Not sure I understand some people..help me out?

Question

Ok So were in Iraq fighting what many are saying is a pointless war.. That we should be going after osama instead of fighting in Iraq. These people that want a change and want out of Iraq seem to like Hilary Clinton the Best since she is widely considered the front runner.

Do you understand that Clinton and many other Democrats saw the same reports that Bush did for reason for invadeing? Did Clinton stand up and say wait a sec... shouldnt we have a better plan before we go in? Did she vote to fund the war?

Bigger question .. has she actually said that if she is elected that she would end the war and bring home the troops? ... The only public statement she has made in this regard is that she says that a better plan needs to be made to end the war quickly.. though she has not outlined any of these better plans.

How is this lady so popular to the left? and to other democrats? who want our troops home.

Answer 1

She voted to support the invasion and continues to support funding for the war. And she plans to stay there, she just mutters that we have to leave as soon as possible, and the libs cheer.

She's popular because of Bill, despite that, I don't know how anyone can support her. Especially if they are against the war, as so many libs are.

Answer 2

I'm not sure what there is to 'understand'. Politicians 'flip-flop'. It's a sad trait, brought on by the general attitude of the American people.

Speaking from a purely political standpoint, Hillary COULDN'T vote against the Iraq war. She represents New York, and New Yorkers were filled with bloodlust after 9-11, as was most of the nation. It would have been suicide for her career to speak out against the war in Iraq.

I think most of America realizes this. Many politicians have changed position on the Iraq war. The problem lies with American citizens. We don't demand integrity from our politicians. We want 'yes men', elected leaders that tell us what we want to hear. This isn't a partisan issue...it's an issue that EVERY American should be concerned with. The primaries are already heating up, and every politician in the race is trying to distance themselves from Bush's administration. I think that every candidate should have his/her feet held to the fire and be made to answer for thier actions, everything from the Iraq war to the Dream Act.

As for her 'plan' to bring the troops home...she doesn't need one. Opponents of the war only need to keep putting the burden of proof on those that still support it. Elections are still a year away. They gave Bush enough rope to hang himself and the rest of the Republican party, and now they will sit back and watch as the Republicans begin to jump ship.

It's sad. I don't affiliate myself with either party, but it's obvious that, come election year, no one has the country's best interests at heart. They just want to get re-elected.

Answer 3

IRAQ WAS A THREAT!!!!!!

(CNN) -- 2004 -- Former President Clinton has revealed that he continues to support President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq but chastised the administration over the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/06/19/clinton.iraq/index.html


"People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons."

-Bill Clinton on "Larry King Live" 07/23/2003

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/23/clinton.iraq.sotu/

Hillary Clinton: No regret on Iraq vote

Wednesday, April 21, 2004 Posted: 10:10 AM EDT (1410 GMT)


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she is not sorry she voted for a resolution authorizing President Bush to take military action in Iraq!


http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/iraq.hillary/

Answer 4

What surprises me even more, is the fact that Bill Clinton was fifteen minutes away from invading Iraq when Saddam refused to allow U.N. inspectors in, to which I doubt Bill had an exit strategy, yet when Bush invaded for more or less the same thing, suddenly it was "wrong". Weird, huh?

Answer 5

Hillary cannot stand up long enough to proclaim anything other than blame, complaints and point fingers of criticism in every direction other than her own.

I watched a documentary of her demonizing every facet of the handling of the ground zero clean-up.

Every word she uttered was an indictment of our federal government, along with that of the State of NY.

She offered not one solution, not one better plan, not one positive comment and throughout all, failed to acknowledge the fact that the citizens involved are among her constituents and she herself is doing nothing to correct or resolve the situation.

No where did she say, 'I would have done this....' or, 'I am doing that....'

As in regard to the war in Iraq, the woman is totally incapable of accepting even an inkling of responsibility or, even actually coming up with a better plan.

Her plan and approach was, as always, simply to sputter spew unto the shoulders of everyone else involved - of which she again conveniently excused herself.

She is the epitome of one who has no awareness of their own failures and shortcomings.

- pretty sad that this same women is viewed by the dems as a legitimate presidential contender and I, like you, do not get it.

Answer 6

Bill invented the democratic wind vane.Every morn he 'd go out on the terrace, stick his finger in his mouth and see which way the political wind blew. I like to call it what it is...suckin up! The Clintons invented the spin machine. If you put sooo much crap out, you actually baffle the masses. Heres the part that makes me LOATHE them.....They know no SHAME! They have absolutely no scrupples what so ever. People actually want this crap back. God help us all!

