and I'm not a Senator, I didn't have the benefit of top-secret "intelligence reports", and I didn't get to attend any presidential briefings.

The fact is, there are many of us in the informed general public who knew that the whole WMD in Iraw and Al-Qaeda/Saddam connection was a swizz coooked up by the Neo-con cabal, and that Bush was using pretense to get us into Iraq. And we knew that it was going to be a disaster.

No need for me to Monday morning quarterback, or babble on about "if I knew now what I knew then."

I'm just an average citizen, but I knew then it was a deception, I knew then it was going to be a fiasco, and I knew then it was WRONG!

Many others knew it then too, and we screamed it here at Salon, and on other blogs and websites, and we wrote our representatives -- who ignored us -- and we protested it on the streets of Washington, and no one cared, including Hillary Clinton.

The media all but ignored us, and right-wingnuts screamed that we were "un-American" and no better than terrorists ourselves, and yet we still knew it.

We knew in our heart of hearts that it was wrong.

We knew it to the core of our beings, and we knew it like we know our own names.

It was wrong.

All the rational, smart people I know knew it then too. The only people I know who thought it was a good idea are the kind of people who are still struggling to "get" the fact that Al Qaeda wasn't run by Saddam, and that there isn't some hidden cache of WMD we have yet to find in Iraq, and are thinking that there is genuine reason for us to totally freak out and rush right into Iran at the first provocation, because it's such a threat to us.

IT WAS WRONG THEN.

And some members of Congress and other people in politics knew it. And they had the courage to say so, at a time when to do so was to risk vilification and condemnation.

So, if you are in politics, and you didn't know it then, then you don't deserve our vote now.

As for Hillary, she either knew, and didn't care (because she wanted to pander to her constituency), or she didn't know, in which case, she's not fit to be president.

Either way, she's disqualified herself from being president.

And frankly, when it comes to being president, the "oops, I made a mistake, I was wrong" argument about something so fundamentally obvious doesn't cut it for me either.

So Edwards can take a hike too.

Because if you couldn't see what Bush was doing, and what he had in store, then I have little confidence that you'll be able to handle the challenges of being President.

We need a President who gets it RIGHT for a change.

Hillary has a pretty bad record getting it right, and for her to get it so wrong on Bush and Iraq -- well, actions speak louder than words.

She does NOT get a pass. She's a decent enough Senator, though I'm glad she's not my Senator, and yes, there were various factors involved in the whole run up to the war that might affect the decisions one way or the other, but again, there's a crucial underlying issue:

SHE WAS WRONG. SHE WAS DEAD WRONG!

How many times do we have to scream it to the heavens?

The whole premise of the Iraq war was WRONG!

It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Iraq had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, and anyone who listened to Hans Blitz or anything besides Faux News also knew that the likelihood or risk of any supposed weapons of mass destruction from Saddam was minimal to nonexistent.

The whole premise of the Iraq war was WRONG!

Barack Obama knew it then. I knew it then. And many right-thinking, intelligent regular citizens I know knew it then.

So if Hillary is so smart, why didn't SHE know it then?

I don't care about her evolution, or her new thinking, or even whether or not she admits she was wrong or not.

Either she's outright lying to us, and her decision to support it all was just a calculated political pander that didn't pay off. Which means, I don't want her as my president.

Or, she didn't have the discernment or intelligence to HEAR and KNOW what some people in the U.S. and MANY people around the world knew -- which was that there was no justification for war in Iraq. Which means, I don't want her as my president.

And I don't want Edwards or Kerry either, because neither of them appears to have the discernment or intelligence either.

We are in a dangerous, difficult time for America.

We need a president who gets it right from the start.

Hillary Clinton is NOT that person.

Whichever Salon editor finally gets enough balls to finally put the kibosh on publishing Debra Dickerson's drivel.

Oh wait, though, that would have to be Joan Walsh. And she's too busy running for the job of White House Communications director under the Hillary Clinton administration to edit the crappy writing...

Big groan...