Nasty Little Man

Clinton dead wrong on the "proper debate"

Senator Hillary Clinton told this to the AP on Sunday, regarding her vote to authorize the war in Iraq:

"I take responsibility for having voted to give him that authority," she said. "My focus is on what we do now. That is the proper debate."

Wrong....sort of. Yes, we need to discuss what we do now. But we are considering our next president. In order to make an informed decision about who our next president should be, we need to consider each candidate's past actions. And Senator Clinton has some explaining to do about that vote, along with Senators Dodd and Biden.

At least John Edwards had the strength to admit, "I was wrong."

America's leaders -- all of us -- need to accept the responsibility we each carry for how we got to this place.

Obama gets off lucky since he was not in the Senate at the time, but he was a public opponent of the war.

I haven't done a full inventory of every presidential candidate on the authorization vote, but my hunch is that only Rep. Dennis Kucinich comes out totally clean on this since he was there for the vote and voted against the authorization.

Senator Clinton, you helped get us into this mess, and I suspect you did it for political gain. Please tell us why we should trust you in the White House.

As an aside, the person who deserves posthumous respect on this issue is Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota). In the heat of a difficult re-election campaign and worrying that opposition to the war in Iraq could cost him his Senate seat, Wellstone took to the floor and gave the speech of his life in opposition to the war. After the speech, his poll numbers went up. For a thorough look at the life of this remarkable public servant, check out the documentary Wellstone! You can get a 5-10 minute preview online.

Labels: Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Joe Biden, Paul Wellstone

posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 10:41 PM