Reply #42: Not about 2002 - about 2004 [View All]

[Adelante]

Clinton then expressed surprise that Obama has been allowed to get away with a statement in 2004, “at the Democratic Convention,” saying that there was “not much difference” between him and George W. Bush on Iraq. He also quoted Obama as saying that he “did not know” how he would have voted on the now-contentious 2002 Senate resolution authorizing military action in Iraq, had he been in the Senate at the time.

The way Clinton said all this, it sounded as if these statements were part of Obama’s big speech to the convention, which marked his introduction to big-time politics. In fact, they are somewhat misleading snippets from newspaper interviews that Obama gave before the convention.

As the keynote speaker, Obama was trying to be loyal to the Democratic nominees, John Kerry and John Edwards, both of whom had voted in favor of the war authorization resolution, along with Hillary Clinton. In a July 26 interview with the New York Times, a few days before the convention, he reiterated his opposition to the war but declined to criticize Kerry and Edwards, saying he was “not privy to Senate intelligence reports.”

He then continued: “What would I have done? I don’t know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.”

(The Clinton campaign left out that important last sentence when it e-mailed reporters with backup material for the inconsistency claim, which was also made by Hillary Clinton in the televised debate Saturday night.)

In an interview the following day with the Chicago Tribune (July 27,2004), Obama said that he would have voted “no” on the Senate resolution. But he said he was not in favor of “pulling out now.” On the issue of whether to stay in Iraq (in 2004), he said “there’s not much of a difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” The context of his remarks makes clear that he was not referring to the original decision to go into Iraq, but the question of whether to remain.

His views on whether to stay in Iraq have changed, of course, as he now advocates a phased withdrawal.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/obama_and_iraq.html#more