In NY Times book review, Senior adds to Her Way falsehood to assert Clinton's "spectacular disingenuousness" on Iraq
In the July 15 New York Times Sunday Book Review, Jennifer Senior, a contributing editor at New York magazine, wrote that in their book Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Little, Brown & Co., June 2007), authors Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. were "right to expose the spectacular disingenuousness" of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) "claim that she thought she was authorizing additional diplomacy, not a war" when she voted for the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. But Gerth and Van Natta's characterization of Clinton's explanation for her vote is based on a falsehood, as Media Matters for America has noted. And Senior introduces a falsehood of her own: Contrary to her claim that Clinton has said that she did not think that she was "authorizing ... a war," as Media Matters has previously documented, Clinton's comments at and since the time of her vote indicate that she was well aware that Congress' passage of the resolution could lead to war. But Clinton also made clear at the time of the vote -- contrary to Senior's suggestion that Clinton is now mischaracterizing her vote -- that she expected the president to use the authority given by Congress as leverage to force complete and thorough inspections in Iraq.
In her October 10, 2002, floor speech before her vote, Clinton acknowledged that approval of the resolution could "lead to war," but also said that she expected the White House to push for "complete, unlimited inspections" and that she did not view her support for the measure as "a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption or for unilateralism." Clinton also stated her view that the resolution's passage would make "war less likely":
Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first and placing highest priority on a simple, clear requirement for unlimited inspections, I take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a United Nations resolution and seek to avoid war, if possible. Because bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely and war less likely, and because a good faith effort by the United States, even if it fails, will bring more allies and legitimacy to our cause, I have concluded, after careful and serious consideration, that a vote for the resolution best serves the security of our Nation.
Gerth and Van Natta themselves misrepresented subsequent statements Clinton made regarding the resolution, falsely claiming that in a June 2006 floor statement Clinton offered a "new interpretation" of her actions -- that President Bush had misused his authority by acting "without allowing the inspectors to finish the job in order to rush to war." As Media Matters has noted repeatedly, Clinton's "interpretation" was not "new" at all, and her June 2006 floor statement was hardly the first time she had asserted publicly that Bush had "misused" his authority by going to war before the inspections could be carried out.
From the Times' July 15 Sunday Book Review:
They are right to assail Hillary for repeating the idea that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda; they are even more right to expose the spectacular disingenuousness of her claim that she thought she was authorizing additional diplomacy, not a war; and they give Hillary's late-breaking attempt to board the climate-change bandwagon the hard, skeptical eye it deserves.
Any senator who voted out of an ingenuous belief that Bush would give diplomacy and inspections a real chance is a fool.
Or doing what is or was politically expedient. Clinton can explain away her vote forever, it doesn't change the fact that she still won't own up to the mistake.
Or doing what is or was politically expedient
That could probably describe 98% of our lawmakers.
I wish Hillary & others had taken the time to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before casting such a monumental vote.
I wish we could kick their butts out the door & replace them with more Senators like Jim Webb. This guy has always impressed me, even more so now after seeing him on Meet The Press.
Yeah, I agree...
I like Jim Webb too. The couple times I've seen him.
Here may be the most important move made by the Democrats yet:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/Media/Download/19367/1/Durbin-Iraq-filibuster.wmv
After hearing Durbin talk about the sacrifice our soldiers are making, and that a REAL FILIBUSTER is going to take place, I thought the least I could do is show MY support by tuning to CSpan, and stay up as a way to join them, and send emails to friends and family to inform them as well.
I hope some of you will join me, I'll be blogging at the same time. (Now I gotta figure out where)
Rick
He was better yesterday than he was when he was a candidate. When I saw he v. Allen on Meet the Press last year, I was just glad I didn't live in Virginia.
Hillary pandered to her base when the war had strong support...she is now pandering to her base because support has waned.
Typical Clinton move.
How come no one seems to be doing such intense scrutiny of the Con candidates?
Is the media going to give them a free pass?Just wave the old red, white and blue with impugnity?
How do you know the GOP candidates are not coming under this scrutiny that the Democrats are forced to endure? If you go by what's said here, well, you can't really do that to get the complete picture.
Also, it's very early in the process......plenty of time to microscopically dissect each candidate's history and record, I would suppose.
Even those of us who do not subscribe to LGF might sometimes see the "regular" media - and, nope! The Repugnant candidates are not being scrutinized in similar fashion, but are instead being given passes on idiocies and lies of their own. (refer the Liasson thread)
The Liasson thread is proof of what? Your opinions on the kid glove treatment of GOP'ers is highly subjective, and your personal view.
