Hillary updates her position on war - letter to constituent

[robbedvoter]

It's a vague shift and a long letter - so highlights:

In October 2002, I voted for the resolution to authorize the Administration to use force in Iraq. I voted for it on the basis of the evidence presented by the Administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do.
Their assurances turned out to be empty ones, as the Administration refused repeated requests from the U.N. inspectors to finish their work. And the "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda turned out to be false.
Based on the information that we have today, Congress never would have been asked to give the President authority to use force against Iraq. And if Congress had been asked, based on what we know now, we never would have agreed, given the lack of a long-term plan, paltry international support, the proven absence of weapons of mass destruction, and the reallocation of troops and resources that might have been used in Afghanistan to eliminate Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and fully uproot the Taliban.
snip
I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the President and his Administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war.
snip
That is what is missing at the highest levels of our government, and what we desperately need now - answers to the questions about Iraq that only the President can provide. I hope he will level with the American people and provide us those answers in his Annapolis speech and give us the plan that has been sorely lacking.
Sincerely yours,
Hillary Rodham Clinton

She still somehow mixes terrorism and 911 in this...

[LiberalVoice]

1. "If nothing we do matters, than all that matters is what we do."

Hows that work?

[robbedvoter]

4. It's our every day actions that have meaning - regardless of the big

picture...Personal standards thingy.

[snowbear]

2. Hillary Shmillary..

Hey Robbed, did you see our notes to you that you had

Senator Warner :grr:

mistaken for
Governor Warner :toast:

