Sorry, she sure was a decision-maker. As one of the best known Dems in the country, she could have read the NIE and could have voted against the war.
I marched on a cold, cold day to try to stop that war. I made a decision about how I stood and so did she.
A lot of people are upset with her "authorization" vote. That's been evident in this primary and by the support by the "moveon"ers toward Obama. Seems to me to be a single issue nomination.
For many families and friends of fallen soldiers it is the ONLY issue.
Besides a speech, when marching did Obama do? What protests did he lead? What action did he take to end the war? Where are his letters, protests, bills introduced to stop the funding?
Hmmm... his resume in that department looks mighty thin.
If I say so myself, Helen Thomas says it all (see my sig.)
And yes, she was really appalled at the media when she said that.
What did Martin Luther King do to take the highest office in the land?
For that matter, what has Hillary done? Been reelected to the Senate seems to be the only answer.
Outside of Obama's statements against the war, he has made zero statements against the war.
Such a knowing voice.
You may have misread my point.
Did you vote for Kerry in 2004?
I also worked against the IWR from the very start. Unfortunately a whole lot of people in Congress voted for it. Personally I'm fairly certain Obama would have, had he been in there. The thing is, I've voted for people who have not always done as I would wish.
Clinton defended that vote for a very long time. And I think that she didn't take responsibility for her act until she very grudgingly admitted it had not been a good idea. And this diary is about taking responsibility.
Now that you keep refusing to answer my question, I'm even more determined to hear whether you voted for Kerry. The reason is, of course, that I wonder if you hold Hillary to a higher standard.
The thing I have the most problem with, when it comes to Hillary, is the AUMF vote. She did take responsibility, though. She didn't attempt to deny what she had done. My own belief is that it was a bad vote. At the time when I said that, I was in a small minority and was sometimes vilified for saying it. Now, of course, the country realizes people like me were prescient.
Yeah. And I worked hard for Kerry. But he admitted it was a bad vote long ago. Hillary took ages to do it, long after it was very, very obvious what a bad choice it was. I try to teach my kids that they have to fess up when they make a mistake. By doing so, they will get more respect than they lose.
that we'll work for and vote for whoever the nominee is, even if we don't support them in the primary season. I don't support Hillary, and one of the main reasons is because of her vote for AUMF and against the Levin amendment. If she'd become the nominee I would've supported her for president, though.
What a sucky argument. "But, but, but, Kerry did it!?!?!" Bwhahaha. Of course, we ABSOLUTELY SHOULD have a higher standard. Kerry was running against an incumbent who had 90+% approval ratings during his first term, and 50+ throughout most of 2004, plus a media environment dominated by Fox News. The GOP brand has taken a beating since, and we absolutely should be holding our nominee to a higher standard and expecting more from (ahem) him.
And while you may be right that Obama would have voted for the AUMF when he was in the senate, the fact is that he did not. You can whine and say that's unfair to your candidate, but this isn't a contest to be fair to Hillary. Taking responsibility isn't about what's fair to you, it's about owning up for your action. And Hillary was absolutely disgusting and Bushian in her refusal to admit her HUGE, OBVIOUS mistake. It would crystalize, once and for all, the weakness and surrender of the Dem opposition to GOP war-mongering to nominate someone in 2008 who voted for the war and refuses to commit to ending it. What better way to bookend this era in history as the one in which Lieberdems and their DLC patsies aided and abetted the GOP in their war crimes and affronts to human decency? Thank God the DLC doesn't run this party anymore. What a bunch of morons.
P.S. This diary, like so many of Alegre's, is really awful and bad for he party. It's obvious that she, like Hillary (and Jerome), puts her right to stamp her feet above the best interests of Democrats. And yet there it goes straight to the top of the rec list. You Hillary supporters really need some better quality control. It's absolutely hilarious that Hillary supporters would question Obama's ability to hire people, like that's a favorable comparison. She went into this race with more advantages than any candidate in recent memory, and lost because the incompetents who ran her campaign (a.k.a. the pople who pay Alegre's salary) were too dumb to realize their error in focusing on "big," "important" states. You're going to have to come up with better anti-Democrat smear jobs than this if you want to ruin Obama to maybe give Hillary the chance to get crushed by McCain in 2012.
I think your question is to politicsmatter. However, I would like to say I voted for Kerry, and Gore, and I even voted for Obama for Senate. I just don't think he's ready for prez.
I, too, voted for Gore and Kerry. Kerry's AUMF vote displeased me enormously, but there's never been a candidate who was with me 100%. We have to look at the overall person, and what's important in the race. Like trying to get Junior Bush out of the WH.
In addition I was pleased to see Obama win the Senate seat. I agree with you that he isn't ready.
So I hear you have concerns about experience. McCain has NO executive experience and his policy positions are dangerous.
anyway, you have to make choices between imperfect candidates, as we all do. That's how elections work.