So show the error: how many times has Julie-Annie been asked about his kinda public affairs? Recall that Senator Clinton has been asked if she could count on Bill to "behave". How many times has "maverick" McCain been termed a flip-flopper or a liar, given his history of being on both sides of every major issue since 2000? Yet the Corporate media is filled with lies and smears about Hillary's "deceitfulness" and "spectacular disingenuousness". How many of them have been asked why supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq (substitute your favorite euphemism) doesn't require them to 'splain how they propose to pay for that, or why we cannot seem to afford Vet's healthcare? Could it be that the "press" is too busy working "slow bleed" and "cut and run" in confrontations with various Dem candidates? Why has no one from the "press" asked Julie-Annie about Kerik in any of these love-fests he hosts? Yet they can chase Obama around the country iterating discredited lies about his current church, when they are not still working on his "madrassa" upbringing or his purchase of a house. There are many crucial questions for Repugnant candidates . . . yet . . . crickets.
It is easy to dismiss as "opinion" that with which one cannot sustain dispute, isn't it?
Unlike any of the GOP candidates, right?
I don't know if it's at all telling that nobody seems all that gung ho about coming to the defense of Senator Clinton. I know that I'm not going to do it seeing as I sort of agree with emboldened supposed misinformation.
Even if one is not a fan of Senator Clinton; even if one dislikes her vote for that 2002 resolution; one is nonetheless appalled that so many are willing to accept the "right" of the right to lie about her and that vote. Do I detect in the postings here just a whiff of the very "expediency" we claim to despise?
Sen. Clinton is not my favorite Dem - but I gotta say, this lie, these liars are just as evil as the other liars (you know, the entire Repugnant administration, and all their media lackeys).
Which emboldened supposed misinformation are you talking about BB?
Some of us try to be descrete, to see how long it takes for the first accusation of MMFA being a Hillary spin site to occur. We may do similar if Obama keeps getting called either/or a wuss, a pothead, or inexperienced Edward's $400 hair cut, etc,etc.
Don't seem to matter how many times a story gets debunked. They live on in closed minds everywhere, and usually spend a lotta time here. Usually being mauled.
I'm having trouble deciphering the tone of your response; did I make any accusations about spin? I suppose I should have said boldfaced rather than emboldened. I'm not saying anything about MMFA. I use the word misinformation because that's what MMFA claims to be uncovering: conservative misinformation in the media. Of course, it's sort of a silly mission for a clearly biased organization to undertake since it's so easy for a quest for uncovering propaganda to itself feel like propaganda when it loses sight of it's own intellectual honesty. As it seems to have done here, if you ask me. Which nobody did. Still, I think the defense of Senator Clinton's vote by anyone claiming to be 'progressive' is as disingenuous as the vote itself.
Earlier, I was simply commenting on how few people at that point had come to back up MMFA in defense of Senator Clinton.
Bush lied to Congress, and in the heat of post-9/11 feelings, Congress voted to give him authorization for war, which Bush assured all would be a LAST resort, after all other avenues had been exhausted. Bush lied again.
So, we have a lying president, and somehow there is a unique kind of BLAME to be given Hillary for how things turned out. Frankly, we Americans had no CHOICE but to trust Bush at that time, and he hadn't been in office long enough to show us how craven he was about his lies and assurances.
The WAR is Bush's, not Hillary's. As President, Hillary would not have started a war against Iraq. As President, Hillary will END the war, and Bush and his supporters (McCain, Romney, etc.) would NOT.
We all know by now the chronology of what happened. We all know by now the legacy of lies and mistakes Bush has made in the failed execution of this "war". There is tons of blame for the damage this war has done, but NONE of that blame is Hillary's. It's all Bush's. Sorry, Rightwingers.
Hillary voted to kill the people of Iraq again and again and again. She MADE this her war, she made the choice to vote to KILL over and over. Even after the whole world saw thru the Bush rubbish, she voted consistently to KILL in the name of corporate profits.
How can you rank-n-file Dems sit around and make up excuses for your leaderships' blatant collaboration in the Bush war crimes? Just follow the votes....the Dems are guilty as hell, too.
That is a ludicrous charge, although it pails in comparison to your previous insinuation that our troops are illiterate criminals who are randomly engaging in pillaging and kidnapping. Have you no decency??????
