"So it is with conviction," Hillary said at the moment of her vote, "that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our Nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him -- use these powers wisely and as a last resort. And it is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein -- this is your last chance -- disarm or be disarmed."
http://www.commondreams.org/...
I've always said that every Congress person who voted to authorize the war should be in jail, because, after all, it is ILLEGAL to violate the Constitution, especially if you're someone who took an OATH to do so. (Thom Hartmann, Senator Byrd (a Constitutional scholar) and Peter Irons, author of War Powers all assert that it was unconstitutional. So take it up with them if you think otherwise.) And, unconstitutional or not, the vote was predicated on George W. Bush acting in good faith. I won't speak to all of the other Congress people who exhibited such lack of judgment with that vote, but seeing that Hillary expressly chose to let something as grave as war be determined by the wisdom of The World's Biggest Schmuck is sickening, to put it mildly.
And, to top it off, SHE DIDN'T EVEN READ THE FULL INTELLIGENCE REPORT!!!
On the campaign trail, Clinton has said again and again that she cast her vote based on the best available intelligence. But Gerth and Van Natta show that, according to all evidence, Hillary did not actually read the "best available intelligence" on the war before the invasion -- the full, 90-page classified version of the National Intelligence Estimate -- even though Sen. Bob Graham, then chairman of the Intelligence Committee, had, according to the book, "implored his colleagues to do so before casting such a monumental vote." (After reading the full report, Graham voted against the war.)
And to add insult to injury:
In an effort to justify her initial support of the war, Hillary has repeatedly insisted that her vote to authorize Bush to use force was actually a vote for diplomacy, that she didn't really believe we would go to war, and that the president misused that authority by giving short shrift to additional diplomatic methods. The authors turn a fan on this smokescreen and show that this claim is contradicted by Hillary's own voting record, pointing out that right before she cast her yes vote on the use of force, she voted against an amendment put forth by Carl Levin that would have required the president to actively pursue diplomacy before going to war. According to Her Way, if Hillary had voted yes on Levin's amendment, "she subsequently could have far more easily argued that she had worked toward a multilateral diplomatic approach. Instead of voting for Bush to pursue more diplomacy, she voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq."
Hopefully this new information will once and for all get her supporters to accept that Hillary is not fit to be the commander in chief so we can focus our energy on the rest of the candidates who actually exhibit leadership and not "follwership."