how the hell do you call this a video of obama's criticism. this is an audio of obama. calling it anything else is soooo republican.

Obama's point gets lost in subtleties. The fact is, no one wants to say out loud that the war was a stupid idea, and the world (and that includes Iraq) was better off with Saddam in power. But it's a fact. Obama hints. Hillary avoids. But the point is, Obama was against removing Saddam and Hillary was for it. Which is why she won't say that her vote was a mistake.

Her vote was a failure of judgement. And Obama is right to point that out.

Ya know, to be perfectly frank, you really have no idea who would be alive or dead if Hillary hadn't voted for the war. It's just a talking point.

If Hillary's vote was different, are you claiming that we wouldn't be in Iraq right now?

Bush lied, people died.
That's as clear as it possibly gets, as far as the reason why we are in Iraq today.

Obama may be fortunate that he was not in the Senate when the vote was held. The argument that cutting a deal with Bush in which he agreed to go to the UN and attempt to get inspectors back in Iraq did have the force of logic, especially when there was every indication that Bush would invade anyway.

Speaking out from the Illonois legislature was very different that voting against as a memeber of the U.S. Senate. I spoke out against the AUMF myself, but to this day I do acknowledge the logic. How do you deal with a rogue President? Tough call.

It's easy to blame President Bush. The bottom line is Senator Clinton voted for the War. If I'm not mistaken, 21 Senators voted AGAINST it. What is her excuse again?

Miri, this comment is completely absurd. Since when is it desperate to point out a substantive difference in judgment between you and your opponent on a major policy issue? That is what campaigns are supposed to be about! The premise of your comment is that Obama should lick Hillary's boots; many of us supported Obama from the outset because we thought he would take her on - respectfully - on the war. And he's apparently now starting to do just that. Thank God!

audiophile, how naive do you think we all are? Bill Clinton keeps making comments like that because he is the one trying to fuzzy up and obscure reality. If you went back at looked at all of George W Bush's pre-Iraq statements on the al-Qaeda/Saddam link, you would see that he never actually directly made the statement that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11. He insinuated it, but the actual words gave him deniability -- and guess what, he fooled people for over 2 years. Bill C. is an expert at the same kind of technically accurate misleading of the public.

Worse than Bill C. has been the candidate herself - Hillary. She had the gall to repeat at the Dem debate a couple of weeks ago her mantra, "Had I been President in 2003, we never would have gone to war with Iraq." That is beyond Orwellian, as she not only voted to authorize the war in October 2002, but did not utter a word of dissent against Bush on invasion in the critical period when war became imminent. In fact, she rooted him on on the day he gave Saddam his ultimatum. These two have given the Dem party a bad name for disingenuousness, and it's time the Dems picked someone who is decent and not just technically accurate but fundamentally honest. That would be Obama.

I have heard this line over and over.... I'm still not buying. Obama put his carreer on the line and said it was a dumb war in October 2002. The Clitonistas can parse the meaning of her vote all they want, the fact remains that she either voted for war or trusted Bush to come back to Congress, either demonstrates a fundamental lack of judgment.

The reason it matters is because Obama is the one in the best position to hold the Republicans accountable, because he was not complicit in authorizing the war. It is about judgment and accounatability.

Give me a break! Since when is answering a question posed by a reporter by pointing out a difference in your record vs. your opponents record "negative campaining"?

Congrats! Lamest post I have seen all week.

Obama stood up and risked his career to oppose a "dumb war." He said that the Administration had not made the case on WMD and that there was no imminent threat. To claim that there is no difference between this position and HRC's AUMF vote is to completely misrepresent the truth.

The question of how to get out of Iraq, once we were in, is completely different. Obama and HRC have both taken the same moderate stance. But their positions on AUMF were not the same. Your argument and BC's argument remind me of "depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is." That was intellectually dishonest and so is this.

I don't mind that you support HRC, I mind that you and other HRC supporters are will ing to distort the truth.

