in the magazine section tomorrow, by none other than Jeff Gerth.
According to Gerth, there is more to her "I take responsibility for my vote" and the excuse that Bush had misused Congressional authority because they acted "without allowing the inspectors to finish the job in the rush to war."
An interesting read, if Gerth can back it up.
Apparently, there was an additional vote that she would really like everyone to forget about.
First, she hadn't done her homework:
"The question of whether Clinton took the time to read the N.I.E. report is critically important. Indeed, one of Clinton's Democratic colleagues, Bob Graham, the Florida senator who was then the chairman of the intelligence committee said he voted against the resolution on the war, in part, because he had read the complete N.I.E. report. As a result, he listened to Bush's claims more skeptically. "I was able to apply caveat emptor," Graham observed. He added regretfully, "Most of my colleagues could not."
Did Hillary read the report, containing vital information - both pro and con?
Earlier this year, on the presidential campaign trail in New Hampshire, Clinton was confronted by a woman who had traveled from New York to ask her if she had read the report. According to Eloise Harper of ABC News, Clinton responded that she had been briefed on it.
"Did you read it?" the woman screamed.
Clinton replied that she had been briefed although she did not say by whom.
A Forgotten Vote
In the early morning hours of Oct. 11, 2002, the Senate voted, 72 to 23, to authorize the Bush administration's war against Iraq.
Although she hasn't apologized, there are so different many messages from her accusing Bush, dancing around withdrawal, I can't keep them straight. But here's the money quote:
It came several hours earlier, on Oct. 10, 2002, the same day Clinton spoke about why she would support the Iraq-war authorization. In her remarks on the Senate floor, she stressed the need for diplomacy with Iraq on the part of the Bush administration and insisted she wasn't voting for "any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for unilateralilsm." Yet, just a few hours after her speech, Clinton voted against an amendment to the war resolution that would have required the diplomatic emphasis that Clinton had gone on record as supporting - and that she now says she had favored all along.
The long-overlooked vote was on an amendment introduced by Carl Levin and several other Senate Democrats who hoped to rein in President Bush by requiring a two-step process before Congress would actually authorize the use of force. Senators knew full well the wide latitude that they were handing to Bush, which is why some tried to put the brakes on the march to war. The amendment called, first, for the U.N. to pass a new resolution explicitely approving the use of force against Iraq. It also required the president to return to Congress if his U.N. efforts failed and, in Senator Levin's words, "urge us to authorize a go-it-alone, unilateral resolution." That resolution would allow the president to wage war as a last option."
According to Gerth, Hillary was the closest senator to echo Bush's talking points, and even our Joe noted that "the relationship between Al- Qaeda and Saddam's regime is a subject of intense debate within the intelligence community."
Even Lieberman comes off better than Hillary, according to Gerth.
I wonder who Gerth supports. The name James Carville popped into mind - there is something more here.
Suddenly, the brain kicks in - I just remembered reading this. Via TPM, Gerth's wife works for Dodd. Things are starting to get interesting, and it's only June. The Times did not mention this fact in the article.