Personally, I did not miss that statement about his regret for not relying on his own judgement. I took that to mean his gut said no, but political ambitions said yes...so he went with his aspirations, not what was in the best interest of the nation or the American lives he was committing to war.

I have noted in other posts, that Edwards sat on the Intelligence Cmte and would have had access to the most complete information available including the dissenting facts that cast doubts that were in the NIE report that the Intelligence Cmte was privvy too. JE failed to follow Bob Grahams' lead as the ranking member, as well.

I don't remember the name, but I'm pretty sure I read a few months ago about some aide of Edwards basically apologizing for or stating that he regretted advising/pressing Edwards to vote the way he did.

Anybody else see that?

Before we go further in the read-between-the-lines game, here's what he said to Russert in February:

MR. RUSSERT: Why were you so wrong?

SEN. EDWARDS: For the same reason a lot of people were wrong. You know, we—the intelligence information that we got was wrong. I mean, tragically wrong. On top of that I’d—beyond that, I went back to former Clinton administration officials who gave me sort of independent information about what they believed about what was happening with Saddam’s weapon—weapons programs. They were also wrong. And, based on that, I made the wrong judgment. I, I, I want to go another step, though, because I think this is more than just weapons of mass destruction. I mean, I—at the—I remember vividly what I was thinking about at the time. It was, first, I was convinced he had weapons of mass destruction. That’s turned out to be completely wrong and false. I had internal conflict because I was worried about what George Bush would do. I didn’t have—I didn’t have confidence about him doing the work that needed to be done with the international community, the lead-up to a potential invasion in Iraq. I didn’t know, in fairness, that he would be as incompetent as he’s been in the administration of the war. But I had—there were at least two things going on. It wasn’t just the weapons of mass destruction I was wrong about. It’s become absolutely clear—and I’m very critical of myself for this—become absolutely clear, looking back, that I should not have given this president this authority.

MR. RUSSERT: At that time, however, Senator Kennedy’s saying, “ This is not an imminent threat.” General Zinni, who led the military in that region, said this is the wrong war.

SEN. EDWARDS: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: General Scowcroft, former President Bush’s national security advisor. And the National Intelligence Estimate that was given to you and now made public had some real caveats, and this is one of them. “ The activities we have detected do not ... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR [the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research] would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons.” Do you remember seeing that?

SEN. EDWARDS: Mm-hmm, I did see it. I mean, I, I think it was—there were serious questions about whether—again, we’re looking back. Now we know none of this was true. But, at the time, there were serious questions about any effort to obtain nuclear weapons, which is what that statement just was. All of us believed there was no question that he had chemical and biological weapons, and there was at least some scattered evidence that he was making an effort to get nuclear weapons.

MR. RUSSERT: But it seems as if, as a member of the intelligence committee, you just got it dead wrong, and that you even ignored some caveats and ignored people who were urging caution.

SEN. EDWARDS: Well, I, I, I would—first of all, I don’t want to defend this. Let me be really clear about this. I think anybody who wants to be president of the United States has got to be honest and open, be willing to admit when they’ve done things wrong. One of the things, unfortunately, that’s happened in Iraq is we’ve had a president who was completely unmoving, wouldn’t change course, wouldn’t take any responsibility or admit that he’d made any mistakes. And I think America, in fact the world has paid a huge price for that. So I accept my responsibility. I’m not defending what I did. Because what happened was the information that we got on the intelligence committee was, was relatively consistent with what I was getting from former Clinton administration officials. I told you a few minutes ago I was concerned about giving this president the authority, and I turned out to be wrong about that.

So, one of the other influences in his decision was "former Clinton administration officials".

You obviously can interpret what happened any way you like. Personally, I see a freshman senator representing a very red state, getting mixed intelligence information, having a gut feeling about what to do, having a wife dead set against authorization, having presidential ambitions in the next election, and he just chose wrong. His answer last night to me sounds like: with all of the other stuff going on, I should have just listened to my gut feeling.

