''Well, I think her position on what we do from here on has been clear. She's had some difficulty because of the insistence of some people in characterizing the vote on the Iraq War Resolution back in 2002, saying that everybody who voted for that voted for the war. And that's factually inaccurate.
Let me remind you that that resolution was written by Senator Carl Levin, Senator Lugar and Senator Chuck Hagel, the primary Republican opponent of the war.
And if you read the resolution, it says that the president is authorized to attack Saddam Hussein if the diplomatic efforts, that is, the inspections, fail.
He couldn't make a finding that they had failed. They were succeeding. And before the people voted on that, the president said these inspections were the last chance to avoid war.
So it's simply not true that a vote for that resolution was a vote for this war.
Plus which Alberto Gonzales gave an opinion saying he didn't need any help from the Congress. He could go to war against Saddam whenever he wanted.
This resolution was an attempt to confine the use of force to a circumstance in which he failed -- the inspections.
And I think the reason she hasn't apologized is she believes that some future president -- even if it's not her -- some future president may need coercive inspections. The U.N. may need it in the future. You may need to tell someone if you fail these inspections over nuclear weapons, then you're subject to military action.
So -- but I think the real relevant thing is what do we do now?
And I basically agree with what she says. We should take down substantial numbers of forces this year, get them out of direct combat, but not bring everybody home because we don't want to abandon the Kurds. We don't want to cause unnecessary tension between the Kurds and the Turks. And we have to have a presence in the region to try to deal with unforeseen difficulties, like new terrorist operations rising up in the Sunni section that might want to attack not just the Shiites in Iraq, but other people in the Middle East, and even in the United States.
So I think she's got a pretty good handle on this.''
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
President Clinton on Hillary's Vote
Asked by Larry King about Hillary Clinton's vote to give Bush authority to use military force against Iraq if necessary, President Clinton summed it up rather tidily.
