Posted on 11/29/2005 5:06:42 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Hillary Clinton: Iraq War Vote a Mistake
For the first time since she voted to authorize the Iraq war three years ago, 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is now saying that vote was a mistake - in an apparent move to pacify growing dissatisfaction with her position among the Democratic Party's left-wing base.
"If Congress had been asked [to authorize the war], based on what we know now, we never would have agreed," Clinton said, in an email sent to her supporters on Tuesday.
While saying she took full responsibility for her error, Clinton repeatedly insisted that she had been misled by "false" intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction presented by the Bush administration.
Citing "assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections," Clinton lamented: "Their assurances turned out to be empty ones."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Nope, not all of them. Joe Lieberman has apparently regained his senses after losing his head over algore there for a while.
...Cohen, then she's lost the election:
More Than a 'Mistake' on Iraq
Tuesday, November 29, 2005; Page A21
A line is forming outside the Iraq confessional. It consists of Democratic presidential aspirants -- where's Hillary? -- who voted for the war in Iraq and now concede that they made a "mistake."
Hillary must be condemned for her mistake.
No mistake, no matter how small is tolerated in DC.
Just ask GWB.
"While saying she took full responsibility for her error, Clinton repeatedly insisted that she had been misled by "false" intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction presented by the Bush administration. "
What documents can she present that were congered up or falsified by the Bush administration? I would like to see those documents.
I am sure she has them somewhere since she used them to base her vote in the Senate on giving the President the authority to use force in Iraq.
Lets see these falsified documents Senator. This intelligence came from somewhere, lets see these intelligence documents/reports that were given to you by the President.
Somehow I am going to guess they were all top secret. Which means the information could never leak out to the public........
Not to worry, she will put that finger to the wind and change her mind once again and no one will notice except the right. Wasn't that Bill's MO?
Well, if she can't be trusted in a vote on war or peace, then I guess she can't be trusted as President. Thanks for the honesty, Hillary.
Jeez, wasn't she on the other side of this issue LAST WEEK?
How dare you question the smartest woman in the Universe. Do you think she is a phoney and trying to appeal to the far left. What a skank !!
What a duplicitous, finger to the wind, unprincipled flip-flopper! Like Kerry and Bill, completely insincere.
This is the core of the impeachment strategy. So assuming that they don't have some more convincing forgeries cooked up would be a mistake. They know now not to use Microsoft word. Be ready for the roll out of some sort of smoking gun document that is hard as hell to disprove. Courtesy of the CIA. (They wouldn't lie would they...)
This is kind of long, but it needs to be repeated:
It's past time that Republicans start reminding the American people of the threat Saddam posed regardless of WMDs. It's also time to point out that Iraq didn't just become a terrorist state as a result of the Iraq War; it already was. In fact, the war in Afghanistan...all by itself, pretty much guaranteed that Iraq would eventually become an even greater threat, regardless of what we did to Saddam. What many liberals and Democrats ignore is that even "before" 9/11, Al Qaeda and Al-Zarqawi were courting the Arabs and Kurds in N. Iraq in an effort to create AQs new affilate...Ansar Al-Islam.
In August of 2001, leaders of several Kurdish Islamist factions reportedly visited the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan with the goal of creating an alternate base for the organization in northern Iraq. It was shortly after this that Ansar al-Islam was created using $600,000 in al-Qaeda seed money, with even perhaps as much as $35,000 donated directly from the Mukhabarat branch of Iraqi Intelligence Service. In other words, before the Iraq War, before the Afghanistan War...and even before 9/11, certain groups of Arabs and Kurds were colluding with Al-Qaeda in an attempt to establish a new AQ affiliate in N. Iraq.
This colaboration was further substantiated during the Afghanistan War, when a document found in an al-Qaeda guest house by the NY Times discussed the creation of an "Iraqi Kurdistan Islamic Brigade" which vowed to "expel those Jews and Christians from Kurdistan and join the way of Jihad, [and] rule every piece of land...with the Islamic Shari'a rule." For the learning impaired, this alliance meant the creation of another Taliban-like organization...with similar ties to AQ that the Taliban had in Afghainstan.
As the Afghanistan War wore on, it wasn't a conicidence that many remnants from the Taliban and AQ were finding themselves within this newly created "affiliate." Human Rights Watch even confirmed this when they visited the region and reported that hundreds of foreign fighters from Afghanistan were joining up with Ansar...some from as early as September 2001 (long before the Afghanistan War). Adding further evidence to this colaboration was HRW's own interviews of Ansar al-Islam members in PUK custody, who according to them, "described in credible detail training in al-Qa'ida camps in Afghanistan."
Heck, after Zarqawi was injured in the Afghanistan War...and even before the war in Iraq began, he found himself being treated in a Baghdad hospital owned by one of Saddam's son...only to leave with his Egyptian Islamic Jihad brethren who accompanied him, and later meet up with Ansar. This action completely contradicts the claims of those who said Saddam would never ally himself with these "radical" Islamic groups for fear of being overthrown. If that were true, AZ woud've never left Baghdad alive.
In fact, this Saddam/Ansar alliance was quite reasonable...not just because of their shared hatred of America, but because Ansar itself was doing something for Saddam that Saddam could no longer do for himself; Ansar was attacking the two largest Kurdish factions (PUK and KDP) in N. Iraq...which had long been the biggest thorn in his side. Evidence suggests that the very creation of Ansar Al-Islam may have been as a secondary base of operation should America succeed in ousting the Taliban and AQ. And this is important because after the destruction of the terrorists camps in Afghanistan, the sancturaries for these terrorists were running thin.
