In her Meet the Press appearance yesterday, Hillary Clinton repeated the argument she has made for some time now: In voting for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq in October of 2002, she was voting to insert inspectors, not for war:
"...My vote was not a vote for preemptive war. I said that on the floor, I said it consistently after that. It was a vote to put inspectors back in to determine what threat Saddam Hussein did in fact pose."
The argument can be made to sound silly. The resolution urged diplomacy and inspectors to avoid war, but authorized President Bush to go to war, and other senators warned that it was a blank check for Bush. Hillary's point, however, seems to be that she believed the vote was the best way to give Bush leverage to get inspectors into Iraq and thereby avoid war -- but she never supported actually going to war, and feels Bush acted precipitously in March of 2003 by invading.
Later on Russert: "Let me just add here that when we were moving toward the preemptive war that George Bush decided to wage, the inspectors were in Iraq, we were getting information, finally, that would give us a basis for knowing. I believe if the inspectors had been allowed to do their work, we would've learned that what Saddam Hussein had constructed was a charade."
This claim, however, is hard to square with the comments Hillary made to some antiwar activists who came to her office on the eve of the invasion in 2003 and videotaped a meeting with her. They wanted her to oppose the invasion. She would not. She said:
"It is unfortunate that we are at the point of a potential military action to enforce the resolution. That is not my preference. It would be far preferable if we not only had legitimate cooperation from Saddam Hussein and a willingness on his part to disarm and to account for his chemical and biological storehouses but that if we had a much broader alliance and coalition. But we are in a very difficult position and I would love to agree with you but I can’t based on my own understanding and assessment of the situation.”
Are those the words of someone who opposed going forward with a preemptive war, as she now asserts, or of someone who supported it, albeit reluctantly? You can view the video of the meeting at YouTube here.