In Debate Preview, Bernie Sanders Criticizes Hillary Clinton for Iraq Vote [View all]

[n2doc]

If there was any question about how Senator Bernie Sanders would go after Hillary Rodham Clinton in the first Democratic presidential primary debate on Tuesday evening, it was answered on Saturday in the form of a press release attacking his rival’s vote authorizing the Iraq War.

With a headline “Sanders’ Foreign Policy Experience,” the press release focuses entirely on Mr. Sanders’ opposition to the Iraq war when he was a congressman from Vermont.

Mrs. Clinton’s vote in 2002 authorizing the use of force of Iraq, which then-President George W. Bush sought, became a defining issue in her 2008 presidential primary against then-Senator Barack Obama. Mr. Obama used that vote to raise questions about Mrs. Clinton’s judgment and her character.

Mrs. Clinton never explicitly called that vote a mistake during that primary, despite pleas from some of her advisers to do just that. Instead, she moved away from it slowly, ultimately saying that had she known then what she later knew, she wouldn’t have voted that way.

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http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/10/10/in-debate-preview-bernie-sanders-criticizes-hillary-clinton-for-iraq-vote/?_r=1