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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."

The problem with this excuse is that they knew these "assurances" were empty the day the war started. It is now over a year and a half later. Why did it take her so long to decide that "believing their assurances" was a mistake? It took 18 months? Or could it be that this is just the time the democrats are scheduled to switch to the "we were misled" mantra.

We can also hang these democrats on the "knowing what we know now" crap. Because what they are saying is that they believe that the uncertain future with Saddam in charge would be preferable to the future we have today, with Iraq on the cusp of a democratic election.

In other words, the democrats are saying that a free and democratic Iraq, not run by a murderous leader bent on our destruction, was not worth 2000 soldier's lives and 200 billion dollars.

But I bet if before the war, you could have promised a democratic Iraq by the close of 2005, at the cost of only 2000 lives and 200 billion dollars, most people would have taken that bargain. Heck, most democrats thought we would lose 10,000 soldiers in the initial battle.

So to the democrats I would ask -- if you could really go back in time to just before the war, is your BEST alternative really to not go to war at all? If I were to go back, I would have the war, but cover my bases on the looting and tne insurgency. I would change who we put in charge, and slap strict controls on the Iranian border immediately.

In other words, I would take our lessons learned and apply them to the war, NOT punt the war. And I was against the war (because I thought it would turn out much worse than it did).

I don't see how any democrat can rationally say that closing out 2005 with Saddam in power, with oil-for-food still running, with sanctions lifted, with Al Qaeda having free reign in the north, with the no-fly zones terminated, would be better than where we are today.

And of course, I always ask the democrats: If on March 20th, you didn't go to war, when would you have brought the 300,000 deployed troops home? How long would you have had them sitting in ships, in tents, in harms way? All through the brutal summer? Into the fall? Into the next year?

I would ask them why they would depend on madman and his sons, who had billions for WMD, the capabilities, the science, the M.O. to use them, a defeated dictator who refused to live up to his surrender, a man who invaded and attacked his neighbors, repeatedly, a sworn enemy who tried to assassinate a US President, a financier of Islamic cults, a torturer, a murderer, who ran a corrupt and failed State.

That's what I would ask Hil and her media operatives.

After 9/11, with boots on the ground in Afghanistan battling OBL and his cults, how secure was Saddam and Son's "box"?

Here is a quote from Hillary back in April of 2004. I'm starting to get quotes from AFTER the war, because this is a great weapon to use against those who now claim that they wouldn't have voted for the war, because they were "lied" to about the intelligence. By april of 2004 we knew there were no WMD, we knew about the bad planning, we knew about not allowing Weapons Inspectors to finish. In fact, we even had Joe Wilson's claims, and the start of the plame investigation. There is NOTHING we know now about the "reasons for war" that we didn't know then.

The only things we know NOW that we didn't know in April 2004 are: (1) President's poll numbers are down; (2) Americans are tiring; (3) 2000 soldiers are dead. None of these are reasons to NOT go to war.

So, what did Hillary say in 2004?:

"The consensus was the same, from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration," she said. "It was the same intelligence belief that our allies and friends around the world shared.

"But I think that in the case of the [Bush] administration, they really believed it. They really thought they were right, but they didn't let enough sunlight into their thinking process to really have the kind of debate that needs to take place when a serious decision occurs like that."

Oh, and did she regret the vote, or say she would take it back?:

"Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since," she said. "No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade."

So, well after the war, knowing everything she knows today (actually today she knows with more certainty that the CIA messed up the intelligence), she didn't take back her vote. Now she says Bush misled them with false intelligence. And in April 2004 she noted the failure to let the UN complete it's work but didn't regret her vote, now she cites the same failure to let the UN do its work as a reason she would not vote the same way again.