Hillary Clinton ‘s vote to enable George Bush to go to war in Iraq has gotten lots of attentions, but her explanations after the fact create a major credibility problem for her. We’ve heard a lot about vote authorizing war, but her explanations of a now-forgotten alternative to war are just as troubling.
2002 as we all know Hillary Clinton voted for resolution that allowed George W, Bush to go to war in Iraq. That vote in itself was a problem because the intelligence used to support the vote was to put it mildly garbage. Former Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island described the quality of the material he saw when he asked to see the CIA’s evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a threat that justified war:
""What they had, I discovered as the meeting stretched into an hour, was next to nothing," recalls Chafee. "They showed me what they had with little comment and no enthusiasm. Someone handed me one of the infamous aluminum tubes, the kind we were told Saddam was using to enrich weapons-grade uranium while plotting mushroom clouds over America, the ‘smoking gun’ that Condoleezza Rice warned about. "I looked at the aluminum tube, looked at the analysts and thought, I can go buy one of these at Adler’s Hardware," the Providence hardware emporium, writes Chafee." (http://www.projo.com/news/content/LInc_Chafee_01-27-08_PD8NPTK_v102.182ab97.html)
Senators who voted for the resolution were either highly gullible or afraid of appearing weak and neither of these motives would be desirable in a President of the United States. Chafee makes this point quite clear:
""I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president," writes Chafee. "Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill. "They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment." (http://www.projo.com/news/content/LInc_Chafee_01-27-08_PD8NPTK_v102.182ab97.html)
Democrats’ fear of appearing weak contributed to many thousands of deaths: "The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were," writes Chafee. "They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom." http://www.projo.com/...
Only hours before their fateful vote Senators, including Senator Clinton, failed to take the opportunity to follow a different path, when the voted against the Levin amendment. The Levin amendment called on the United Nations to pass a resolution authorizing force against Iraq if Iraq did not permit weapons programs inspections, but the Levin amendment also included a second provision under which the President would return to congress for a unilateral resolution authorizing force if the United Nations failed. (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?r107:./temp/~r107xmRs5c)
Senator Clinton has consistently explained her vote against the Levin amendment by claiming that it would have subordinated the United States to the United Nations. It is clear that this sounds better than admitting to gullibility or conceding a vote based on fear of weakness. However, the facts in the matter to not support her explanation. Levin and Chafee both make this clear. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/us/politics/02check.html)
In March 2007, long before he had issued any endorsement in the 2008 Presidential election, Chaffee described his colleagues’ rash and unseemly rush to war. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/opinion/01chafee.html?ex=1330405200&en=df93344977234907&e
i=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)
The Clinton campaign and Clinton supporters have never been able to offer a convincing explanation of the Senator’s vote against the Levin amendment because there is none. After years of war, thousands of deaths, and billions of dollars spent, this fateful decision does very much call into question Senator Clinton’s decision making in a crisis and her explanations of those decisions.