in her DNC speech (video here), "If we in Congress don't end this war before January of 2009, as president I will." This statement is as clear as it gets. Clinton promised to end the war in Iraq if she takes office in January 2009. She made this promise to a room of thousands of Democratic loyalists, people who have been fighting to end this war since the day it started, people who have lost family members or themselves been injured in Iraq. And she made a promise, not unlike other Democratic candidates, to be sure that the war would end immediately were she to be given the reins of this country.

Clinton lied. Or at least changed her mind in the last month, though this is hardly a better explanation. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-browner-hamlin/hillary-clinton-lied-at-t_b_43472.html

[SaveElmer]

1. Matt Browner is lying...and apparently ignorant...nt

[terisan]

2. Kerry voted for IWR and I don't think he would have gone to war in 2002

either if he had been president then.

People need to read the IWR and remember that Bush had options he chose not to use, as well as intelligence he chose to ignore and intelligence he chose to manufacture.

[PresidentObama]

4. Much agreed. This was Bush's war. Not any Democrat who gave him the authority.

Most Democrats who gave him the authority didn't think he'd rush to war like he did. The blood is on Bush's hands, not Kerry or Hillary's. The fact of the matter is, it was bad judgment to put faith in George W. Bush's hands. Kerry had his issues with some of our base in 2004 over that. And Hillary is having that same issue now. But they showed bad judgment, and they both know it and are trying to take us down a different course. I wish Hillary would at least admit her mistake, but hey it's her choice. At least she isn't for this war like Senator Lieberman.

But the IWR vote Kerry, Edwards, Hillary, and others made doesn't change this war being Bush's war!!

[Captain Hilts]

5. Check out Media Matters.org's summary of Hillary and the war issue. nt

[PresidentObama]

7. Do you have a specific link? I'd be more than happy to look it over. n/t

[Captain Hilts]

10. www.mediamatters.org

It's a recent summary so a quick search for her name will bring it up.

It's interesting.

[PresidentObama]

12. Thanks. Will do. n/t

[blm]

13. Kerry spoke AGAINST Bush's DECISION to go to war - said he rushed to war even though

the IWR was actually WORKING and weapon inspections and diplomatic efforts were proving war to be unnecessary.

Hillary also stayed closer to Bush than Kerry on terrorism and Iraq throughout 2003 and 2004, and would not back up Kerry on serious matters like Tora Bora and Rumsfeld's firing.

So, there IS a difference in their positions in 2003 and 2004 with Hillary sticking much closer to Bush than to Kerry.

[Captain Hilts]

14. No, HRC also denounced Bush's rush to war. Don't believe the right-wing spin. nt

[blm]

15. And she backed up Kerry on Tora Bora and Rumsfeld's firing in 2003 thru 2004?

I don't think so.

And I saw no evidence of any OUTSPOKENNESS against Bush's decisions on terrorism and Iraq at the time.

[Captain Hilts]

17. Check this out.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200703050007

She's not my first, second, or third choice, but she gets a bum rap on this.

[blm]

18. I don't care about the vote - IWR didn't take us to war - but the decision to go

deserved an outcry from more Democrats.

Had more Dems voiced their disapproval of the decision LOUDLY it would have made it easier for Kerry and others who were talking about it more impact. Instead, the IWR became Vote for War just like Rove wanted it to.

And Tora Bora was not a hard call to make at all. She knew as much as Kerry did, that Bush failed BIGTIME at Tora Bora and they tried to keep the failure a secret.

Many Dems left Kerry out on a limb on that one, so BushInc spun even that against him as if he was lying for political gain.

[napi21]

3. Who is this twit Browner? Sure is good at twisting words, huh? n/t

[flpoljunkie]

6. HRC: It is directly in opposition to our interests, the interests of regimes, to Israel's interests.

This statement Hillary Clinton also made in this article is also as clear as it gets and speaks for itself.

The United States’ security would be undermined if parts of Iraq turned into a failed state “that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda,” she said. “It is right in the heart of the oil region,” she said. “It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel’s interests.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/washington/15clinton.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[paulk]

16. do you agree or disagree with the statement?

I don't understand what you're trying to say....

[MGKrebs]

8. I guess I'm trying to figure out the point of this.

he's challenging a hypothetical situation by saying it's not worth the breath it took to make the statement, then wastes countless electrons and photons to say she WOULD have started the war if she were (hypothetically) President in 2002?

OooK.

[Rageneau]

9. Arianna is soooo envious of Hillary, she can't stand it.

Which is why Huffington Post is tied with Daily Kos and Fox News in flagrant attempts to upend Hillary's candidacy.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

11. The way I see it, senators had to know about PNAC and RAD...

they had to know it was Cheney's plan to into the Middle East before 9-11. More than 20 democrats voted against the IWR. What did they see that the others didn't?

I think many trusted Bill Clinton and his Iraq Liberation Act. Kerry trusted Bill's campaign strategists in '04, where did that get him? ...The Clintons have fell off the pedestal I placed them.

[MGKrebs]

19. As you imply, voting for or against the IWR would have made no difference.

Many of us opposed IWR thinking we were helping to prevent war, but with hindsight we can see that it was meaningless. Would Bush have not had the authority to attack if it were defeated? Of course not. Even the weak conditionals in the IWR were ignored by Bush. There are many who say in one breath that war was inevitable and in the next that passing IWR enabled the war. I think the former is more likely, but both certainly cannot co-exist. I also think many Dems at the time looked at the situation, understood that the absence of a resolution was no different in practicality than passing this one, and chose to avoid getting beaten about the head and neck trying to explain that they voted against the IWR because they were more than 60% sure that there weren't chemical spraying drones on their way to D.C. any minute now.

I think some people don't want to face the reality that their work, their passion, their belief, was, in the end, inconsequential and had no bearing on the actions that occurred later. There is a lingering desire to believe that if the IWR had been defeated, Bush would not have felt emboldened to defy the UN, defy France, Germany, Russia, and most of the rest of the world. In fact, it seems some feel that even if the IWR had passed, but one more senator had voted against it, that it would have made a difference.

Bush was going to have this war. Since he went ahead and did it even though being opposed by the UN, millions of activists in the streets, and 80% of the governments of the world, I doubt a few more votes in the United States Senate would have stopped him either.