So, we have a lying president, and somehow there is a unique kind of BLAME to be given Hillary for how things turned out
The WAR is Bush's, not Hillary's. As President, Hillary would not have started a war against Iraq. As President, Hillary will END the war
but NONE of that blame is Hillary's
Hillary is that really you posting as Tex? ;-)
Of course it's Bush's war. No one disputes that. he and his neo-cons WANTED this war. That was plain to anyone paying attention back in 2002-3(and before).
So while it Bush's war, many Dems, including Hillary, should have have said NO. Iraq was not al Qaeda, Iraq was not 9/11, Iraq was, as Colin Powell said prior to 9/11, CONTAINED, and not a real threat.
Authorizing war, even with, as Hillary admitted, a weak diplomatic component, was WRONG.
Remember right and wrong? Not always easy, but in this case, very easy.
I honestly can't tell if you're serious. I mean, I have no problem with people supporting Senator Clinton. She was once my senator. That being said, do you really have to absolve her completely in order to stomach defending her? None of the blame lies on the senate? None of it lies on individual senators who voted for the resolution (by the way, not all of them did)? None of it lies on the tax payers who continue to willingly fund this war? None of it? How do you figure that? I mean, does it really make you sleep better to say this is all because of one man who was equally idiotic and meglomanically devious? Does it really make you feel better to think that he pulled one over on the world? That the our elected officials are just well meaning dupes? Where does your rationalization end? Honestly. And I'm far from being a right winger.
Bashing Hillary because she voted for authorization pales to Bush's claim that there are two constituencies one being the American public and the other the members of the military. Bush went on to state that the military constituency shall have supremacy over the American Public.
Can anyone see where the above logic of Bush leads? He is the commander in chief, but he was first and foremost a politician getting there. Once there he has dismissed the People of the United States. This is what Hillary could not have predicted.
Until anyone can claim that they could have predicted that Bush was going to ignore the will of the People, it will be hypocritcal to bash Hillary for expecting her to.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/bush-j16.shtml
Look at the video of today's bloody bombing in Kirkuk that left 85 dead and 150 wounded. Do not watch if you have children. there is a badly burnt young girl crying in pain. Do not watch if you do not like seeing people with legs cut off. A man loses his leg (4:52 into the video).
video
...and all because Bush lied.
...and Hillary and Obama and the rest voted to let Bush drop those bombs. Our whole government is war criminal. We have created something new....a two-party fascist state.
And we all financed the job. Our government makes no distinction between supporters of terrorism and the practitioners of terrorism.
Our government is a practioner of terrorism. We know the Iraqi military is full of death squads...we trained them! The infamous "police commandos"....first group the US set up over there. The El Salvador option...how to terrorise a population ala Reagan's School of the Americas.
Btw Redking Obama was not a member of the senate at the time of the vote.
You're reaching here. Did anyone honestly believe Bush wanted autorization to go to war so he could pursue diplomatic options? Not if they were paying attention or being honest. So, yes, Hillary is being "spectacularly disingenuous" to say that she wasn't authorizing war. Of course she was; we all knew it.
I know this is off topic, but I felt I should share it....look for everyone's favorite hate monger conservative poster girl. Also check out the curiously pale "black" man running the African American Republican booth....funny stuff.
link to CPAC
OMG! Does anyone not remember those days during the runup to that vote. Bush and Co. had been nonstop selling the American people (that's you and me btw) that their was a connection between Irag and Al Queda. We heard at every speach the words Suddam/Al Queda being used synomisly. Bush even gave a speech before the vote stating that the military option would be a last ditch after all other options had been exhausted. Taking all the histeria of the time and the manipulation of the facts being presented to the American people had Sen Clinton voted against it would have been political suicide. Political expedinacy? maybe, but if you had Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and many, many more ready to pounce that you are against for not "protecting the America People". It wouldn't be brave; it would have been stupid.
It might have been suicide if she were representing Arkansas. But not in NY. There would have been strong support for her in NY, especially among previous skeptics had she voted against the authorization. But she obviously was looking at 2008 and did the political calibrations accordingly.
Asking politicians to be courageous is usually unproductive, I know, but sometimes it takes less spine than is acknowledged. That war vote was just such a moment.
Come on, guys. You do good and necessary work but you should stop defending Hillary's vote on the Iraq war authorization. She screwed up on that vote and has looked even worse since trying to reationalize it. The vote was craven and opportunistic. All else is spin.
ED NAKAWATASE
Except that no one - NO ONE - has the right to lie about that vote. Which is what MMFA has called here - another in an unending series of lies about that vote, mixed into the torrent of other lies about Hillary.