"I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day," Smith said. "That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that any more."
Well you know what? It's too damn little, too damn late. The horrors of this war and what's happening in the Middle East lay squarely at the feet of every Senator that voted for the AUMF. That means 77 Senators who have blood on their hands and it really doesn't matter now if they regret their vote. Oh, it's totally grand they now understand the errors of their ways, but now it’s TOO DAMN LATE. The damage is already done. We have a broken Iraq to prove it. We now have 3006 dead American soldiers and that number is increasing every god damned day. That doesn't include the thousands upon thousands of maimed, wounded, and now crippled soldiers who have come home from the hell that is Iraq or the thousands upon thousands of civilian Iraqis who have lost their lives in BushCo's war of choice. And now they say they'd vote differently based on what they've learned since then? Well, we KNEW before the AUMF vote that invading Iraq was a mistake. So why didn't they? And I really wonder. Would it stop them from voting to authorize the use of force against Iran? The true test is: have they learned their lesson? ABC's survey seems to indicate maybe some of them have. Personally, I'll believe it when I see it, although I hope we never get to that place again.
Bush is likely to request more troops for Iraq next week and there is the fact that 7 out of 10 Americans think he isn't handling Iraq well (ya think?). So ABC thought it would be interesting to see how the Senators who voted for the AUMF would vote today. It points out {snip}
Regret, after all, may not be a valued commodity in politics, but it is not one that public officials express easily, even with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. That said, a surprising number of senators who voted for the war were willing to say that they, and the Senate, made a mistake. (my emphasis)
Oh yeah. And some of them think they're pretty slick when it comes to evading the question of how they'd vote for the AUMF today. It's an interesting exercise to see how some of these Senators squirmed their way out of saying whether they'd vote the same way now.
But first, here's the sum of it all.
By ABC News' count, if the Senators knew then what they know now, only 43 — at most — would still vote to approve the use of force and the measure would be defeated. And at least 57 senators would vote against going to war, a number that combines those who already voted against the war resolution with those who told ABC News they would vote against going to war, or said that the pre-war intelligence has been proven so wrong the measure would lose or it would never even come to a vote. (emphasis mine)
For any Senate vote to switch from 77-23 in favor to essentially 57-43 against is quite remarkable, and far more so for a decision as significant as the one to go to war.
Here's the good part. 34 of the 77 Senators who voted for the AUMF would vote differently today. Some of them are saying that for the first time. Of those 34, 6 parse words and we'll examine their logic shortly. ABC says the list of those who would vote differently is bi-partisan (whatever that means). Grouped that way, the (not complete) list includes
Rethugs:
Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado
Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois
Bob Smith of New Hampshire
Olympia Snowe of Maine
Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas
Dems:
Senator Joe Biden of Delaware
Chris Dodd of Connecticut
John Breaux of Louisiana
Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia
Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota
You may have already figured out where the parsing comes in for those 6 Senators that squirmed. Here are the operative words in that block quote above that summed up the results:
"...or said that the pre-war intelligence has been proven so wrong the measure would lose or it would never even come to a vote."
And who are they?
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa
Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.
Susan Collins, R-Maine
Arlen Specter, R-PA
Former Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio
Did you read the 1st and 3rd names? Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev and Byron Dorgan, D-ND. I don't know about you, but it's not very comforting to me to know that our new Majority Leader still won't admit that it WAS WRONG TO INVADE IRAQ. Instead, it appears he and 4 of the other parsers look at it this way
With more than 3,000 U.S. troops killed, and thousands of others wounded, to say nothing of the countless dead Iraqi civilians, this is a topic whose sensitivity borders on taboo. To imply in any way that a vote cast in favor of war was a mistake can be misconstrued to mean that honorable troops died in vain.
The hard truth is our troops have died in vain in a war that we can't win and never should have started. Deal with it Senators - cut the losses and BRING OUR TROOPS HOME. Senators need to put their regret where their mouths are and admit there are no more excuses for keeping them in Iraq, much less sending more in. It's a war without end and we have to get out of there in the fastest way humanly possible.
Apparently for that reason, five senators have come up with a different construct for public consumption. They say that knowing then what we know now, the war resolution never would have even come up for a vote. (my emphasis)
Pleeeeze. I won't even entertain the crap about how the AUMF would have never come up for a vote if they had only known what they know now. It begs the question I posed earlier - if we KNEW BuchCo could not be trusted, why didn't they? And why isn't our Majority Leader joining those who now say it was flat out wrong to invade Iraq? There's more than ample evidence to say so and two thirds of Americans now believe it was wrong for Christ's sake. Just saying...Moving on.
Based on that convoluted logic, ABC counts Reid's, Grassley's, Dorgan's, Collins', and DeWine's votes as NO if they were to vote today on the AUMF.
Here's how their pea brains work
"The intelligence was obviously wrong," said a Grassley spokeswoman. "If Congress had known the intelligence was wrong, they wouldn't have even been voting."
Ornstein, who believes that Gordon Smith's speech was the tip of the iceberg, says that's a cop out. It's hard for a public official to admit they made a mistake or would do it any differently now. Excuse me? When the lives of our soldiers are at stake, what's more important? Admitting you made a mistake or parsing words and squirming around like a slithery snake? Who would you, the reader, admire more? Ornstein says
...that response is "fundamentally the same thing as saying you regret your vote — if not even more."
