Thanks Kitty!  If you find the video afterwards, let me know.

Joe Scarborough did the same thing on Real Time last week---didn't want to deal w/the judgment and decision.

it doesn't matter why or how we got into the war, but how we're getting out.

Obama can draw a crystal clear distinction with McCain on the Iraq debacle that HRC can not.

It doesn't matter how or why we got into a war with Iran....

oh, wait....

Sorry, but I think that fact is very relevant in choosing who I want to clean up this mess. I don't want someone who helped to create it in the first place.

The basic fact of how we got into the war is this: a complicit Congress succumbed to a petulant President drunk with power.  Instead of performing their Constitutional duties to check the President's power, they ceded more and more power to him.  People who voted for the war have used as justification, repeatedly, the argument that they meant to strengthen the President's hands by giving him the authority ahead of time, even as they were hoping to avoid war.  That is the quintessential argument that shows what's wrong with our government.  Hillary Clinton and John McCain both seem to believe in the edict that the President is a superior, not equal, branch of government and hence deserves the added power.  That is the fundamental problem with our government.  Barack Obama, a Constitutional law expert, will not make that argument.  He will not grab for vast powers for the Presidency at the expense of the other branches of government.

THAT is why it's important to focus on the mindset that got us into this occupation, if we hope to avoid future ones.

In 2002, United States Senator Hillary Clinton and State Senator Barack Obama both believed that Saddam had developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

If Barack Obama had his way, he was willing to do nothing and let an un-restricted Saddam in Iraq, with no U.N. weapon inspectors on ground for 4 years, to continued weapons of mass destruction development at his will. A.U.M.F.  was key for the U.N. inspectors re-entry into Iraq..

Barack Obama 26 October 2002: "I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity". He"s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

Either Barack Obama does understand the Senate A.U.M.F. debate and vote (most don't) and is just playing politics of duplicity or he does not understand the A.U.M.F. debate and vote, which makes him just naive.

Hillary was PRO U.N., Bush was Pro War, Obama was PRO doing nothing...
http://aumf.awardspace.com/

is why I've come back to the Democratic party after nearly 20 years. I got fired up by the Greens in the early 90s because they were speaking about all those problems in exactly that way, but not many were really paying attention.

That Obama gets this and can articulate it so clearly on so many different levels is more than anything else what's got me so excited about him and his candidacy (well, that and the fact that he's been able to get sooo many people to hop on board).

by those soldiers coming back and not being able to re-acclimate into family life. It's a horrible strain, and when the family member is having 2-4 tours, eventually the family will be forever torn apart.

Howard Dean, when he was running for president, was right on the money about the greatest cost that America suffered under the Bush presidency.  It isn't that we got into an occupation.  It wasn't that we went from a huge surplus to a huge deficit.  The biggest loss, Dean said, was the loss of the American sense of community under Bush.  The sense that tells us that we are all bound together in the destiny of time, the sense that we have a responsibility to care for each other, that it matters to me when you can't get a job, and that it matters to you when my kids to go to bed hungry.  That sense of community - that we are all in it together - is what this country lost under eight years of George Bush.  That's the loss we are going to have to reverse if we hope to restore our nation to its glory.

.....the medical, psychiatric and financial needs of returning vets as well as those of their families who are trying to get on with their lives.  After WWII any vet had no financial problem  with buying a decent house or going after a college degree due to the various government programs.  What do the current vets have?

Congress finally took way all their tax breaks

and they are screaming that they got a tax hike