Letters to the Editor
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Admit it already, or lose the race.
Hillary, stop being exactly what Bush is. A ridiculously stubborn person who cannot admit when they've made a mistake. I don't understand the reasoning behind her evasiveness about it all. She's a human being like the rest of us, and we all make mistakes. She made one by voting to authorize force, period. Admit it and move on, or lose the race. I just can't get over how much she sounds like Mr. Bush when she dodges the hard question like that. It makes me shake my head. I don't understand why she would do this.
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Her position makes sense
If somebody I trusted told me my house was on fire, and I called 911 to have it put out, only to later find out that there was no fire after all, did I make a mistake? Yes -- but my mistake was in trusting the an untrustworthy person, not in making the phone call.
That is what Hillary is saying, and if you are willing to assume that she believed Bush before the Iraq War (or at least was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt), it's a perfectly valid and logical position.
Of course, that may not matter to voters if it comes across as too quibbling or technical... or if they decide that trusting Bush's word showed poor judgement.
-Jeremy
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"...she still can't say her own vote to authorize force was a mistake..."
If you've read her autobiography, you know her fatal flaw is that she can't say anything she's ever done was a mistake.
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What Hillary Won't Say
It not surprising that the junior senator form New York won't say she made a mistake. She won';t say it because she is trying to appeal to the middle of the road voter. That is one of her biggest problems. She tries to appeal to everyone and hopeful will end up appealing to almost no one. She panders, triangulates and nuances on many issues like immigration. flag burning. abortion, her religiousity and more. She is trying so hard to get elected that she has no genuine convictions about hardly anything excet bringing back the Welfare State. Beware of the politician who is a windmill politician. She has the results of polls brfore she takes any stands. This lack of conviction and decisiveness are not the qualities of a leader. She is not a leader.
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That photo
I'm a big fan of Salon, in fact I read it nearly every day--which is probably why I feel like I've seen this particular AP photo of Hillary about half a dozen times by now. Well, probably more like two. But seriously, can't you come up with a better, less suspiciously unflattering shot of her? Ye gods, that jacket is horrible. That, combined with her pursed-lipped expression, makes her look like someone's pissed-off Amish grandmother. I think that as our first viable female candidate for president she has enough obstacles to surmount without that.
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Well, I can say it...
It was a mistake.
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In response to Jeremy
Jeremy hits the nail on the head: "Of course, that may not matter to voters...if they decide that trusting Bush's word showed poor judgement."
That's where I fall. Not only did Bush show that he could not be trusted to tell the truth, well before this vote, but he had already shown that he could not be trusted with power either. Even if there were WMD's (which anyone paying attention already knew there were not), I'm not sure it would be defensible to give Bush a blank check for war.
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What Hillary won't say about Iraq
I'm not sure she understands that the mistake she made, and to which she needs to cop, is not the actual vote itself. It was the fact that she allowed herself to be buffaloed into buying the administration's bullshit sales job. 23 of her colleagues didn't fall for it; why did she?
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Admitting a mistake
We have just witnessed 6 years of governance by a man who cannot admit a mistake and still have 2 more years of his mismanagement to suffer through. The last thing we need to do is replace one leader who cannot admit a mistake with another.
I am undecided in my presidential preferences - but I do know one thing, I will not vote for a candidate who cannot admit error.
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What Hillary won't say about Iraq
Thanks to Tim Grieve for collating and summarizing the history of Hillary's comments on this urgently important subject. In a time when our country is in need of genuine leadership, It is truly sad to see that Hillary's public statements on the Iraq war become fuzzier, less honest, and frankly obfuscatory. It is particularly sad because Hillary's comments are becoming more and more like Bush's outrageous and clearly dishonest comments over the same period of time. Both Hillary and Bush fail to address the critical issues of our time, and they both find convenient ways to blame others for the complex problems facing our nation. Neither Bush nor Hillary will take any responsibility for the poor judgment which brought us into this frivolous and unnecessary war, and neither has a clear, precise plan for getting us out of this war. The future of our nation demands that we make a clean break from such dishonest behavior---we need true leadership, and Hillary has made it abundantly clear that she is no more capable of leadership than the current dysfunctional occupant of the White House.
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stupid and unprincipled vote
Why is it that 23 senators were SMART ENOUGH TO REALIZE that Bush's so-called evidence was not sufficient to grant him permission to go to war for no good reason. Those twenty three would be the smart people, the thinking people, the people wise enough to see through the crap. Any senator who voted to grant our idiot ill-intentioned President and his cabal of oil company associates the right to go to war wherever and however he wants should not be considered for president..unless that senator has said that vote was WRONG (as Edwards has.) Hillary, "if I knew then what I know now" Clinton was wrong to be swayed by Bush's lies. If she was not smart enough to see, as 23 did, that the man was pulling the wool over her eyes, then she is not smart enough to be president. Lets look to the smart senators for advice from now on..we can begin with Russ Feingold who has been correct on all of these votes from the get go INCLUDING the dreadful Patriot Act. All the senators who voted yea on October 11, 2002 (another day to go down in infamy) and who have not admitted that vote was WRONG should be dumped..that includes my New York senators..BOTH of them. they show no moral spine at all none. Al Gore for president. No more Clintons and no more Bushes.