I've written at length about "political courage" with the AUMFAIR vote before. It wasn't a shining moment for any Democratic senator really. Those in comfortable re-election positions voted against it. Those that weren't, voted for it. And some that were, still voted for it: ahem Kerry and Clinton.

I don't read anything nefarious into this. It was his gut feeling, against all the other external info and advice.

Edwards has been completely forthcoming, admitting this vote was a mistake, one he'll always regret. He f*&ked up. He said it was a mistake. I'm good with that.

On the other hand, I do think his refusal to acknowledge the "war on terror" is a tremendous step forward. Despite the glib "show of hands" silliness, I actually thought that was a brilliant question, and those with their hands raised seemed to be playing right into Bush's framing.

I have to go back to the tape, but did I detect even a bit of squeamishness on those hand-raisers?

I think it's important we get away from the "war on terror" language, which over simplifies and even misleads the public on how we need to handle these very real threats.

I hope that by the DNC comes around, Democrats have done away with that language all together, and gotten to a more substantive position on handling the terrorist threat.

In fact, why wait? Next debate, let's not see any hand-raisers, huh? 

Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. -- SCOTUS that was...

It is clear to me that those who voted to allow bus his unfettered acces to invade Iraq, played a polical game. If he was successful, they would be sitting pretty.

Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, all played the risk and they lost. That they now are in the corner, trying desperatly to sneak out of that terrible corner is telling. Most especially for Clinton. She continues to behave as if she is George Bush--stubbornly refusing to admit she was, either stupid, or playing the game (with the lives of our young) I believe she was playing a political game and when cornered, became stubborn and arrogant, believing perhaps the PR people could gloos over her egregious error.

As far as Edwards--I am not sure whether or not he is still playing the political game with his admission of his "mistake" It is unfortunate that people must have to calculate how much these politicans are spinning us. Edward's mistake was playig the belt way politics game. If a man follows his "advisors" as if they were gurus, we have to ask ourselves if that behavior will continue.
Obama--has the upper hand re his behavior re the Iraq debacle. He was not present for that vote.

interested in knowing exactly what happened inside his head. I'm not sure I buy the idea -- pushed by many -- that they were deceived by wrong int

the sense I get from reading that Russert interview is that he went with his aspirations because he believed the President would be a sensible and reasonable man who would not take the country to war without reason. That I think is where his error of judgement lies. Not understanding how profoundly flawed the character of Bush was. He already knew in his gut, he didnt want to go to war, but he was willing to pass the buck to the President's 'better judgement'  and hope to gain politically from casting an affirmative vote. I imagine that would indeed weigh heavily on his conscious given the ass Bush turned out to be.

Bottomline, he and Hillary are saying the same thing...I was deceived by the President.

Greg,
Its the ESSENTIAL question that has to be answered by everyone who supported the war back then: What were you thinking?

We got stuck in Vietnam because of the assassination of the Diem brothers more than because of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Decapitating the South Vietnamese government made us politically responsible for South Vietnam.

How could it happen again? Especially with people who opposed the Vietnam War (Kerry, Dodd, Schumer, Clinton, etc.) getting on board with the US ruling the world with violence. How could they ever have thought it would work? Obama's 2002 speech against the Iraq War wasn't "prescient;" it was just common sense. And all the war supporters should have to answer in detail why they were so casual about taking on the responsibility for another country by decapitating its government.

If you have a chance, be sure and see that Bill Moyers special "Buying the Iraq War." It highlights a team of Knight Ridder reporters (Strobel and Landay) who debunked the weapons of mass destruction horse manure while it was being shoveled at us back in 2002-3. Any US senator had at least as good resources to find out what they did.

Theres a video clip of him saying he was PROUD to have been the co-sponsor.