Answer 7

They still have faith in Politicians.

They don't realize that it's the worlds second oldest profession. They will make decisions based on what is best for their career as a first priority.

And if they think that Clinton, Inc. is going to end the war, they are going to be sooo pissed off if she gets into office.

She won't end the war. She will expand it.

Answer 8

Personally I expect none of the aforementioned of you. Nor anything else, quite frankly. It's YOUR life. Live it as YOU choose. I will neither condone nor condemn your decisions unless they involve causing deliberate harm to another. Then I'll bust ya in the chops and larn ya better.

Answer 9

SHE took DUBYA and his Administrations word on it.
BIG MISTAKE

What I Knew Before the Invasion

By Bob Graham

Sunday, November 20, 2005; Page B07

In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.

The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.

THE PRESIDENT HAS UNDERMINED TRUST(emphasis mine). No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.

As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war, I probably had as much access to the intelligence on which the war was predicated as any other member of Congress.

I, too, presumed the president was being truthful -- until a series of events undercut that confidence.

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

In the early fall of 2002, a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry committee, which I co-chaired, was in the final stages of its investigation of what happened before Sept. 11. As the unclassified final report of the inquiry documented, several failures of intelligence contributed to the tragedy. But as of October 2002, 13 months later, the administration was resisting initiating any substantial action to understand, much less fix, those problems.

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.

From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

The writer is a former Democratic senator from Florida. He is currently a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111802397.html

add: important portion of article
"did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.

THE PRESIDENT HAS UNDERMINED TRUST(emphasis mine). No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth."

Answer 10

This may help you out a bit.

SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE

REPORT ON THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'S PREWAR INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ON IRAQ CONCLUSIONS

OVERALL CONCLUSIONS - WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION(U)

Conclusion 1. Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.

As for flip-flopping:

February 2001 in Egypt, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said of the economic sanctions against Hussein's Iraq: "Frankly, they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."

No, Congress did not see all the reports:

But Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country.


Except the day before the vote, as in this one mentioned:.

In addition, there were doubts within the intelligence community not included in the NIE. And even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release. For example, the NIE view that Hussein would not use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or turn them over to terrorists unless backed into a corner was cleared for public use only a day before the Senate vote.


Bush said the following:

"When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support."

But the October 2002 joint resolution authorized the use of force in Iraq, but it did not directly mention the removal of Hussein from power.

And unless Clinton has ALL the information, I don't want to hear how she will do it, just that she is willing to do it.

Maybe she would be willing to put some, okay, a lot of pressure on the Iraq government to start really showing some progress politically. I mean 6 days ago the White House released a report saying very little progress has been made by the government over there.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296779,00.html

ADD: By the way, the intel reports, conclusions were made after 2005. That means that everyone who said they supported the war in 2004 DID NOT know about the information that was not given to them by Bush in 2004.

Quote her from 2005:

In October 2002, I voted for the resolution to authorize the Administration to use force in Iraq. I voted for it on the basis of the evidence presented by the Administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do.

Their assurances turned out to be empty ones, as the Administration refused repeated requests from the U.N. inspectors to finish their work. And the "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda turned out to be false.

Based on the information that we have today, Congress never would have been asked to give the President authority to use force against Iraq. And if Congress had been asked, based on what we know now, we never would have agreed, given the lack of a long-term plan, paltry international support, the proven absence of weapons of mass destruction, and the reallocation of troops and resources that might have been used in Afghanistan to eliminate Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and fully uproot the Taliban.

Before I voted in 2002, the Administration publicly and privately assured me that they intended to use their authority to build international support in order to get the U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq, as articulated by the President in his Cincinnati speech on October 7th, 2002. As I said in my October 2002 floor statement, I took "the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a U.N. resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible."

Instead, the Bush Administration short-circuited the U.N. inspectors - the last line of defense against the possibility that our intelligence was false. The Administration also abandoned securing a larger international coalition, alienating many of those who had joined us in Afghanistan.

From the start of the war, I have been clear that I believed that the Administration did not have an adequate plan for what lay ahead.

I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the President and his Administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war.

Given years of assurances that the war was nearly over and that the insurgents were in their "last throes," this Administration was either not being honest with the American people or did not know what was going on in Iraq.