Explaining her hesitation to renounce her vote in favor of the Iraq War, Hillary Clinton said Monday that she didn’t want to “break faith with” the U.S. military.
The remarks gave a little more context to Clinton’s admission in her new book that voting for the Iraq War in 2002 was “wrong. Plain and simple.”
Backtracking on the vote earlier would have been the “smart political decision,” Clinton told a Toronto business group on Monday during her ongoing book tour. But she explained why she felt she couldn’t.
The Nation published a video and transcript of her statement in front of the Toronto Board of Trade.
“I had this sense that I had voted for it, and we had all these young men and women over there, and it was a terrible battle environment,” Clinton said. “I knew some of the young people who were there and I was very close to one Marine lieutenant who lead a mixed platoon of Americans and Iraqis in the first battle for Fallujah.”
“So I felt like I couldn’t break faith with them,” she continued. “Maybe that doesn’t make sense to anybody else but me, but that’s how I felt about it. So I kept temporizing and I kept avoiding saying it because I didn’t want there to be any feeling that I was backing off or undercutting my support for this very difficult mission in Iraq.”
Clinton wrote in her new book that she “got it wrong” on Iraq with her 2002 vote. But she said on Monday that her apparent hesitation to recant the vote was not a political calculation.
“I kept trying to say, ‘Well if we knew then what we know now it would not have ever come for a vote,’ all of which was true, but just sort of avoided the fact of my saying, ‘You know I just got it wrong, plain and simple. I made a mistake,’” she said. ‘I thought a lot about that, because people said well — ‘You’re not saying you made a mistake for political reasons.'”
“Well, in fact, in the Democratic Party at that time, the smart political decision, as so many of my colleagues did, was to come out and say ‘Terrible mistake, shouldn’t have done it,’ and you know blame the Bush administration,” she said.
Bull
Got it. If you came out against Iraq early, you must hate the troops. At the very least, if you point out that Hillary’s position doesn’t make any logical sense, then you just don’t overflow with love for our troops the way she does. Is love logical? No, it’s love, and love means never having to say you’re sorry! God bless our troops! Not to mention all of the puppies and kittens. And think of the children, always think of the children!!!
I wish this country had someone better than Hillary.
Enough of the dynasties, enough of the pandering bs, enough of the right leaning ‘liberals’. Just enough.
More Elizabeth Warren’s.
Dear Hillary, a political leader is supposed to make the right decisions for the damned country…not go all mushy-minded as you apparently did according to this article. This is the most important reason that I am looking for another Democratic candidate that I can support in 2016 (and I don’t mean any of the old retread crowd). I don’t like mushy-minded folk–as well as those who are hawkish as you are.
From an Obama supporter who beat you in my ward in the 2008 primary because you didn’t show up to do ANY campaigning since it was “in the bag”.
Martin O’Malley is better than Hillary. He’s more liberal and he’s planning on running in 2016.