Yes, what was in senators' heads? I was blown away tonight by the news on 'Countdown' of Durbin's speech in the Senate (today I think). Durbin said that the intel the Intelligence Committee members had received in 2002 was quite different from what the White House and major media were reporting to the American people. Alas, the secrecy oath he took as a member of the Intel Committee made it impossible for him to warn Americans. Olberman rightly commented that Durbin's allegience to a secrecy oath over and above the likely costs of war in American and Iraqi lives was a trivial concern. Also, a simple statement of general fact, such as "Intel received by the Intelligence Committee is at odds with public reports," would not have been violating an oath meant to protect specific pieces of sensitive information.

I've googled in search of a transcript of Durbin's Senate statement but so far have come up empty. It doesn't appear other news outlets have picked up on this.

Well, I just googled the Senate Intel Committee membership in 2002 and their Iraq Resolution votes. Of the eight Democrats on the committe, four voted 'yea' (Rockefeller, Feinstein, Bayh & Edwards) and four voted 'nay' (Levin, Wyden, Durbin & Mikulski). I guess the 'differing' info that Durbin spoke about today wasn't dramatic enough to change four Senator's votes who had heard the same intel. Of course, each senator should have taken a personal responsibility for investigating each intel point as to its veracity. It was easy enough for me to do with my PC, getting excellent info from experts worldwide, so I'm quite sure the senators could have managed with their staffs to do a little homework too. Shame on them.

The only 2 puzzling votes there are Feinstein and Edwards..Rockfeller and Bayh are Repubs and they were definitely going to vote with Bush. Edwards was seemingly for his political aspirations, I wonder why Feinstein voted as she did. Perhaps, AIPAC influence?

Rockfeller and Bayh are Repubs and they were definitely going to vote with Bush.

Both are Democrats, of course, and if they were Republicans it would hardly excuse them.

Best, Terry

Its either a colossal wrong decision, a monumental bad judgement OR they put what they perceived were their own personal interests and ambitions ahead of the nation's (keeping their fingers crossed that it wouldn't be such a big deal???).

Of course, there are lots of Democrats who opposed the Iraq War besides Obama and Kucinich. Most of the Democrats in the House voted against it. If the ones who got us into this mess were ever willing to put their ambitions aside and step aside, surely others would have stepped forward and run for president, no? Its what should have happened.

Dems on the Committee in 2002:

Graham, Nay
Levin, Nay
Rockefeller, Yea
Feinstein, Yea
Wyden, Nay
Durbin, Nay
Bayh, Yea
Edwards, Yea
Mikulski, Nay

5-4 Nays to Yeas

http://intelligence.senate.gov/members107thcongress.html

UPDATED

Thanks for the corrected list of Dem Intel members in 2002. I somehow missed Daschle and Graham.

So you're implying that the reason why Kucinich is the only candidate that voted against it is because the other blinded-by-ambition, war-mongering candidates are blocking the really good ones from running?

I don't know, seems like if that was the case, and that the electorate saw this one vote, this one decision as being as monumental and colossal a failure as you do, that there would be more than one candidate.

Personally, I feel like the Democrats have the best pool of candidates since 1960.

Sorry, I guess I should clarify here that "we" and "us" here do not mean "all" but "a majority of Americans".

This was the first link I encountered in my search. Taken from a 'Common Dreams' reprint of an LA Times article on a poll taken in December 2002:

'The overwhelming majority of respondents -- 90% -- said they do not doubt that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction. But in the absence of new evidence from U.N. inspectors, 72% of respondents, including 60% of Republicans, said the president has not provided enough evidence to justify starting a war with Iraq.'

Most Unconvinced On Iraq War, Reynolds, LAT

My point was that, as people such as Jessica Tuchman Matthews (see http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june03/why_war_2-12.html)
was suggesting, there was a middle ground between doing nothing and going to war in Iraq. Inspections "with teeth" was the idea - where the US would back up the UN inspectors with a plausible use of force. I think a lot of people supported the force authorization on this theory in the hope that Bush was responsible enough to refrain from the actual use of force unless weapons were found. Even if weapons were found, military action short of all-out invasion and regime change was a possibility. As I said, I did not trust George Bush, so I opposed the authorization at the time, but I thought the "inspections with teeth" theory was a responsible one.