"To claim that there is no difference between this position and HRC's AUMF vote is to completely misrepresent the truth."

I'm claiming gregory asked Obama if his voting record was just like Hillary's.

Obama said:
"I suppose that’s true. ..."

But please don't take my word for it. Watch the video. As much as you don't like it there it is.

"I don't mind that you support HRC"

Oh. Thank you so much. I do mind that you either are the most uninformed commenter on the net or a big faker. And I’ll tell you why: People like you put bush in the white house. Twice.

You hate Hillary. Good for you. You trash a dem nominee either because you ignorant beyond belief or a big faker and I’m gonna call you on it.

Actually, for the record, he didn't say "I suppose that’s true." he said "I suppose that’s true, if..." The point is either the war in Iraq couldn't have happened without Hillary's yes vote, or if her vote wasn't necessary then why did she vote for it, unless she voted for it because she believed in it at the time. This was Obama's point--validating the Perle-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney case for war was an error in judgment. Maybe not so important in the long run, but if more senators had voted against this war in the first place i may never have happened. That is the sad truth.

Freespeak, I'll say that out loud. If Hillary hadn't voted for the war, the war wouldn't have taken place. And I'll justify that comment.

Implicit in your question is the suggestion that everybody else would have still voted for the war, and we would have had the war anyway. That misses a HUGE point that is sticking in the craw of all the anti-Hillary Dems, like me, that remember that lack of any real debate in the Congress or the media during the run-up to the war.

There was a strategy to that silence. The Clintonistas and the DLC Left of the Democratic Party just closed its eyes and let Bush and the Republicans do what they want for cynical political reasons that didn't have to do with the actual welfare of this country. Such silence had to be coordinated. As Howard Fineman noted on the day of the AUMF vote, all the Democrats that were planning to run in '08 had voted for the AUMF.

I'm just really sick and tired of everybody laying ALL the blame on Bush. 2002 was a year of enormous betrayal of the American people, and it wasn't all just the work of Bush. It took the complicity of the Clintonistas and their entourage and machine, as well as the complicity of the American media.

Bush deserves to roast in Hell for what he did, but he deserves a little company from his enablers. I can give Edwards some forgiveness for acknowleding that what he did was wrong, but I can't forgive Hillary, because, of all people, if she and Bill had stood up and say, "Slow down, this could be a genuine first-class disaster we are walking into," enough of the rest of the party would have fallen into line with them to slow the rush to war.

As it is, there was no opposition to speak of. And that is in many respects an even greater sin than what Bush did. We expect criminals to rob banks. We don't expect the tellers to help them make their getaway.

The problem with Obama's protestations is that he has voted the same as Clinton on this issue since he has been in the Senate. He wasn't first out of the blocks, like Dodd, to support Feingold-Reid. He hasn't put forth his own plan to de-fund the U.S. occupation of Iraq, halt base development, or even declare that nuking Iran is not a very smart idea.

So what on earth would make me believe that, if he were in the Senate at the time of the AUMF, he wouldn't have voted for it, like all of the other politically driven pols now running for President. Edwards has admitted that his vote was because of the incredibly stupid advice of the major Dem advisors. What evidence is there that Obama wouldn't have done the same?

On this issue, I don't trust the judgment or leadership of any of the first and second tier. I guess I'm down to Kucinich or Gravel.

How about the video tape saying that he thought it was a "dumb war"? Or the interview where he says the administration hasn't made the case on WMD and that the threat is not immenent?

The question of how to responsibly disengage from Iraq is different than the question of whether we should have invaded in the first place. Just because you disagree with Obama's position on how and when to get out, doesn't mean that you shouldn't give him credit for not wanting to go in, in the first place.

He certainly has put forward a plan for "phased redeployment", he has consistently preferred this option to defunding the war. As the vote this week demonstrated, Feingold-Reid is nowhere near having the support necessary to pass. Obama is trying to generate public pressuere on Repub Senators who will in turn force the White House to compromise. It is a slow, ugly process, but it is the only one that is going to work.

