In the Sunday New York Times Magazine, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, Jr. explore Hillary’s history with the war in Iraq.
Senator Clinton’s aides and strategists say they have worried for months that as the party’s base has overwhelmingly turned against the war, questions about her vote, and her views on Iraq more broadly, could derail her bid to become the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. The answers to many of the most persistent questions about her war record are hidden in plain sight. What those answers reveal about her approach to Iraq — her votes, her views, her political maneuvering — may provide as good an insight as we have into what sort of president she would be.
Do you want to know what her war record reveals? It reveals that she is a liar. The most obvious example of her dishonesty is demonstrated by her vote on the Levin Amendement (.pdf). The Levin Amendment was offered during the AUMF in Iraq vote (here’s the roll call). You’ll notice that Hillary Clinton voted against the Levin Amendment. Back on March 1st, Lincoln Chafee wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times where he explained the significance of the Levin Amendment.
A mere 10 hours before the roll was called on the administration-backed Iraq war resolution, the Senate had an opportunity to prevent the current catastrophe in Iraq and to salvage the United States’ international standing. Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, offered a substitute to the war resolution, the Multilateral Use of Force Authorization Act of 2002…
Senator Levin’s amendment called for United Nations approval before force could be authorized. It was unambiguous and compatible with international law. Acutely cognizant of the dangers of the time, and the reality that diplomatic options could at some point be exhausted, Senator Levin wrote an amendment that was nimble: it affirmed that Congress would stand at the ready to reconsider the use of force if, in the judgment of the president, a United Nations resolution was not “promptly adopted” or enforced.
The amendment would have compelled Bush to come back to Congress for authorization to use force if he could not obtain explicit UN authority. It was essentially calling Bush’s bluff that he was serious about letting the inspectors do their jobs. Gerth and Van Natta, Jr. get to the point:
In her remarks on the Senate floor, she stressed the need for diplomacy with Iraq on the part of the Bush administration and insisted she wasn’t voting for “any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for unilateralism.” Yet just a few hours after her speech, Clinton voted against an amendment to the war resolution that would have required the diplomatic emphasis that Clinton had gone on record as supporting — and that she now says she had favored all along…
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…
If Clinton had [voted for the Levin Amendment], she subsequently could have far more persuasively argued, perhaps, that she had supported a multilateral diplomatic approach.
Lincoln Chafee had it figured out…so did Jim Jeffords and 22 Democrats. Hillary didn’t want the president to have to return for authorization if he failed at the U.N. This vote was inconsistent with her rhetoric at the time and it is at odds with her revisionist history of the vote now.
If we want to get a better sense for where Hillary stood at the time, we have to go back to Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans and their efforts to mislead the Congress and the American people about Saddam’s alleged ties to al-Qaeda.
At the time she cast that vote, she was among the Senate’s most outspoken Democrats warning of Saddam Hussein’s dangerous arsenal. Unlike nearly all of her fellow Democrats, she even went so far as to argue that Saddam Hussein gave assistance to Al Qaeda members. Now she speaks with equal fervor about the need to bring the war to an end…
The question of whether Clinton took the time to read the N.I.E. report is critically important [ed note: she didn’t]…
In her own remarks on the Senate floor on Oct. 10, 2002…Clinton continued, accusing Iraq’s leader of giving “aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.”
Clinton’s linking of Iraq’s leader and Al Qaeda, however, was unsupported by the conclusions of the N.I.E. and other secret intelligence reports that were available to senators before the vote.
Clinton’s refusal to read the fully classified National Intelligence Estimate had another consequence, as well.
Indeed, one of Clinton’s Democratic colleagues, Bob Graham, the Florida senator who was then the chairman of the intelligence committee, said he voted against the resolution on the war, in part, because he had read the complete N.I.E. report. Graham said he found that it did not persuade him that Iraq possessed W.M.D. As a result, he listened to Bush’s claims more skeptically. “I was able to apply caveat emptor,” Graham, who has since left the Senate, observed in 2005. He added regretfully, “Most of my colleagues could not.”
On Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2002, Senate Democrats, including Clinton, held a caucus over lunch on the second floor of the Capitol. There, Graham says he “forcefully” urged his colleagues to read the complete 90-page N.I.E. before casting such a monumental vote.
Hillary didn’t listen to Bob Graham despite the fact that he was the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and despite the fact that Graham voted against the war. That might have told her something was wrong with the publicly presented intelligence, but instead she went on the Senate floor and:
She cited unnamed “intelligence reports” showing that between 1998 and 2002 “Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability and his nuclear program.”