Also (I'm adding this as an edit), I supported Bob Graham for president. This is what he said: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111802397.html
He was very meticulous in his analyis of the intelligence that was being offered, but doesn't seem to throw stones at those who didn't share his perspicacity.

Crabapple, you should really supply a link to what you cite, because the polls were a little more nuanced than you suggest: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec02/iraqpolls_10-07-02.html

There was qualified support for the use of force in Iraq - people did not support a unilateral invasion. In other words, people believed that there was a problem in Iraq and they believed that military action of some kind (or the threat of military action) should play a role in solving it, but they didn't support what Bush (from the get go) wanted to do - have an all-out unilateral invasion and occupation. That's why the Senate's support of the war (although I opposed it) was more complicated than war mongers versus peaceniks.

Wow. Someone in Congress, with all those staff resources and all that responsibility is only held to the standard of the mob on the day of 9/11? And on the issue of taking this country to war? Actually, the polls at the time of the Iraq War Resolution were very mixed with the public only at 50% on invasion with ground forces, despite the all out media push for war and the support for war by high profile Democrats.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec02/iraqpolls_10-07-02.html

Yeah, I'd give them a break if, say, the Washington sniper got caught and they made some dumb comment on the fly that could be seen to prejudice his Constitutional rights. But there is just no honest way to let them off the hook for their responsibility to be serious and THOUGHTFUL in taking this country to war. It was a grievous error and says something about their character in the actual vote but also in putting themselves forward to be President now.

Where else in adult life is one not held to the "You should have known" standard? That IS how an adult holds himself/herself accountable for important responsibilities.

And, politically, nominating a war supporter nullifies the best, starkest issue the Democrats have going for them: forcing the Republican candidate to embrace Bush or repudiate him, a lose/lose proposition for the Republican. It'll be a shame to give that up again.

I have heard this debate about the AUMF vote over and over. The HRC and JE supporters try to justify the mistake their candidates made. The Obama supporters trumpet his judgement.

I think this discussion about judgement and political calculation is very important, but I believe there are two other questions about the AUMF vote that are equally important:

WHO IS BEST POSITIONED TO HOLD THE REPUBLICANS ACCOUNTABLE?

HOW WILL THE REPUBLICANS ATTACK THE DEM NOMINEE BASED ON HIS/HER POSITION ON AUMF?

HRC: calculating, then evasive, then stubborn in refusing to apologize. Complex explanation for her position makes it hard to hold the Rs accountable. Her evolving position totally reinforces the Repubs attack meme that she is calculating, ambitious, and inauthentic.

Edwards: didn't just vote for AUMF, he made many pro war statements. Because he was on the Intelligence Committee it is even harder to hold the Repubs accountable. His complete apology is helpful on one hand, but OTOH it reinforces the image that he is chasing public opinion. This chasing opinion, flip-flop reinforces the Repub attack meme that he is a slick trial lawyer who lacks foreign policy substance.

Obama: opposed the war from the start. Voted to fund the troops and find a "responsible" way to disengage. Definitely in the best position to hold Repubs accountable. Precient judgement and "reasonable" and "mainstream Dem" approach to disengagement help protect him from the Repub meme that he lacks experience and substance without getting him marginalized as another Kucinich.

I have posted similar comments a couple of times. My apologies to those who may have already heard this spiel, but this is a very significant part of why I lean towards Obama.

Let's get this clear, my post here is talking about the psychological state of the majority of Americans at the time. I'm not talking about Congress, we had that discussion earlier in this thread. I'm trying to broaden the scope here abit and talk about what was going on in the minds of the electorate.

