"What Hillary Should Have Known"

From Salon.

Florida's Senator Bob Graham did not vote for the resolution allowing President Bush to invade Iraq. Read his owns words. (He knew a lot.)

The American people needed to know these reservations [he had about the classified NIE], and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4 [2002], Tenet
presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.

From my advantaged position [as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001], I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

I think Hillary was trying to have it both ways, and still is. Nonetheless, I'd gladly vote for her.