Over the last decade, AQ and their more radical elements had been getting kicked out of their own homelands and host countries. From Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Lebanon to Jordan...and even terrorists supporters like Syria and Libya, these countries no longer wanted these groups operating from within their borders. With Sudan offering up UBL and even Musharif in Pakistan joining the WOT, there were little places left for AQ to coalesce, especially after 9/11 and the retribution America was seeking. No one wanted these groups for fear the US would make their state the next target in the WOT. Even Iran supposedly expelled Zarqawi after it was learned he may hiding there....which is when he made his way to Baghdad.
The simple fact is the war in Afghanistan made Iraq a natural choice for these groups...even well before the war in Iraq began. Before GW Bush was even President, ABC News and other media outlets were reporting that Saddam offered santuary to UBL. This is supported by the fact that Saddam already had the propencity for harboring wanted terrorists; he had already offered safe-havens to both Abu Abass and Abu Nidal...two of the world's most wanted terrorists. A brief history of Nidal shows that he and his group were responsible for the killings of over 900 people in over 20 countries. Nidal was a leader in the PLO...and after leaving them, formed his own group, the Abu Nidal Organization, which operated at an even more violent level.
Nidal was once America's most wanted terrorist and a 1989 State Department report called his organization the most dangerous terrorist group in the world. In a headline from Jan. 8, 1999, Reuters reported that the "Guerrilla Abu Nidal Flees to Iraq." This wasn't necessarily a secret since intelligence had reported that Nidal may have entered Iraq 10 days before Bill Clinton's Dec 16, 1998 bombing of Iraq. Since the 9/11 attack, it was learned that two of the hijackers...Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah, had very close relations with Abu Nidal...which may explain his untimely death in Iraq.
Further confirmation of these alliances may be found in the fact that after the first 1993 WTC attack, Abdul Rahman Yasin, the man who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought and found refuge in Baghdad. Coincidence? Not if you believe this and what others have said about Ramsey Yousif being a former Iraqi Intelligence officer. The same was also true for Abu Abass. This "convicted" Palestinian terrorist...and the mastermind behind the Achille Lauro hijacking, had been calling Baghdad his home since 1994...under Saddam's personal protection.
Abbas was the leader of another Palestinian terror organization (PLF) that, after leaving Tunisia, set up shop in Iraq. Saddam's relationship with Abass (and Nidal) was very convenient, as Saddam became one of the largest providers of finanical and material support to Palestinian suicide bombers, offering up to $25,000 to the families of these killers. Abbas became an intermediary between Saddam and the Palestinians, were both financal and material support flowed directly from Saddam to the blood-filled streets of Israel...with the PLF setting up terrorist training camps directly in Iraq.
Between the two Abu's...and the material support flowing between them from Saddam...and Hamas and Hezbullah, Iraq was already one of the largest terrorist havens in the world, complete with a terrorist training center at Salman Pak. For those who truly seek peace in the ME...especially between Israel and the Palestinians, that peace would've never had a chance with Saddam in power financing these organizations. This reason alone, makes the ouster of Saddam a legitimate cause, especially since Saddam's harboring of any terrorists was prohibited by the Gulf War Cease Fire and following UN resolutions.
The idea that Saddam and Iraq were some how disconnected from terrorists and terrorism before the Iraq War is one of the greatest frauds being perpetrated on the American people. Ansar's cooperative relationship with Al-Qaeda began "before" 9/11...and was only growing stronger. With the collapse of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as a result of that war, Iraq was guaranteed to become an even greater threat. In fact, unlike Afghanistan and the Taliban, what made Iraq even more dangerous is that you had a Saddam with unlimited resources to continue funding these groups at a more significant level than Afghanistan could've ever done.
Putting aside the WMD argument, these terrorist connections were the most significant reason that Saddam had to be removed. And for those who still aren't convinced of this alliance, you don't have to look any further than Clinton's own DOJ that unveiled a sealed indictment of UBL in 1998. The indictment, unsealed later that same year, stated that "Al Qaeda reached an agreement with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons development."
When you consider the fraud that was the Oil for Food Program...which only continued to enrich Saddam, and the attempts by several nations to totally remove the sanctions, Saddam in no way was ever "contained"...nor would he be. It's also as if these people never even read the Kay and Duelfer Reports...which while admitting that they may not have found stockpiles of WMDs, did acknowledge the infrastructure, expertise and willingness that Saddam still retained to reconstitute these programs. This, combined with the terrorist haven that Saddam allowed Iraq to become, made his removal an immediate priority...even moreso simply as a result of the Afghanistan War.
Sorry, comrade. It doesn't work like that.
My translator agrees with yours. It has been upgraded to do Clintonese, and its parent language, Satanese.
Hahahahaha!!!!!
And Hillary officially jumps the shark.
I did not have the 'news' on today is this the only place reporting this? Could this be another 'republican' leak???
Bottom line: When you're lusting for the Presidency, you'd better not be making "voting mistakes"....kinda shows she's unqualified to do the Peter Principle thing.
Hillary isn't a democrat nor a republican. She is not a liberal nor a conservative. Hillary is for Hillary, period! She could tax us up the wazoo, or she could give us huge tax breaks. It doesn't matter to her, so long as she is the one with the power and the one getting credit. She is a nasty piece of work, and anyone who endorses her is just as bad.
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