Posted on 11/24/2005 8:54:53 PM PST by RWR8189
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WASHINGTON -- John Edwards, the former Democratic nominee for vice president, has made a courageous admission: “I was wrong,” he said, and made “a mistake” in voting for the war in Iraq when he was a senator from North Carolina .
Edwards wrote his mea culpa in an op-ed article for The Washington Post on Sunday, Nov. 13.
Now let’s hear it from those other Democrats and possibly brave Republicans who are willing to admit that they, too, had been misled into war.
That may be asking too much of members of the Democratic Leadership Council, who often toss in their political lot with the Republicans. It’s hard to distinguish some of them from the GOP these days when it comes to the Iraq war.
Several DLC members appear to have presidential ambitions, including Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York , John Kerry of Massachusetts and Evan Bayh of Indiana . And it’s apparently politically dangerous for them to stick their necks out and admit they were bamboozled by the Bush administration. Remember when Michigan’s Gov. George Romney remarked in 1968 that the Johnson administration had “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War? That finished his presidential ambitions.
In his article, Edwards said “almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told and what many of us believed and argued was a threat to America .
But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. . .”
“The intelligence,” he added, was deeply flawed and, “and in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.”
“It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002,” he said. “I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn’t make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price.”
“The world,” he declared, “desperately needs moral leadership from America , and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth.”
He said that the argument for going to war was based on inaccurate intelligence. Had he known this at the time, Edwards added, “I never would have voted for this war.”
He said the U.S. moving “a significant number of troops” out of Iraq after the Iraqi elections early next year.
Meanwhile, an astounding statement has come from Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kans., chairman of the Senate intelligence committee and a strong administration supporter. Referring to the lessons of the flawed WMD intelligence, Robert said on Fox News that “a lot of us would really stop and think a moment before we would ever vote for war or to go and take military action” on the basis of intelligence.
“We don’t accept this intelligence at face value anymore,” he added.
Roberts and Sen. John D. (Jay) Rockefeller, the vice chairman of the intelligence panel, are overseeing an investigation into whether the administration manipulated the intelligence to justify the invasion.
A review of the misleading statements by President Bush and his top advisers in the run-up to the war leaves little doubt that war was a first resort, not a last resort, for these people.
The committee should examine the well-publicized “ Downing Street memo” which reflects the observations of the chief of British intelligence in July 2002 after he visited U.S. officials in Washington . Based on those visits, the British official went back to London and wrote the memo that concluded that the Bush administration wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action, with “the intelligence and the facts being fixed around the policy.”
The president -- whose trustworthiness has been questioned in recent polls -- is fighting for his political life and trying to get his footing back on the national stage.
In a Veterans Day address, Bush accused critics of trying “to rewrite history of how the war began.”
He also accused his detractors of sending “the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America’s will.” The question comes down to this: Will the president show the strength that Edwards has exhibited and say: “I was wrong?”
Old age...do your duty.
Democrats stand for lies, treason, stabbing our military and allies in the back and abusing women and minorities. That's all you need to know.
mark
She is such an ugly old Jew-hating Arab.
Today's Coulter : The Democrats are giving aid and comfort to the enemy for no purpose other than giving aid and comfort to the enemy. There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle.
They fill the airwaves with treason, but when called to vote on withdrawing troops, disavow their own public statements. These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20305
Yeah, it's right next to the Ann Coulter bylaw. Another "right" magically discovered in the FR Constitution by activist FReepers.
These hypocrats really need to fire their writers and find some new ones. The standard fare of lib diatribes are getting rather old and stale. As for Thomas, if I had a dog with a face like that I would shave it's a$$ and make it walk backwards (it's an oldie but still appropriate in this case)
Did this woman ever have children?
I have no idea if she has kids or not, but it seems unlikely, as she has such a total disconcern for posterity with her insane positions and writings.
Ahem, 12 years of no-fly zones, UN weapons inspections and sanctions and now, only now, it's wrong.
i hate that ole b####!
She is always way behind in the news, her commentary is outdated by the time it's printed.
"Will the president show the strength that Edwards has exhibited and say: “I was wrong?”
Not a chance, Hell-en, because he wasn't, and John Edwards is an idiot, like most other democrats.
Lord, please tell me that she was not allowed to breed.
Exactly. Now they should stand for a firing squad.
Smart fellow once told me that when your opponnet is hanging himself, don`t stop him from buying more rope.
The rats have a big problem, our guys are winning. They have no other issue.
Don`t you just love it when a plan comes together
Don't forget the Kournikova guidelines or the MoDo rule.
Slavery was once a "tradition" too. This tradition needs to go away too.
Thanks for the ugly mess. I'm confused, isn't she supposed to be a reporter? There are opinion statements in this column which belie that job description.
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