Clinton's Struggles to Explain Her Iraq Position

There have been several attempts to account for Senator Clinton's vote for the Iraq War Resolution. None withstand scrutiny.

1. The Vote on the War Resolution. Hillary Clinton says repeatedly that she was assured by George Bush that the vote was just to insert intrusive inspections, and that he abused the authority Congress gave him.

Although that is clearly true, it does not explain her vote. Juxtapose it with what she actually said in her vote speech: "This is a very difficult vote. This is probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make -- any vote that may lead to war should be hard -- but I cast it with conviction". Is that what someone says when she believes she is voting just to insert inspectors?

The Clinton campaign will point to other parts of that speech, in which she urged diplomacy, expressed reservations, ...but, the bottom line was how SHE herself summed up her own dilemma -- "the hardest decision I have ever had to make", did not mean intrusive inspections, it meant committing us on a path to war and the most disastrous foreign policy mistake in US history.

The campaign's attempts to reframe her vote are belied by the clear statement she made at the time of her difficulty in casting it.

Moreover, as Bush was moving to war there was nary a word of protest from Senator Hillary Clinton that she had not meant to authorize it. There is a good reason for that: she had and she wanted that known. She cast that vote "with conviction".

2. The Levin Amendment . She has provided several explanations for her vote AGAINST the Levin Amendment, always mischaracterizing its content.

The Levin Amendment provided Congressional authorization, but pre-committed the US to war if, and only if, the Security Council voted for it. It did not, as Senator Clinton has said on occasion, compel the US to go to war, but rather said that the president was authorized by Congress if the UN voted for it.

Nor did it preclude the US from going to war if the UN did not vote for it, as she has also implied. The Levin Amendment said that that in all other circumstances there was no Congressional authorization for war, and that Bush needed to get that voted upon by Congress.

That is, the Levin Amendment called for Bush to go to the UN, obtain intrusive inspections, authorized him to go to war with a Security Council vote, but required another vote by Congress if the Security Council did not vote for war.

Why do the Clintons mischaracterize the Levin Amendment? Because it is just what she should have voted for if she really only wanted to do what she now says she intended: to trigger intrusive inspections and really wanted not to provide Bush authorization for war.

So, on Meet the Press #1, she said she voted against it because it turned over authority to the UN (it did not), and because President Clinton answered NATO's call in Bosnia and Kosovo, and should not have had to go to Congress for authorization. (See, "Hillary Was Not Boring on Meet the Press -- She Raised a Critical Issue of Presidential Power", October 11, 2007).

That was dangerous ground for her since Democrats do not want presidents going to war without Congressional approval. Actually, neither did the Founding Fathers, and that is why the Constitution divided the war-making authority between the branches, but that is a subject of another article.

In one of the debates, and on MTP #2, she omitted the comment about Congressional authorization. (I would like to think that the above-referenced article forced them to backtrack, but who knows?) In the debate she repeated her mischaracterization of the provision relating to the UN. On MTP #2 she mischaracterized the entire amendment, but added she was always interested in limiting Bush's authority, i.e., she inhaled but she did not smoke.

Voting FOR the Levin Amendment was actually the vote she SHOULD have made if she truly wanted to do what she now says she did. Their problem: she voted AGAINST IT, and thus has had to pretend ever since that it was something it was not.

3. Did not read the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Their explanation for this is that she consulted a "wide variety of people", including those from Bill's administration, and she therefore did not need to read the NIE.

We know now that the NIE contained qualifying information about the WMD claims, including their lack of corroboration and their source emanating from "Curveball", a character to whom the CIA never spoke, and about whom German Intelligence had grave doubts.

No one, no matter how well-informed, could know that a report she has never read did not contain very useful information.

Not reading the NIE, the government's multi-agency final report, when one is about to vote based upon "the hardest decision I have ever had to make", when no one could know what that contained without having read it----and thus sharing responsibility for the deaths and injury of 30,000 Americans, the expenditure of $500B and counting--- how does all that add up? It does not.

4. Bill Clinton was against the Iraq War from the beginning!? That one did not last more than a half a news cycle, but the attempt is worth a moment's analysis. While Hillary was voting FOR the war in the "hardest decision I ever had to make", Bill Clinton gave interviews that expressed support for the war, and sometimes expressed disapproval. He was for and against the war at the same time.

Early in the campaign, they had James Carville send out a trial balloon that she was very sensitive to terrorism because she was the New York Senator during 9/11, and that's why she voted for the Iraq War authorization. That did not work.

Bill Clinton just trotted that out again. Basically, this suggests some legitimacy to the Bush/Cheney line that there was a connection between 9/11 and voting for the Iraq War.

5. The Iran War vote. Alone among the Democratic Senators running for President, Hillary Clinton voted for the Bush/Cheney resolution declaring the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Others rightly worried that such a declaration might provide George Bush the pretext for launching another war. She did not appear to be sufficiently chastened by her vote for the Iraq War resolution so as to avoid providing Bush/Cheney a pretext for another war.

In last night's debate, she said she would want her vote back. Does she apologize to the American people? Edwards did.