Hillary Had My Back [View all]

Hillary Had My Back
By Joseph C. Wilson
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The administration promised that it would seek explicit UN support prior to any military action. Meanwhile, every top official, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, assured senators that Saddam did indeed have WMD. It was in that context that the congressional vote for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force took place. Hillary has acknowledged in retrospect that her vote was an error. I agree. The error, however, was to believe an administration that has since been exposed as having serially lied to Congress, the American people and the world at the United Nations. We should never forget the extent to which the Bush administration betrayed our trust. The rest of the world doesn't.

During the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Hillary emerged as one of the administration's toughest critics. She traveled frequently to Iraq to observe the facts on the ground for herself and to speak directly to military commanders and U.S. officials. And she used her position as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to harshly question the disastrous Bush policy. She never flinched in her criticism. Not to acknowledge the full story of Hillary's record is to distort it.

Valerie's and my support for Hillary is owed as much to her character as to the issues. When I challenged the Bush administration on the truth of its case for war in a New York Times opinion piece in 2003, its reaction was to betray Valerie's identity as a covert CIA officer. The subsequent vicious attack on us by Republican partisans, designed to shift the focus from their crime was withering and unrelenting. Hillary repeatedly reached out to us with counsel and empathy as we navigated the shark infested waters. Speaking from her own personal experience, she reminded us of the importance of the good fight, however difficult it might be. Those who were attacking us, like those who had attacked her over the years, wanted to destroy people doing the right thing in order to discourage others from venturing into the public square. If they can't win on the facts, they invent smears to attack the characters of their critics. With Hillary's moral support, we stood up to the bullies. We could not give them that victory. She was right and we were vindicated.
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