I continue to be utterly mystified.

[Nonhlanhla]

211. Yes, he was not trustworthy

I agree she should not have trusted him. But I suspect she might have seen him as a bumbling idiot (which is true enough), and might have thought that the real powers behind Bush would have been more thoughtful. In an interview with Tim Russert she said the following: "We can have this Jesuitical argument about what exactly was meant. But when Chuck Hagel, who helped to draft the resolution said, 'It was not a vote for war,' What I was told directly by the White House in response to my question, 'If you are given this authority, will you put the inspectors in and permit them to finish their job?' I was told that's exactly what we intended to do."

As I said, I don't like her vote, but I think as Democrats we are able to do nuance, and look at the whole picture, and given the whole picture, her vote was not simply a vote for war - indeed, it seems that it was paradoxically driven by the desire to avoid war by strongarming Saddam into giving up (potential) DMW. Her words: "The idea of putting inspectors back in -- that was a credible idea. I believe in coercive diplomacy. I think that you try to figure out how to move bad actors in a direction that you prefer in order to avoid more dire consequences."

I am not inclined to think of Hillary Clinton as the Wicked Witch of the West. I do think that some are inclined to see her as such and to therefore simply assume that she is a bloodthirsty monster who enabled BushCo out of sheer naked personal ambition, and I think they do so because they are buying into smears of Hillary that actually originated with the Right Wing. This woman has been smeared by conservatives in this country ever since it became clear that she is not the traditional supporting cookie-baking submissive wife-of-the-politician. They have successfully built up an image of her as a mean, ruthless, cold-hearted b!*#ch precisely because she does not fit the stereotype of the traditional feminine. We should be cautious not to allow that Right Wing-fabricated image of Hillary to cloud our judgment.