I do not think that views on the war are so easily categorized.

Here is my previously expressed view on that (somewhat off target, but since you bring it up with regard to Gov Spitzer)....

No matter how much a piece of garbage has been deposited in the White House, when the President says we are facing a dire threat, I listen.  Since the last president who possessed an intellect beyond comic book level also felt that this Hussein character posed a threat to us, it seemed even more important to listen carefully before jumping to the usual post-Vietnam conclusion that whatever it is, it’s best not to engage anyone militarily.

So I listened.  What I heard scared me.  I knew that the people running Iraq had no relation to the people who attacked us in 1993 and on 9/11, but it is a volatile part of the world filled with irrational people who seem to be less cowed by the use of force than one would like.  I listened to the Secretary of State, who had been chairman of the joint chiefs of staff the last time a president to my liking had occupied the White House, and saw that CIA director, also appointed by that president I liked, and thought that this might be something.

Unlike many of you who are obviously much smarter than I am, then, I do not think that the question of what to do in Iraq was as clear an issue.  The guy snookered us last time we went to war with him, and massacred people who he basically told General Schwartzkopf he would not.  We probably ought not ot have trusted him, but we did not have many choices then, since our government was not in the control of people who fantasize about the world of 1946, and the collective security that we depend on today would not permit a unilateral take over of a soverign country.

Frankly, some of those who argued against this new war made the argument for war more appealing since I heard in some of them the antagonism against war under almost any circumstance, something I do not condemn and sort of admire, but do not feel it to be a reasonable military stance at this point in our history.

My family and friends recall that by the time of "shock and awe" and, in fact, when the now famous resolution was voted upon, I had decided that the authorization for  the use of force should not be approved at least at that point, but, frankly I did not come to this conclusion until almost the very end of the debate.  By then, it seemed to me  that the resolution should not be passed since none of our traditional allies, except the UK, were supportive and when the President and his allies made comments which suggested they were not taking the UN inspections as seriously as was warranted, especially given how significant we found it when Hussein had kicked them out several years earlier.

But, I was not married to anybody who was President of the United States, nor did I attend briefings from the military. Given all of that, and the assurances (empty as they turned out to be) that the authority would only be used if necessary, and the obvious mod of a country whipped into a frenzy by claims of mushroom clouds and the like, I cannot bring myself to condemn a person for not seeing it the same way I did, even though we have since found out that much of what was said to Congress and the public, and the UN was false.

Senator Obama’s view at the time is really entitled to no more weight than mine.  Neither of us was asked to vote on the resolution and had no responsibility for its consequences.  He had no special intelligence briefings.  His duties in the Illinois State Senate had little bearing on this issue.  He was a citizen with the right to his opinion, but I do not know what its basis was.  He sais he was not against all wars, and I take him at his word—especially since he sounds as if he is willing to risk a war with Pakistan to capture Osama bin-Laden—but I just don’t know.

Yes, as it turns out he (and I) were right and those who voted for the resolution (and trusted the word of the President of the United States) were wrong.  That entitles him to one point, I guess.  It does not make him, or me, a foreign policy expert or a great military genius.

The bad guy in all of this is George W. Bush, and those who supported him, not Senator Clinton, not Senator Edwards and not Senator Kerry [or this Spitzer].    The failure to understand the country's trauma after 9/11, combined with an educational system that has not given most of us the tools or interest in distinguishing between Sh'ite or Sunni, Al Qaeda or Hussein, makes many a bit more holier than thou.