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Star Parker: War, lies and Hillary Clinton
WorldNetDaily ^ | 6/9/07 | Star Parker

Posted on 06/09/2007 5:09:02 PM PDT by wagglebee

I assume Sen. Clinton's campaign hopes most folks will not read "Her Way," by New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., or the New York Times Magazine article adapted from the book, "Hillary's War."

Anyone who does will appreciate the transparently false picture the senator is transmitting about why she voted in 2002 to authorize going to war in Iraq.

Clinton's vote has become a point of discussion because of her reluctance to clearly explain her thinking then. Unlike Sen. Edwards, she refuses to simply say she was wrong and express regret.

On the other hand, there has been no clear statement that at the time it was the right decision. One may assume the latter is unpalatable for her because it would give credibility to President Bush.

Clearly, since that vote something has changed. She recently voted with only 13 other senators to deny the additional emergency funding in support of the war effort that the president requested.

So what happened?

In one sense of consistency, we expect liberals to be allergic to personal responsibility and to seek every opportunity to be the victim. Here, Clinton does not let us down.

Her story now is that she voted for the war, but it's really not her fault that she did.

George Bush lied to her.

According to Clinton, she thought the resolution she was voting for meant that a new round of U.N. inspectors would be sent into Iraq. But, she was snookered.

As she put it in the debate the other night, "What I did not count on ... is that he (Bush) had no intention to allow the inspectors to finish the job."

Now, as Gerth and Van Natta point out, the war resolution contained no directive for further U.N. inspections in Iraq. It left it to the president's discretion to determine if this approach was working, to assess Saddam Hussein's compliance, and to resort to invasion as an alternative.

Sen. Carl Levin offered an amendment that would have required additional U.N. action and required the president, if the U.N. diplomacy failed, to return to Congress for authorization for a unilateral war initiative.

But Clinton, who now claims that more diplomacy was key, voted against this. And, as the reporters go on, "Clinton has never publicly explained her vote against the Levin amendment or said why she stayed on the sidelines as 11 other senators debated it for 95 minutes that day."

The day before Sen. Clinton voted for the war resolution, she spoke on the floor of the Senate and talked about "intelligence reports" describing Saddam's rebuilding his WMD stock and about Saddam giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members."

Former President Clinton, husband of the senator, was, according to the reporters, her chief counsel on the war vote. They quote him saying at the time, "Mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. ... He will deploy them and he will use them."

After returning from a trip to Iraq in 2003, Sen. Clinton spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York about the situation, saying, "We have no option but to stay involved and committed," and calling her vote "the right vote" and one "I stand by."

Clinton appeared on "Meet the Press" during a 2005 trip to Iraq and, again, according to Gerth and Van Natta, continued to express confidence in the effort and opposed withdrawal or a timetable. "We don't want to send a signal to insurgents, to the terrorists, that we are going to be out of here at some, you know, date certain."

The issue here is not making mistakes. The issue is being honest and taking responsibility.

Sen. Clinton, in what should be of concern to us all, seems to have a problem with both.

It is simply nauseating to hear from someone who aspires to be president of the United States what we heard from Clinton at the New Hampshire debate: "... this is George Bush's war. ... He started the war. He mismanaged the war. He is responsible for the war."

There would have been no Iraq invasion without authorization from Congress. Clinton's vote was part of that authorization. It was her war as it was George Bush's war.

Sen. Clinton may have not read the National Intelligence Estimate, as she has admitted, before voting for the war. But she certainly was reading the polls. At the time of the vote on the Iraq war, President Bush's approval was at 70 percent.

She was aware, awake, conscious, sober and responsible when she cast her vote.

A little free campaign advice to Hillary Clinton: Americans prefer presidents who tell the truth and take responsibility.


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 2016election; benghazi; clinton2008; clintonlied; election2016; hillaryclinton; iraq; libya; nothirdterm; peopledied; starparker; x42
A little free campaign advice to Hillary Clinton: Americans prefer presidents who tell the truth and take responsibility.

Well, her frame of reference is her corrupt, impeached "husband," so I doubt any of this will register with her.

1 posted on 06/09/2007 5:09:03 PM PDT by wagglebee
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To: wagglebee

Hill what are you going to flip flop on next week.You sound like john kerry now.


2 posted on 06/09/2007 5:21:59 PM PDT by jocko12
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To: wagglebee

hillary! will probably be elected anyway. i don’t like betting, but if i had any intestinal fortitude, i’d bet the farm that hillary! will be elected by the “american” electorate; guaranteed. (buy your gulag wardrobe as soon as possible.)


3 posted on 06/09/2007 5:27:35 PM PDT by ripley
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To: ripley

I will take a few acres of that bet.


4 posted on 06/09/2007 5:45:29 PM PDT by lag along
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To: lag along

i hope to grow some corn and dry it before they confiscate the south fourty. (i’m going to stuff it in my pants as they lead me away to mix mortar for hillary’s new kremlin.)


5 posted on 06/09/2007 6:05:24 PM PDT by ripley
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To: wagglebee

bttt


6 posted on 06/09/2007 6:06:40 PM PDT by Osage Orange (MOLON LABE)
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To: ripley
I think rice works better. shouldn’t her reeducation camps be in veit nam
7 posted on 06/09/2007 6:10:05 PM PDT by lag along
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To: ripley

i agree with you.

bush bot is helping her along,

and, of course,

the media.


