What's the difference between Bob Graham and the Clintons on the Iraq fiasco? Honest truth. [View all]

[madfloridian]

On the lead up to the Iraq war Senator Bob Graham was very critical of those who refused to read the entire NIE and not just the sanitized version. He did not mince words. These are strong words for Bob Graham who always thought and thought about things before speaking.

This is a partial repost, but it needs to be said again. I notice Graham is still after getting the redacted truth about 9/11 out to the public.

We need to remember things like this at this anniversary of the time that our country invaded another country based on lies.

I remember Bob Graham's rant on October 9, 2002, two days before the IWR vote.

The Palm Beach Post link is no longer available, but I saved the text and the article.

..."On Oct. 9, 2002, Graham — the guy everyone thought of as quiet, mild-mannered, deliberate, conflict-averse — let loose on his Senate colleagues for going along with President Bush's war against Iraq.

"We are locking down on the principle that we have one evil, Saddam Hussein. He is an enormous, gargantuan force, and that's who we're going to go after," Graham said on the floor. "That, frankly, is an erroneous reading of the world. There are many evils out there, a number of which are substantially more competent, particularly in their ability to attack Americans here at home, than Iraq is likely to be in the foreseeable future."

He told his fellow senators that if they didn't recognize that going to war with Iraq without first taking out the actual terrorists would endanger Americans, "then, frankly, my friends — to use a blunt term — the blood's going to be on your hands."

It was a watershed moment. Gone was the meticulous thinker who would talk completely around and through a problem before answering a question about it...

In contrast to those words were the ones spoken by other leaders.

Clinton defends successor's push for war

"I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over," Clinton said in a Time magazine interview that will hit newsstands Monday, a day before the publication of his book "My Life."

Clinton, who was interviewed Thursday, said he did not believe that Bush went to war in Iraq over oil or for imperialist reasons but out of a genuine belief that large quantities of weapons of mass destruction remained unaccounted for.

Noting that Bush had to be "reeling" in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Clinton said Bush's first priority was to keep al Qaeda and other terrorist networks from obtaining "chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material."

"That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for," Clinton said in reference to Iraq and the fact that U.N. weapons inspectors left the country in 1998.

Of course his views were the basis of many of the votes for the invasion by others in Congress.

And Hilary also spoke on the topic in 2008, when there had been plenty of hindsight.

Hillary and the Iraqi People

Sometimes one can agree with a great part of what one says, but then can be appalled by one statement. This was that kind of time for me.

As Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, prepares to give a major address on Iraq today, I’m reminded how much I was struck by this part of her Friday speech in Pittsburgh, when she sounded as if she were implying that the Iraqi people were entirely to blame for their current troubles.

Democrats, it seems to me, have blurred the line between the Iraqi government officials unable or unwilling to come together, and the Iraqi people — the millions of people who have been victimized by Saddam Hussein, then a poorly-planned war, and on and on.

Her words from that ABC article in 2008.

"And I believe that at the same time that we have to make clear to the Iraqis that they have been given the greatest gift that a human being can give another human being – the gift of freedom. And it is up to them to decide how they will use that precious gift that has been paid for with the blood and sacrifice and treasure of the United States of America.

Changing the reason for the invasion from protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction to giving Iraqis the gift of freedom. That is a terrible spin about such a tragic loss of our country's integrity.