Edwards position is not a strategy because the Dems do not have the votes to pass the same bill "again and again". Edwards' position is a slogan whose primary purpose is to pander to the anti-war sentiment in the Dem party. Personally, I have more respect for some one who is trying to take effective steps to reign in the administration than someone who is pandering and doing nothing to effectively end the war.

The anti-war speech he gave on October 26, 2002 is a pretty big clue:

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

...

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

And here's the Youtube video of his November 25, 2002 interview, where he specifically says giving Bush a blank check was a mistake and that he would've voted against it.

The problem with that logic is that all the outside experts knew an occupation would follow the invasion. Obama based his judgement on the war on this understanding:

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

The primary was a year and a half away. If the war was successful, his anti-war position would've been pretty useless. An Obama presidency would've been out of the question.

Obama was exactly right when he told Charlie Rose that Democrats have to stand up for what is right instead of caving and complaining about it later.

Sign me up for the meds. I wish I were wrong about us, but I don't think I am. The sad truth is that we don't seem to be willing to risk American civilian casualties in the so-called "war on terrorism." Combine that with a professional, volunteer military of enormous destructive power that no military in the world can stand up against, and all of the arguments for restraint go by the boards. And by the way, it's not true as another reply suggests that an occupation was inevitable. As a matter of fact, before the invasion, the Cheney camp favored knocking Iraq down and letting someone else put it back together, but changed their minds under the influence of Chalabi and the Iranian secret service. So Obama's prediction about the occupation was very astute. But his judgment of the American voters in Presidential elections is way off, I fear. Agree with you about the kind of CIC that would be ideal. But, alas, I doubt the true nature of threats will ever be that clear. I just don't think the electorate will take a chance on Obama.

Sorry. The conflation was unintentional. The entire post was about voter perceptions and the relative strengths of the Clinton and Obama positions given those perceptions. The kind of events I was talking about are events that could affect people's perception of the relative safety of voting for either candidate, particularly events that trigger emotion and panic, e.g., another attack here at home.

Maybe the real point is that I think the people commenting here are better informed with a more international point of view than most American voters. I think it's safe to say that most people reading this blog and commenting would count the death of an Iraqi child as just as tragic as the death of an American child. But there really are two Americas, or at least two sides to the American character.

I see an America where half of the eligible voters don’t bother to vote, where George Bush managed to grab the Presidency two times, the second time when the war on terrorism and Iraq were the most important issues to voters, an America where, in the middle of a war on terrorism, I have not been asked to sacrifice in any way and my taxes have actually gone down while my income was going up. I see an America that fought a bloody civil war, exterminated the Indians, grabbed land from Mexico, kept slaves, built the railroads with Asians and the Irish, built its cities with immigrants. An America of Wounded Knee and Fort Davis where soldiers forted up at the water holes in the desert and slaughtered Apache men, women and children who were dying of thirst and came down to the water. An America that interned the Japanese. Dropped incendiary bombs on Dresden and two atomic bombs on Japan. An America of McCarthy as well as Feingold. An America where Edward R. Murrow died and nobody took his place. An America of LBJ, Hoover, two Kennedys dead, MLK dead, Malcolm dead, Ali stripped of his title, and the police rioting against our children in Chicago 1968. Nixon. Vietnamization. Watergate. Woodward cashed in and nobody took his place. An America that hates and punishes Cuba for having a lower infant mortality rate than we do, refuses to intervene on behalf of the Palestinians, elects wrestlers and movie stars to high office, mocks Kucinich and Dean, talks about sending the wrong message to the troops, as if occupying Iraq were the troops idea. Do you know how old Seymour Hersh is?

I'm afraid that America is not going to respond to Mr. Obama's message about the war the way he hopes it will.

Anyway. That was my point.