Of the top three Dem candidates, it’s clear that John Edwards is the most progressive. The two main reasons I have had reservations about him up until now is that he has not come out in favor of single-payer health insurance, and that he panders to the Israel lobby. Now I have a third reason. It turns out that because he was on the Senate Intelligence Committee during the lead up to the war, Edwards knew that the Bush administration was lying when it claimed that Iraq posed a threat to the United States. Therefore, there is no excuse for his voting to authorize the war.
Senator Dick Durbin was also on the committee, and he explained on the Senate floor last Saturday that he voted against authorizing the war because of classified intelligence that he was briefed on as a member of the committee.
I believe that Edwards owes us an explanation for why he voted for the war, given that he knew that the argument for it was based on lies. Simply admitting that he made a mistake is not enough.
Sen. Durban’s speech on the Senate floor:
A few hundred feet away from here in a closed room, carefully guarded, the Intelligence Committee was meeting on a daily basis for top secret briefings about the information we were receiving and the information we had on the Intelligence Committee was not the same information that was being given to the American people. I couldn’t believe it. Members of this administration were in active heated debate over whether aluminum tubes really meant that the Iraqis were developing nuclear weapons some within the administration were saying of course not it is not the same kind of aluminum tube. At the same time members of the administration were telling the American people to be fearful of mushroom shaped clouds. I was angry about it. Frankly, I could not do much about it cause you see, on the Intelligence Committee we’re sworn to secrecy. I could not go outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the WH is in direct contradiction to classified information that’s being given to this Congress. We can’t do that. We couldn’t make those statements.
So, in my frustration I sat here on the floor of the Senate and listened to this heated debate about invading Iraq and thinking the American people are being misled. They are not being told the truth. That’s why I twenty-two members of my colleagues in voting no. I did not feel at the time that the American people knew the real facts.
So what happened, we invaded, turned loose, hundreds if not thousands of people looking for these weapons of mass destruction. Never found one of them. Looked for nuclear weapons, no evidence whatsoever.
Crooks and Liars has a video of the speech taken from Countdown. I learned about this very disappointing news concerning Edwards from this piece in Counterpunch. It really does throw Edwards’ character seriously into question.
First of all, I’d take anything in Counterpunch with a grain of salt…….but…….
According to Shrum’s book, he advised Edwards to vote for the bill if he planned a run for president. So the vote was for purely political reasons. Edwards has said that the regrets not going with his instincts.
Of course this in and of itself is troubling.
And it makes one wonder if his change of heart is also political. After all, it didn’t happen until 2005 when public opinion turned against the war. The year before he was still adamnant in standing by his vote.
You’d take anything from Counterpunch with a grain of salt? That sounds like the attitude of wingnuts: if it comes from the “liberal” media and not Fox news, it must be made up. How often do you read Counterpunch? Can you name a single recent article from that site that is clearly wacky, that would justify your attitude?
All this Counterpunch article did is draw one’s attention to Sen. Durban’s speech, and note that Sen. Durban voted against the war, while Edwards, who was also on the Intelligence Committee, voted for it.
But yes, as you say, this information does make one wonder whether Edwards’s change of heart is also political. His now saying that Congress should keep on sending the same bill to Bush until he signs it now strikes me as posturing. I don’t think he would be saying that if he were still a senator.
I don’t think it’s enough to describe Edward’s vote for the war as simply political, however. The Bushies engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the United States by making a false case for war. By voting for that war, knowing that the case was fraudulent, Edwards joined in that conspiracy.
No,not a wingnut.Just someone who has followed CounterPunch for a while. They are far far far left and Cockburn is absolute loon. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day
can be characterized as eccentric, but there’s no way he can be described as a loon. You seem to believe that being significantly to the left of Booman, for example, is to be a loon. I would say there are two things wrong with that.
It is self-defeating for progressives to try to marginalize radicals like Cockburn.
I asked you to give an example of wackyness at Counterpunch, and you at least narrowed things down by mentioning Cockburn. So it shouldn’t be too hard for you to find a piece by him that demonstrates his alleged looniness.