in an earlier post? Hope you caught the glitch since the post had to be canned.

~~~ :grouphug:

[robbedvoter]

12. I wish I would have seen that earlier - would have deleted it myself

[Moochy]

3. That she believed those assurances is laughable

I voted for it on the basis of the evidence presented by the Administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do.

This is the thing that pisses me off the most. That she can honestly claim that the Democrats who voted for the war resolution were accepting assurances that anyone with half a brain realized were lies.

[robbedvoter]

8. Agree. Thought it significant that she finally addressed the issue

as in her past, all her correspondence was the usual "social security, Medicare blah, blah, blah" regardless of the subject of my letters to her (war usually)
Especially when her hubby said THIS at a CFR event in August 2002:

I will just
make one observation. Saddam Hussein presents no conventional
military threat
to us, and a
much smaller one to his allies than he did before the Gulf War.
His military
strength, it is
commonly conceded, is about 40 percent of what it was before
the Gulf War

http://www.cfr.org/public/Clinton_6-17-02_Transcript.html

[Moochy]

14. Definitely signifigant

thanks for posting this, I'm not an HRC fan but I too recognize the shift of her hawkish position!

:toast:

[Malva Zebrina]

5. and of those who voted against it, Hillary, what are they?

Smarter than you? Better able to discern a fraud and a liar? More in tune with what was going on? Have better aides? Or were they dumber than you? Are you more susceptable to a con artists game than they?

Were they "commies" as the right wing often claims? Or were they visionaries.

There is NO doubt, Ms. Clinton , that they were right and you were wrong. Are you going to claim that these members of Congress are not within your party? Are you going to ignore them?

You are not a team player and that is doing the party wrong. Please go have dinner with Senator Lieberman and discuss the advantages of increasing the troops and how president Bush is doing a swell job and always has done a swell job.

And then, please take a look at the casualties and the deaths and them please, if it suits you, make some sort of a comment on your perspective, which has been absent for three years.

[thefloyd]

6. People are really obsessed

with Hillary. 3 years off. Hillary's sex, like it or not, will be the unspoken question mark IF Hillary runs especially during the war on terror.

[robbedvoter]

13. Not me. Came in my mail, I thought it relevant issue-wise.

I'm certainly not buying the media hype trying to make her the designated loser to the BFEE in 2008.

[OneTwentyoNine]

7. 2.5 years later at Hill NOW figures out it was all bullshit?!?!?

Gawd...maybe you should have tuned into DU in the MONTHS before Chimps invasion Hillary. We had the boy King nailed as a liar and bullshitter and an invasion that was for nothing more than Oil and Corporate profit.

And you want to be President?!?!? Pfffffftttt....

[robbedvoter]

9. More like - now it's finally safe to say...like most of them

[Selatius]

10. How the hell does anyone trust Bush with IWR given his record beforehand??

He promised he'd govern from the center, but he went and jumped to the far right and said, "Go fuck yourselves." He said America needed tax cuts to get the economy going again, but he cut taxes for the folks who needed tax relief the least. He said he was environmentally conscious, yet he would remain mute if not push forward ideas like opening ANWR or floating ideas like building even more nuke power plants or oil refineries instead of something more common sense like, gee, raising those CAFE standards and investing in alternative fuels.

Given all of that, not to mention other things such as stem cell research or abortion rights or gay marriage, WHY WOULD ANYONE TRUST BUSH THE NEXT TIME AROUND?

[Benhurst]

11. Hillary, if you are going to use the old parliamentary

"I take responsibility" for my vote, don't fail to use what traditionally follows: "and I resign."

What bullshit-- taking responsibility with no consequences.

The only excuse for not being responsible for any vote on the Senate floor would be mental incapacity or a rigged count. Is she claiming either?

[durrrty libby]

15. I appreciate her effort

and am happy that she finally addressed the issue.

[OneTwentyoNine]

16. LOL,she only addressed it because the tide has turned....

Oh...and the fact that she's running for Pres and needs to cover her ass for giving Chimp the power to invade based on nothing but LIES.

[robbedvoter]

22. True. I posted it as proof that the tide has turned, the only good news

here, really.

[kentuck]

17. Out front and leading....

once again...

[AmericanDream]

18. She still doesn't say her vote was "wrong" or a "mistake"...

What exactly is she taking responsibility for? Misleading? Voting wrongly? Trusting Bush? Why all the winding sentences and not a straight answer on what her position is.

Plus she says that, "the congress" knowing what it knows now wouldn't support Bush... but that is different than saying "I" knowing what I know now wouldn't support Bush's war... and of course, it is very different than saying that regardless of what we known now, I was wrong to vote for this war in the first place.

I think she realizes all this... but is playing politics... she probably thinks that if she tries a mea culpa in the Edwards form of "I was wrong" .. repubs will have a field day with labeling her a flip-flop and wobbly... and they will try to use it as a weapon to illustrate how being a "woman" she wasn't tough enough to stick it out. On a side note, I've always found it odd that woman in politics have to show a tough front and constantly prove their toughness, whereas, when it comes to the males, we tend to value compassion over anything else... why do we take it for granted that if it's a male, he must be tough? I do think Hillary's tougher than most guys in the field and I trust her to pull off a mea culpa... now only if she was courageous enough to take that step and set aside politics for a second.

[Donna Zen]

19. I read the letter and wrote back:

Dear Senator Clinton,

Having read your well-crafted letter, I am very perplexed. Considering that meetings concerning the “reconstruction of Iraq” were being held openly in Washington long before the IWR vote, I find it difficult that anyone of average intelligence would not have understood completely what “reconstruction” meant. I knew.

And when it comes to giving the president a blank check for war--let’s not kid ourselves: it was war--believing that somehow any intelligence pointed to a conclusion that Saddam posed an “imminent” threat, would seem a hasty act.

In fact Senator Clinton, the more serious neglect on the part of those who made this irreversible mistake, was thinking that an invasion of Iraq was ever a good strategy. Not recognizing the worst geopolitical blunder that our country has ever made, should cause any voter pause when considering someone to serve as CiC.

You see Senator Clinton, I live in the middle of the woods, and I knew what Bush was up to. And I knew from the facts that I researched with the aid of government funded staff. Now how did that happen? It was your husband who received a letter from the Project for the New American Century outlining this very rush to war in Iraq. Am I to believe that somehow you didn’t know who these people were and what their plans were?

So Senator Clinton, when I was spending money, volunteering my time, and marching against this war, you weren’t any where to be seen. That is not leadership, just as writing this poll-driven letter to say “oops” is not leadership. It does not bring back our country’s treasure or blood.

This well-crafted letter insults my intelligence. While it may be great that you finally caught on, you will never catch up.

Note: after my hasty message, I got to thinking about Hillary's assertion that somehow 911=Saddam=war on terror. We (the people who got it right without the oops) have fought very hard to end this bush-driven confabulation. The undercutting of the efforts to end this propaganda by Hillary, really serves to piss me off.

[robbedvoter]

21. Excellent letter! This one is a classic:

This well-crafted letter insults my intelligence. While it may be great that you finally caught on, you will never catch up.

[leesa]

20. Oh, shut up! You never even wanted to know who DID 9-11! Never

even bothered to press for a real criminal investigation into what happened on 9-11. Al Qaeda? Pure mythology made up by the liars in the WH, does she care? Hell NO! Does she care that Cheney was up to on 9-11? No. Does she care about Bush's peculiar behavior on 9-11? No. Does she care that no concrete evidence has ever been presented proving OBL did 9-11? No. Does she care that 7 of the 9-11 hijackers are alive and well? No. Does she care that NORAD didn't respond normally that day? No. Does she care that criminal evidence was ordered destroyed by the WH? No. Does she care that Bush and Cheney both personally instructed Daschle NOT to investigate 9-11? No. Does she care about the hundreds of peculiar events that point to WH culpability in 9-11? NO.

Screw Hillary.

[Loonman]

23. Power hungry

Centrist.