Back in 2002, Hillary Clinton committed all the cardinal sins. She hyped the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, she cherry-picked the intelligence on Saddam’s WMD programs, and she voted against making the president come back for a second vote if he couldn’t convince the U.N. of the need for force. Oh…and she voted for the war.
In doing these things she showed herself to be what is now known as a Liebercrat (alternatively, LIEbercrat). And it all might have been forgiven if her lieutenants hadn’t gone after Howard Dean, the anti-war movement, the blogosphere, and the netroots for the first four years of the war. But they have been unrelenting in their contempt for the people that have opposed this war from the outset.
There can be no forgiveness without remorse. Hillary has no remorse. She lied to us. She got her votes wrong. And now she wants to lie to us again about what she did. And she wants to be our nominee?
I think not.
Since when do we trust Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, Jr. on the subject of Hillary Clinton?
My problem is more “When do we trust Hillary on the subject of Hillary Clinton?”
nothing I excerpted in disputable. That’s how she voted and that is what she said.
Good article. She really is as they say. “a piece of work!”
Efforts by presidential candidates to rewrite history have turned into a mad rush, Hillary, Romney and Giuliani amongst this group. Unfortunately for them, google makes the fraud all too apparent.
You got it right on the head.
Hillary’s problem is that nothing is the truth . . . . she is the most unauthentic of the Dem candidates. Running in an election in which voters will be thirsting for authenticity.
Everything she does has always been calculated and never from the heart . . . . even something as irrelevant as the baseball team she supports.
Hillary is old politics without the charm.
Great article Booman! Both Clintons have always been Republican Lite. I fo one hope we don’t see them in the whitehouse again. We’ll end up with Christmas pictures of Bill and Papa Bush chatting around the tree.
calvin does NOT make it a habit to read Instapundit, but he did today and there is an interesting article about Sandy Berger and the fact that he turned in his law license rather than face answering questions about the secret materials he stole and destroyed. One might make a case for Hillary’s vote based on that destroyed info. What did she know and when did she know it? What did Berger destroy and why? It’s incredible for someone to voluntarily give up a law license unless there are some pretty incredible things that somebody didn’t want others to know.
calvin only has a snippet of the story, not the whole “truth”, whatever it may be. calvin would like know what’s going on.
This is the kind of information I need to show folks who think Hillary is just fine… I live in a strong Democratic region, but most people don’t follow politics that closely. I talk to a lot of folks who would vote for Hillary just because of her name, and her association with Bill. They don’t know how she’s voted, or why that matters.
Not only did she not READ the NIE report, she didn’t listen to her colleague who DID. I can understand not every Senator has time to read everything… but isn’t that what they have a staff for? And if they don’t even pay attention to those who DID take the time to read something like this, on a matter that is SO DAMNED FUCKING IMPORTANT as determining whether there is a cause to take the nation to war…. how can we trust her to be fully informed or listen to knowledgeable advisors as the Commander in Chief, or the one who signs inch-thick packages of legislation into law?
It makes one wonder what else she didn’t read, or didn’t bother to ask questions about, or think of the possible consequences of….
Senator Hilary Clinton’s voting record on Military Issues can be found at: Sen. Hilary Clinton’s Voting Record
Senator Hilary Clinton’s history of speeches on Military Issues can be found at: Sen. Hilary Clinton’s Record of Speeches
Senator Hilary Clinton’s ratings from special interest groups on Military Issues can be found at: Sen. Hilary Clinton Interest Group Ratings
For more information on Sen. Hilary Clinton please visit Project Vote Smart or call our hotline at 1-888-VOTE-SMART.
Good article, Booman. I haven’t been in favor of Hillary, but I haven’t really heard good arguments against her (beyond the fact that a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton presidential sequence would be incredibly bad for the country). Your article reifies the general sense one gets for her insincerity, by showing the plain fact of her inconsistent position.
The other thing that really bugged me about her was when she came out against flag burning. I was like, WTF?
I had a look at the record, and if
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&sessio
n=2&vote=00235
is the vote you’re talking about, Edwards failed to vote any better. I don’t know if the same objections apply to him these days, whether his mea culpa is sufficient or not, but I find it very disappointing that he didn’t support this bill when the opportunity was there. This on top of recently hearing he had access to the NIE and still voted to give Bush authority…
So far I still favor him over the other contenders, but this is hard to forgive. Maybe there’s something I’m failing to take into account?
No, not really. There is nothing about Edwards’ votes that is any better than Hillary’s votes.
There are, however, some important differences. Edwards did not tie al-Qaeda to Iraq and he apologized for his vote two years ago. He’s also taking a more aggressive stance about ending the occupation.