The New Yorker article by Jeffrey Goldberg on last week’s crop of Democratic presidential contenders has quite a bit on the various personalities and their stands on Iraq.
The article mentions that the top two positions in a December poll of Iowa Democrats went to former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama, each with 22% (Sen. Hillary Clinton came in fourth, with 10%, after Iowa governor and DLC chair Tom Vilsack, who had 12%).
The article quotes from Obama’s recent book where, as has become his wont, he uses the same arguments that the neo-conservatives do to vilify people who oppose the war in Iraq:
Obama is discomfited by those on the left who, in his view, minimize the threat of terrorism. In his recent book, he even scolds those who put the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and the improvement of relations with Americas allies, ahead of national-security concerns. “The objectives favored by liberals have merit,” he writes. “But they hardly constitute a coherent national security policy.” He adds that “the threats facing the United States today are real, multiple, and potentially devastating.” But when he writes that its “useful to remind ourselves, then, that Osama bin Laden is not Ho Chi Minh,” its hard to imagine who would confuse the two.
And here I thought that not continuing to expand the mess the administration created in Iraq and getting back to dealing with terrorism by international cooperation would be a good national security policy. By all means, let’s continue bombing people we shouldn’t have been bombing in the first place.
I’m also disheartened by the tack Edwards is taking.
Edwards is genial in conversation, but he became almost testy when I brought up his vote, in 2002, in favor of the Iraq-war resolution. Edwards has repudiated his vote, unlike Clinton, who has not renounced her own support for the war despite demands from her backers that she do so. Edwards worries that his vote will be seen as evidence that he was somehow fooled by the Administration into giving it his support. “I was convinced that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons,” he said. “There was some disparity in the information I had about how far along he was in that process. I didnt rely on George Bush for that. And I personally think theres some dishonesty in suggesting that members of the United States Senate relied on George Bush for that information, because I dont think its true. Its great politics. But its not the truth.”
Here we are, nearly four years after the invasion of Iraq. We’ve had ample opportunity for any evidence from any source that was convincing to be produced by the administration as they’ve try to bolster their reasons for going to war. Nada. Whatever evidence there was that was provided to the full Senate still didn’t convince two-fifths of the Democrats in the Senate to vote for the AUMF. It didn’t convince Sen. Jim Jeffords or Sen. Lincoln Chaffee, either. It didn’t even convince four of the eight Democrats who were on the same committee Edwards was on during the fall of 2002: Carl Levin, Ron Wyden, Richard Durbin, and Barbara Mikulski all voted against the Iraq war resolution. [UPDATE] My mistake, I missed the name of Bob Graham — chairman of the Intelligence committee at the time. He also voted against the AUMF, making it 4-5, not 4-4.
So what, exactly, was it that convinced Edwards that the vote was a good idea? You’d think that even if it was a secret then that secret evidence of WMDs that didn’t exist wouldn’t really be of much use, no matter how convincing it was. Show me. Or tell me why you really voted for it.