You are right, we make choices between imperfect candidates. I think Chitown Denny has made the reasonable choice of Hillary Clinton.
he's a weirdo, for sure. Either of ours is head and shoulders, but she's the best, and looks like she's positioned to win the GE. She's got those working class white guys who never vote for a dem prez, but vote dem down-ticket. They're big on national security and she has a great relationship with the military, who totally back her Iraq exit plan which includes outlawing private armies and canceling Bush's no bid contracts. She also has hundreds of years of foreign policy wonks and retired diplomatic corps people. But the poll that they like her moxies, she doesn't whine, or complain, she just keeps going toward the goal. She's practical and she's relentless and for some reason these guys are voting for a girl. That is amazing, she can bring the country together. Pug women like her too, even though they disagree with her policies they also want out of Iraq, and they know she'll clean up the bush mess. It's always that way, if it's dirty enough let the girl do the hard cleaning. I"m sure they'll expect to take it back in 8 years when things are smooth again and we all have insurance, but I think getting a taste of a responsible and competent president will lead us away from the big personalities and maybe let some more girls in the door.
obama might have "had pizza" with monica too.....but we'll never know.
i am so tired of this high-pathetical. (the pun is always intended)
politicsmatters, Where the heck do you get your info? Do you simply repeat what you hear? I'm not very familiar with your postings but I'm under the impression that you're a much sharper tack then you've let on in the last comment.. If you're really interested in what happened leading to the invasion of Iraq - please skip David Corn and Noam Chomsky, okay? And read this - and if you're like some Obama supporters who think Pat Lang is a racist because he had the nerve to write historically about the Confederate Secret Service, please don't bother. And I will be disappointed in you.
http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol11/0406_l ang.asp
OK, for starters let's say I'm not thrilled about the AUMF yea vote and I will say Hillary, like others was duped. And I'm proud both of my senators, Levin & Stabenow voted nay. Hillary made the mistake of believing GWB, a sitting president would not lie and pull the inspectors out before they were allowed to finish their job. All the dissensions were taken out of the 27 page NIE. The INR & the Dept. of Energy's dissension[s] Energy were removed.
From Drinking the Koolaid..
First, there was the consistent refusal to provide witnesses and information to the U.S. Senate, especially regarding the projected costs of the war and the lack of opportunities to question key players such as General Jay Garner, who was appointed by the Defense Department to be the first head of the U.S. provisional authority in Iraq. There was also the subtle hiding of the objections of the Department of Energy and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) in the NIE of October 2002. One congressional source explained that the classified NIE was made available in its entirety to only a select few members of Congress. There were verbal briefings and an elaborate process to access the document in a secure location. But it was never clear that the 27-page unclassified version that was available to every office was missing any crucial information.
There were also false statements to Congress about providing the U.N. inspectors all the intelligence that might have helped them locate the Iraqi WMD and programs. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan has accused the administration, and especially CIA Director Tenet, of withholding information because "the truth" -- that the United States had withheld the locations of 21 high - and middle-priority sites -- might have slowed down the drive for war. The truth might have convinced Congress to take action to delay military action until the inspections were completed.
The March 7, 2003, appearance by the chairmen of UNMOVIC (Hans Blix) and the IAEA (Mohamed ElBaradei) before the U.N. Security Council was a disaster for the neoconservatives. The Iraqis and Saddam Hussein had "accelerated" cooperation with the United Nations, said Dr. Blix. Blix told the Council that Iraq had made a major concession: they had agreed to allow the destruction of the Al Samoud ballistic missiles. "We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks," Blix said. "Lethal weapons are being destroyed. . . . The destruction undertaken constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament -- indeed, the first since the middle of the 1990s." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~
Now the Al Samouds were very expensive to make for a country under sanctions and under the watchful eye of Centcomm. Saddam allowed unprecented access to the inspectors and the Samouds were destroyed until the inspectors were pulled out.
The the mission of disarming Saddam was being accomplished. And on Mar. 7, 2003, ElBaradei blew the neocons out of the water and destroyed their story completely with his revelation of the forged documents and the aluminum tubes. Col. Lang says..
But it was after the next presentation, by IAEA chairman Mohammed ElBaradei, that "all hell broke loose" in Washington. ElBaradei, in his statement, sank the U.S. intelligence community's prestigious NIE, President Bush's State of the Union address, and Colin Powell's February 5 address to the U.N. Security Council with one blow. ElBaradei was calm in what he had to say: "Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which form the basis for reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are, in fact, not authentic." The Niger yellowcake documents were forgeries. Then, ElBaradei told the press that an IAEA staff member had, in fact, used the common search engine Google to determine, within hours, that the Niger documents, which had been passed on to the U.S. embassy in Rome through an anonymous source, were fakes! Members of Congress then began to grumble. In light of the contradictions, a bill was introduced demanding that the administration disclose the intelligence reports that were the basis for the statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell about the Iraqi WMD threat. It was still locked in committee when the war began.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/07/sprj.ir q.un.transcript.elbaradei/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~
Yet at that point, it didn't matter. This WH had other plans and betrayed the trust of congress, the UN and the American people. Bush simply said the destruction of the Samouds was proof of the duplicity of Saddam. Blix, ElBaradei and others were aghast.
Then Illinois state Sen. Obama took a guess. He has admitted it but it is a far different story from what some of his followers say. Good for you for marching - and may there always be those that do - but neither you or I knew of the stunning level of duplicity. Ask Joe Wilson.
