Sen. Obama Underscores His Credibility on Iraq
Campaigning in New Hampshire, Sen. Obama told reporters what everyone else already knows — that “the U.S. senators who formally authorized President George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2002 are at least partly responsible for ‘the situation we’re in now.’” The Union Leader reports:
Wrapping up his first house party in the first-primary state, the newly announced Presidential hopeful told reporters that senators who voted to authorize the war should “make their own assessment on how they would do things differently or not.”
Fellow Democratic candidates New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards were members of the Senate when the historic vote was taken and voted in favor of the war authorization resolution.
Edwards has apologized for his vote. Clinton has not but has said her vote was an expression of support for sending weapons inspectors into Iraq, not a vote for “pre-emptive war.”
The article includes Sen. Obama’s reasoning about how the senators’ votes allowed the Bush administration “to take this country down a path that’s been very damaging for our national security,” as well as this important quote:
“All the decisions we make in Washington have consequences,” Obama said. “Obviously, if the senators (had) voted down the authorization, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in now.”
The article also notes that Obama was “not yet in the Senate at the time but spoke out against it as an Illinois state senator.” Here’s an example of him doing precisely that during a November 2002 interview:
