Live and Let Lie
Monday, February 5th, 2007 10:24 am by Neal
Voting to give the President the authority to use military force in Iraq is one of the few votes that Hillary Clinton can be proud of. As a Democrat who wants to be the next President, however, she must lie about why she voted and even what she voted for. Fear not, Hillary supporters. Your Democrat colleagues consider lying about a vote to be on-the-job training. Michael Goodwin has this story on Hillary’s vote, “Hillary was not duped on war vote.”
So Clinton’s camp sees her pro-war vote as heavy baggage. She has never denounced it or said it was wrong, but, at times, has done something worse. She has lied about the reasons for it.
Asked about her vote in front of a mostly adoring rally in Davenport, Iowa, Clinton told the whopper. She said she was misled by President Bush about the resolution. “He said at the time he was going to the United Nations to put inspectors back into Iraq, to figure out whether they still had any WMD,” she said, adding, “He took the authority that others and I gave him and he misused it.”
That’s very similar to how Bill Clinton defended her last year. In an interview with ABC News, he said Dems who voted for the resolution did so only to force Saddam Hussein to give up, not to use force. “They felt, frankly, let down” about the invasion, Clinton said, painting Dems as dupes of Bush.
It’s a clever argument, but it’s not true. Here are the facts. The resolution passed the Senate on Oct. 10, 2002, by a vote of 77-23, with support from Clinton, Edwards and about 20 other Dems. Its purpose was clear from its title: “Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq.” Opponents, including Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., voted no because they thought it meant war was inevitable.
They had good reason to worry. Bush made it clear he intended to “disarm” Iraq and the resolution gave him that authority. He could use our armed forces, Section 3 said, “as he determines to be necessary and appropriate” to defend America and enforce U.N. resolutions. Separately, an amendment requiring Security Council approval for an invasion was defeated. Clinton helped defeat it.
To hear the Clintons fudge now, you’d think the invasion began the very next day. In fact, it began five months later. During those months, as U.S. troops massed in the Mideast, there is no record of Hillary Clinton opposing the invasion or claiming she’d been misled.
Indeed, an article in The Washington Post on March 9, 2003, lamented Congress had been mostly silent since the resolution passed. The only major exception came when Kennedy, Byrd and some House members urged Bush to let weapons inspectors finish their work. Clinton was not recorded as being part of that effort.