2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I always knew that Hillary had it in her [View all]Carolina
(6,960 posts)the good guys as well. But I never thought $Hillary was good after her IWR vote and here's why:
Reason 1: Iraq did not attack the US; fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis while the other four were from the UAE, Egypt, Yemen. They learned to fly here in the States (Florida, Arizona... should we have invaded and bombed those states?!). Bin Laden was also Saudi!
Reason 2: Iraq had been under horrific UN sanctions since the first Bush war on Iraq in 1991; so how could it have morphed into an imminent threat to the US in 2002 when IWR was being peddled
Reason 3: W's administration introduced IWR and demanded a vote on it right before the 2002 midterm elections. Wise men questioned the timing and the rush but not those who voted aye... they had their eyes on being POTUS and cast calculating votes that reeked of political and moral cowardice.
Reason 4: Anyone who was paying attention knew about PNAC and therefore knew how the Bush cabal and Carlyle group had their eyes on carving up Iraq's oil fields. As you pointed out in the OP, Clinton sure knew because the signers of PNAC policy papers wrote him seeking pre-emptive action while he was POTUS. And Kerry should have questioned pre-emptive war since he served in and then questioned Vietnam. He also should have questioned anything pushed by the Bushes because he had been part of the Senate investigation into Iran-Contra... about which the elder Bush as VP and former CIA chief claimed the big lie of having been "out of the loop."
Reason 5: the Bush cabal STOLE the White House in 2000 because they had their PNAC plans. Then, they ignored all the warnings/chatter leading up to 9/11 (remember the 8/6/2011 brief). They allege they were blindsided and could not have foreseen such an attack, but that flies in the face of the fact that the airspace had to be closed around the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy in July 2001, precisely because of terrorists' threats to fly planes into buildings! And Bushco was there. So therefore, why would any sentient 'leader' of the opposition party trust or "have good faith" in ANYTHING proposed by W and his cabal
Reason 6: Anyone who knew history, knew that Reagan sold WMDs to Saddam/Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war (recall the photo of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand). So when Cheney took to the airwaves in 2002 talking about WMDs and said he knew where they were and how they'd been used against the Kurds, he was telling the truth... about 1988. He was using his dirty past to foment a new war for oil
Reason 7: the Bush cabal withdrew the weapons inspectors because they were not finding anything. Scott Ritter (who was smeared) and his fellow inspectors' findings would not/did not conform to the desired Bush narrative because there were no WMDs, so Colin Bowel sold his soul and did his 'tube' presentation to the UN
Reason 8: Citing the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War, Robert Byrd gave an eloquent and passionate speech about lies that lead to war, about the waste of war, about the unintended consequences of war... and he challenged the rush to war. Bob Graham and Ted Kennedy spoke as well. Why didn't other Democratic 'leaders' like HRC listen to them rather than to Bush or Cheney? Through their aye votes, they gave Bush bipartisan cover and therefore, they have blood on their hands as well.
Clearly the rationale for IWR was all a LIE, and if a little old Jane Q Citizen like me (along with millions of other citizens) could see all this, why not Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards and Kerry?! They all voted aye, they all ran for POTUS and they all lost. I held my nose and voted for Kerry-Edwards in 2004 because our ticket, our party, our guys they were better than Bush, but it was unnerving to watch and listen to Kerry's meandering justifications when he was called out on his aye vote.
So in 2008, there was no way I was going to support $hillary precisely because of her IWR vote. Votes have consequences as do the ghastly speeches justifying such awful votes. There is no apology large enough, no justification valid enough to cover a cowardly, finger-in-the-wind vote that has caused so much death, debt, destruction and destabilization! That women should never be president.