8 posted on 06/09/2007 6:16:24 PM PDT by ken21 (tv: 1. sells products. 2. indoctrinates viewers into socialism.)
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To: wagglebee
And the story changes often:

April 14, 2007

ABCNews’ Eloise Harper reports: After fielding many questions ranging from mental health care to veteran affairs at a Town Hall Meeting in Hampton, NH, Senator Hillary Clinton received a heated question about Iraq. A woman who had traveled from New York asked Sen. Clinton if she had read the report given to her in 2002 on intelligence and the Iraq war.

Clinton said she had been briefed on the report, and the woman screamed back, “Did you read it?!” Notably uncomfortable, the Senator repeated that she had been briefed. This exchange went back and forth about three times.

The woman sat down and Clinton explained, “If I had known then what I know now, I never would have voted to give this President the authority.” Clinton also said she believed she was giving the President the authority to send U.N. inspectors to Iraq.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/04/heated_meeting_.html
9 posted on 06/09/2007 6:32:40 PM PDT by keepitreal
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To: keepitreal

Does she realize how lame an excuse that is? Guess not, or she’d come up with a better one. I’d like to see her keep repeating that excuse since it makes her come across as one stupid woman. Now clinton’s excuse for his wife is that she thought it was a coercive measure to vote in favour of the war, she thought it was just a threat and that the president would not follow thru. I guess she thought president Bush was like her husband, all talk, but no action.


10 posted on 06/09/2007 7:58:12 PM PDT by psjones (u)
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To: wagglebee

and Chillary’s 2002 Speech from the floor of the senate isn’t mentioned....it damns her to hell....


11 posted on 06/09/2007 8:00:58 PM PDT by stylin19a (Since bad golf shots come in groups of 3, a 4th bad shot is the start of the next group of 3)
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To: wagglebee
A little free campaign advice to Hillary Clinton: Americans prefer presidents who tell the truth and take responsibility.

Some Americans do, but quite a few don't care.

Remember what FDR said about Samoza? "Sure he's a SOB, but he's my SOB." Well, IMO most of the voters feel the same way about their selected pol.

12 posted on 06/09/2007 8:09:09 PM PDT by ChildOfThe60s (If you can remember the 60s........you weren't really there)
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To: wagglebee

I certainly look forward to having a President whose husband deceived her regularly, went behind her back to have sex with anyone but her and, time and again, made her look like a fool. On top of that, I look forward to a President who researched the classified details of why a war with Iraq was the right thing to do yet still has the chutzpah to say that she was bamboozled.

Yes, we can’t go wrong with a leader like that! Perhaps she’ll name Monica as the Surgeon General.


13 posted on 06/09/2007 9:15:34 PM PDT by Rembrandt (We would have won Viet Nam w/o Dim interference.)
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To: wagglebee
Clinton appeared on "Meet the Press" during a 2005 trip to Iraq and, again, according to Gerth and Van Natta, continued to express confidence in the effort and opposed withdrawal or a timetable. "We don't want to send a signal to insurgents, to the terrorists, that we are going to be out of here at some, you know, date certain."...leftists seem to be unable to practice anything but old-time politics - they all seem unable to remember that virtually everything they say now is being captured on tape or film by somebody, and could well be used against them in the future - Clinton needs to come into the 21st century......
14 posted on 06/09/2007 9:17:36 PM PDT by Intolerant in NJ
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To: psjones
She must not realize how lame an excuse that is, or she’d come up with a better one.

You had it right when you said she's stupid.

She can't come up with a better excuse. Even the ones she's been using are not her own, but rather, the best her staff has been able to construct.

You see how she, along with Katie Couric, can have a clear conscience. Letting others write your speeches, spots and words is "just the way things get done" in the world of the high and mighty. Her vote in 2002 wasn't really to go to war, it was more superficial, and just a Dick-Morris-sort-of calculation about which was the choice more likely to help get her into the White House in 2008.

What her memory is aware of--but she'd never admit--is that she's too dumb to be president, but in a Nixonian fashion, has thinks she's surrounded herself by "maleable", capable people. Partly because of that--their scripting, that is--and partly as over-compensation for her weaknesses, we have all the blustering braggadocio about being the smartest woman in the world. As other DimocRats, she is counting on the electorate being even dumber than she is.

HF

15 posted on 06/09/2007 9:44:07 PM PDT by holden
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To: wagglebee

Hillary is beneath contempt. If by some hideous calamity, she somehow becomes president, it will lead to disaster for our country, count on it. That being the case, let us not blindly allow such a calamity to occur, such as a split vote by some “Third Party” candidate, as in 1992 and 1996.


16 posted on 06/09/2007 9:46:02 PM PDT by Richard Axtell
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To: Richard Axtell

AMEN to that, but good luck with it.


17 posted on 06/10/2007 12:09:08 AM PDT by Fudd Fan (Don't you worry, never fear, FDT will soon be here. http://www.imwithfred.com)
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To: Fudd Fan

She reminds me of Jack Nickolson in “a few good men” when he was so smug on the witness stand and then Tom Cruise pins him to the wall and says “No, you said you’re men follow orders or people die”...we need someone to pin Hillary for every lie, every falsehood, every backtracking statement she’s made as a Senator and there are plenty of soundbites out there. Who will do it though? Rudy? Mitt? Fred? SOMEBODY!


18 posted on 06/14/2007 5:12:00 PM PDT by princess leah
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