So, which is it Senator Obama? Being deceived by fudged numbers and shaded truth, or bad judgement? He can't have it both ways. Why has he changed his position? Why did he support Kerry and excuse his vote for the war, and attack Clinton for hers? Is Obama saying Kerry's judgement was sound but Clinton's wasn't? Why? Because she's a woman? Because her name is Clinton?

It's unprincipled political hackery if your candidate does it. It's shrewd political expediency if mine does it.

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With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

Rikki '08! Vote for A Circus Runaway That Cares!

True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler

i'm for obama

i'll take door number 2

Randy its very good question & I have no answer.

Obama's been ask this & the best thing to do is google & see if what Obama says answers you..or not

The Obama quote from '04 isn't exactly glowing praise of Kerry--more a criticism of Bush. Is that all you got?

Maybe Obama remembers how well Kerry's "I was against the war before I was for it" nonsense worked in 2004, and he's tired of defending someone else's bad decision. Or, yeah, it could be because Hillary is a woman. Whatever.

Kerry and Clinton were both wrong when it counted. It hurt Kerry, and when Hillary has to tap dance around the Iraq issue and make excuses like she did last night, she's at her weakest.

P.S. the "because she's a woman" had not occurred to me, but instead was asked by an actual woman sitting across the office from me when I typed that.

Not only is Clinton a woman, she is quite a bit shorter than Kerry and Obama. Da manly men know how to take care of us lil ole delicate thangs. :)

The Obama quote from '04 isn't exactly glowing praise of Kerry--

Not glowing praise? It was at the Democratic Convention, supposedly praising our next President (in 2004).

Perhaps the vote for war isn't the best issue Obama should be using to try to distinguish himself from her (as you point out he didn't have to make that vote).

But I can't really fault him as long as she keeps making ridiculous statements to justify her vote.

All she was doing was voting for more aggressive inspections? She was surprised Bush actually went to war?

Give me a break. Admit you were wrong and move on.

Brian A.
I'd rather be cycling.

Kerry and Clinton were both wrong when it counted.

And Obama has no voting record to use to evaluate this - only his word that he would have done differently (this despite the fact that his voting record on Iraq has been identical to Clinton's since he took office).

So, what would he have done if he was a sitting Senator in 2003? Imagine that his office is inundated by calls telling him that he should vote for the AUMF by his worried constituents. His chief of staff informs him that there aren't enough votes to beat the resolution, and if he really has designs on a 2008 White House bid, he doesn't want to look weak on defense. The Senate leadership shows you intel that they're not showing the public, and it's scary stuff. Bush's poll numbers are at his pre-Katrina 60's & 70's. His Republican colleagues come forward with some sort of proffer on a bill that he's sponsoring. A big contributor to his campaign thinks it might be a good idea for him to demur. He'll be in the same boat as Kerry and Clinton (and for that matter, Edwards - who also voted for the AUMF) if he votes with the Republican majority and the Blue Dogs.

But we don't know any of that, because none of that happened. He was in Springfield, IL at the time where he could easily afford to speculate that he would take this course of action - but that wasn't his job. Ultimately, he would pay no price because he didn't have a seat at the big table and his non-vote didn't count for him or against him; it just didn't happen. He may have *felt* that way, but his conjecture of how he'd absolutely would have voted is a whole-cloth invention. His non-vote means just as much as mine - he may as well have been one of thousands of angry bloggers, none of whom had the same stake as those D's sitting in that chamber in 2003.

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With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

Actually, the speech Hillary gave the day of the vote sounds nothing like that at all.

However, this course is fraught with danger. We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak.

If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us. In recent days, Russia has talked of an invasion of Georgia to attack Chechen rebels. India has mentioned the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan. And what if China were to perceive a threat from Taiwan?

But the Obama folks have to have something. When they're not whining about some imagined personal slight against their candidate by one of the Clintons.

He supported Kerry in 2004 and Kerry voted for the war. No way to spin that either.

You're seriously arguing that Obama is untrustworthy because he supported the Democratic nominee in 04? What was he supposed to do -- endorse Nader?

Obama's speech at the 2004 convention was to praise Kerry in opposition to Bush. Obama did not support Kerry's 2002 war vote in 2004 and he doesn't today. He wasn't asked about Kerry's 2002 vote in 2004 and his comments at the DNC do not contradict his consistent opposition to the war - from 2002 to today.

The context is different today. Now he's up against Hillary Clinton in a primary campaign. Hillary voted for the AUMF in 2002 because she thought it was too politically risky to oppose the war. She didn't want to be Sam Nunn and ruin her centrist cred. So she did what Kerry and Edwards did and voted to give Bush authorization to go to war with a protest comment saying that she didn't like it all one bit but gollygeewilikers she's got to stand with the President and trust him. She had an option to support the Levin Amendment that would have sent inspectors into Iraq without authorizing military action. But no, she decided that that vote wasn't hawkish enough for her. She even used the Republican talking point last night that she didn't want to "cede authority to the UN." Like Democrats who support the death penalty to maintain their tough-on-crime cred, most pro-war Democrats acted utterly without principle in 2002. She triangulated and helped the country lurch to the right...and off a cliff.

So let's think about context here. Obama opposed the war in 2002. And he opposed it for the right reason: that it was a massive diversion from the fight against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. What's more, he knew not to trust the gang of criminals in the Bush Administration. Andy Axel raises a good point regarding Obama not being in the Senate and facing all the pressure at that point. But Obama had political ambitions in 2002 and knew his public positions on the war (given on Chicago public television) would be part of the public record. He was more than just an angry blogger of no consequence. He was a State Senator preparing a grueling primary campaign for the US Senate.

All of that may be water under the bridge at this point. But Hillary has never come clean on her vote the way Edwards did. Had she admitted it was a mistake then Democratic voters would forgive her as they did Edwards. But no, she's trying to out-Bush Bush by refusing to ever admit mistakes. Like Bush and Rove, Hillary Clinton believes admitting fault is a sign of weakness. It's time to turn the page on all that.

You can shake it and bake it anyway you like, but the fact still remains that anti-war presidential candidate Senator Clinton voted to allow the use of military in Iraq. She now claims that she was misled by President Bush about the WMD's. There were other Democratic Senators who were not duped by Bush and voted against the authorization to use military force in Iraq. What it boils down to is decision making.

I don't remember for certain if this was true at the time of Obama's 2004 speech, but a very important difference between Kerry's vote and Clinton's vote is that Kerry has acknowledged that it was a mistake, while Clinton has not.

To answer your question, he was wrong then (in that 2004 speech). :)

She had a chance to show she was her own person with a knowkedge of what the American public wants and more caution when the vote to name the Iranian Gaurd as terorists. Hillary jumped right aboard the Bush convoy. At the time this really shocked me. She was using the same old reasoning too, saying it did NOT giving Bush permission to use military force in Iran. No...but it sure would help him back up any sudden attack if the "terrorists" needed to eliminated.

This was very insulting to people who were sick of the war, sick of seeing seeing our miltary die, sick of maimed lives, Iraqi deaths, broken promises by Bush, and war profiteering by almost everyone connected with Iraq.

Those two statements by Obama by the way even when taken out of context show very little change of mind.