If you think that the majority of American's weren't affected psychologically, that's a valid counter argument. However, then the reason we went to war is pretty much a vast right wing conspiracy where everyone in power was in on it. The government, the media, the British, and Saddam himself. Is this what you're suggesting? What is your explanation that when the war drum started beating that the American people didn't stand up in numbers too great to ignore, and say "stop!".

If you want the rest of the country to think like you, you need to figure out why, in that moment, they did not. If you don't care about how they think, then you'll have an impossible challenge to get a candidate elected.

Ah but here's the flaw in that logic: The general public didn't oppose the war when the votes were cast. A majority wanted the inspectors to get back in, and if they couldn't, to use force.

I think Feingold is great, but even in the political climate right now which I believe is very receptive to progressive policy due to the utter failure of neo-conservative leadership for 6 years, there is virtually no chance that Feingold could win a general election. And this election is just too critical to gamble on that.

Also, I don't think there's a leadership equivalence between saying you are against a war and actually voting against a war. Opposition is always context specific and voting is always constituent specific. Hypothetically speaking, you have to ask yourself if Barack Obama was the freshman senator for North Carolina in 2002, whether he would have voted against the AUMFAIR. Only one senator voted against that wasn't in a safe re-election position, Mark Dayton, and he was not re-elected. I'm not saying this is right, or good leadership, just that practically speaking it's how our flawed system works. Put in term limits, and maybe it doesn't happen that way.

Personally I think we're not far apart in our wish to have as progressive a candidate win the nomination and election as possible. It's my own belief that Edwards is the best balance between standing for progressive policy and being able to win in the general, that the Democrats have had in a long long time. He's by no means a perfect candidate, but he's the most progressive with the best shot of winning.

I think you are by far overestimating the AUMF outside of the blogs. A plurality of Americans are in the same space Edwards and Clinton are in terms of turnign against the war. Coming across a the "I told you so candidate," is not an electoral winner.

Obama's decision to continue to buy into the Bush's GWOT even now significantly undermines his "judgement" angle as well.

If I say "mistake," I'm just picking up the way the politician is characterizing it. I don't think thats the right word and I frankly think its extremely dishonest. This was willful so its not even a question of getting "wiser." I do not believe that they could possibly have believed it was in the interests, let alone best interests, of our country to invade Iraq, decapitate its government and be responsible for that country. (Gee, its not believable that those consequences just never occurred to these folks, though thats what they seem to be telling us.)

It makes it very hard and I am kind of dismayed that the Democratic Party establishment puts us voters in this position. Thats the reason the choices are so overwhelmingly skewed towards war supporters: these are the people who can get backing from the establishment. I sincerely believe that they voted for the war for absolutely selfish reasons. Its the only explanation that makes sense. That is a hard thing to accept. Millions of people have suffered, are suffering, so much for it. Their excuses aren't as good as a drunk driver's excuse and their remorse about the terrible consequences is, IMO, less sincere because here they are running for President, which is what they were thinking about when they supported the war.

No offense, but maybe your willingness to see it that way is BECAUSE you like Edwards?

Very few Democrats who voted for authorization actually supported invasion

With all due respect, Dee Dee, I think that is wrong. Bush only grudgingly put the question of an invasion up for a vote because he questioned whether there was even a need for any authorization. The vote was on a resolution which had no force of law but expressed the sentiment of Congress.

I would not suggest a candidate who voted for the resolution should be sentenced to eternal damnation but any that did not know they were voting for war must suffer from periodic blackouts.

Best, Terry

Best, Terry

So you did, sorry. The fact is people did want something done - they wanted the United States to have a strong posture against Saddam Hussein. Many fewer people, including fewer Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force, actually wanted Bush to use that authorization for a full-scale invasion. I wholeheartedly agree that voting to authorize Bush to do ANYTHING was a mistake, and I was against it at the time, but what people were saying, basically, was that we needed to psyche Saddam out, and that no threat we made would have any teeth unless the President had immediate authority to act.

The fact that the President to whom they were giving this power is either a moron or an evil person lends support to the idea that the vote for authorization was very poor judgment. But I can forgive people for not believing that Bush was as reckless as he turned out to be. I don't believe that John Edwards is just a cynical politician. That's just a judgment call about the character of John Edwards. As to polls, please remember that most of the American people long believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks on the Twin Towers. That casts a rather dark shadow on the theory of the collective wisdom of the American people.

Ah the age old political paradox: do I support the candidate/party because of the way I think, or do I think the way I do because I support the candidate/party? The latter is what causes fanaticism in politics, something I'm totally against (and something I think Obama gets very well). I'm fiercely independent, so much so that I struggle with the very idea of political factions, especially the current duopoly. So although I will never be able to convince you, I think the way I do regardless of who is currently running.

And to get at the heart of this particular issue: I've never believed you can pigeon-hole a candidate, and more importantly a human being for that matter, by focusing on one mistake they made. Especially if they have apologized and noted what they've learned from it. And if you distill this down, that's what this discussion is really all about.

Here's the problem and I think this happens with anything as complicated as this issue, we seek one simple elegant answer for why things happened. I said in the original post that the collective psychology of the country was taken advantage of by the Administration. I did not say that anyone is to blame or anyone is free from blame. I'm merely pointing out that this aspect of the lead up to war is rarely emphasized. It's probably just the way our memories work, we filter out excess, and gravitate to and select the simple explanations to store. Therefore, after seeing Moyer's piece on the media's role, it made me think again about this, and now I'd love to see a piece on the American people's role. In all fairness to Bill's new show, his interview with Jon Stewart last night touches upon this.

With all respect, please go back and read their statements in 2002. What does decisive action mean? Are we going back to "that depends what the meaning of "is" is" on the part of Democrats where they parse their language in such a self-serving way that it means whatever they want it to mean whenever they want to tell us what it means?

If they didn't want Bush to invade Iraq, they should have said it loud and clear and over and over and have dozens of statements they would have made between September 2002 and the date of the invasion to point to for exactly what they intended.

You're absolutely right about what Democrats should have done. I supported Wes Clark in the primaries for that very reason. But I do think there are some arguments for forgiving those Democrats based on their assumptions that 1) Saddam Hussein was a dangerous and cruel dictator whose rule was a reign of terror, 2) he had wmd's which he intended to use on neighboring states (even though the inspectors had not found them yet), 3) he couldn't be indefinitely contained. They were wrong in assumptions 2 and 3.

And I don't believe they thought war would unfold as it did - they expected a few air strikes - that's what they intended by "decisive action".

I'll vote for any of the Democratic candidates. Kucinich is the one whose views are most similar to mine, but he comes across as sanctimonious and I don't think he can win. Clinton is my least favorite because she's the most hawkish. But I'll take any one of the Democrats over any Republican to restore my priorities to the country's agenda - especially civil liberties and compassion for the poor. I will not waste my time trashing any of them when there are so many Republicans to trash, and when I know none of them are going to seek out military conflict for the fun of it as George Bush has.

Do you seriously believe that Bush doesn't take full advantage of the number of Democrats who voted for this war? Do you seriously believe that any GOP candidate for the presidency in 2008 won't take full advantage of a Democratic opponent who also supported the war--just as Bush did?

Democratic "concerns" by any of our current crop of candidates who voted for this war is simply putting lipstick on the pig. The GOP is begging to have this war hung around their necks for the next 50 years. Their policy did not rise to the level of "imminent threat" to America or American interests.

We need a Democratic candidate who can make that perfectly clear--and apologists for their thoroughly destructive vote in 2002 don't make the cut. Go look up what Democrats who voted "nay" on this bill had to say to defend their "nay" vote.

It's not nit-picking to deny Bush and the GOP the cover of the minority of Democrats who supported their policy in 2002. And there's no reason for any Democrat to support a candidate in the primary who provides any fig-leaf for the Emperor and his party.