Ya think?
Let's not forget about our 6th parser. If you haven't read the whole article yet, can you guess who that could be?
One other Senator, Arlen Specter, R-Pa., begged off saying how he individually would vote, but said that knowing then what we know now the Senate would not have voted to go to war.
"I believe that had we known Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, the Congress would not have authorized the invasion of Iraq," he has said, since "we operated on faulty intelligence."
So ABC counts Specter as one who would vote differently with the benefit of hindsight. ABC points out
But even not counting his vote, or that of the five senators who regard the intelligence as so weak the matter would not have even been voted on, the war resolution would fail by a vote of 49-51.
Well, it's too fucking little, too fucking late. The fact that the AUMF would have failed today doesn't fix the fact that we broke Iraq, it doesn't bring our troops home, and it sure doesn't stop the blood letting going on in what is now a civil war in Iraq, although our government won't officially recognize it as such. Instead, BushCo wants to escalate (note I didn't use the term 'surge') the carnage in Iraq and send more troops in.
And while we're talking about an escalation of troops in Iraq, what about those Senators who would still vote for the AUMF today?
Standing by Their Vote
Many senators stood by their vote, including Republican Sens. Dick Lugar of Indiana, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Orrin Hatch of Utah and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, as well as Sens. Joe Lieberman, formerly a Democrat but now an independent from Connecticut, and Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat. (my emphasis)
Other senators that had previously expressed such sentiments included former Sen. George Allen, R-Va., and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who has said in retrospect he would still vote for war for "humanitarian" reasons.
Kudos to ABC for designating LIEberman for the Independent that he is rather than a Democrat.
Because as far as I'm concerned, LIEberman has NO CLAIM TO FAME IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY especially since he would still vote for the AUMF today.
But these Dems have a CLAIM TO FAME IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY because they would not vote for the AUMF today. You've come a long way baby!
Max Baucus of Montana
Evan Bayh of Indiana
Maria Cantwell of Washington
Tom Carper of Delaware
Dianne Feinstein of California (WTG Dianne!)
Herb Kohl of Wisconsin
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana
Bill Nelson of Florida
Former Sens. Jean Carnahan of Missouri, Max Cleland of Georgia and Bob Torricelli of New Jersey.
Every Democratic senator serving in 2002 who supported going to war and harbors presidential ambitions in 2008, where he or she will need to appeal to anti-war liberal Democrats — a list that includes Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, and Kerry — has said he or she would vote differently.
Now let's see. Whose name is missing? Oh yeah, Hillary Clinton!
In December, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., also considering a White House run, told NBC's "Today" show that, "obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote, and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way."
Guess that goes in the NO column, huh?
ABC starts wrapping up the article with
Senators being senators, their answers were not always the clear cut "yes" or "no" the question might imply.
LOL! Take Chuck Schumer. In a statement to ABC he says
"I believe that when the nation is attacked, you give the president the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, if we knew then how badly the president would bungle the war start to finish, we would not have given him the benefit of that doubt, and we certainly wouldn't again."
I mean, is that priceless as in MasterCard or what? Guess that's another one for the NO column. What an idiot.
But I found what former Sen. "Fritz" Hollings, D-SC, said very interesting. He wouldn't answer ABC directly, but said he only voted for the AUMF because of something the President said. He told ABC he was leaning toward a NO vote until the President said, "we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
"When the commander-in-chief said that, I knew he knew something I didn't know," Hollings told ABC News. That changed his mind and he voted for the war resolution, a vote he now says was a "mistake"
"I was lied to and now we all know that we were lied to," Hollings said. (my emphasis)
Yes, the whole
knows that we were lied to. And knowing the AUMF that Bush used to invade Iraq would not pass today offers little comfort because it certainly doesn't FIX what he broke and it won't bring back 3006 dead soldiers that he sent into harm's way.
I won't be sleeping any better because 57 Senators have had a change of heart. Until I see them fight BushCo every step of the way over the escalation of our troops in Iraq, any regrets for their past votes mean jack shit if they don't prove they've learned that BushCo lies, just like Hollings finally recognized. And if you want to see just how bad it really is in Iraq, have a look-see here and one more time right here. I'm pretty sure you'll agree that anyone who doesn't believe going into Iraq was a HUGE FUCKING MISTAKE needs their head examined. Let's see, right now that includes 43 Senators, right?
So I won't be sending any kudos to any Senator until they prove that they will no longer take BushCo at his word and they start asking the tough questions when it comes to sending our troops into harm's way. I want our troops home. I don't want anymore to go to Iraq or anywhere else in the World. I want
and until our Senators prove to me they want it too, I'm keeping their feet to the fire and holding them accountable for their actions, or lack thereof.
UPDATED BY SALLY IN SF 12:38pm: I thought a list of those who voted for the AUMF might be helpful. Marina was kind of enough to post those that voted NO when someone requested that information.
Members of the Senate who voted for AUMF:
* Wayne Allard (R-CO)
* George Allen (R-VA)
* Max Baucus (D-MT)
* Evan Bayh (D-IN)
* Bob Bennett (R-UT)
* Joe Biden (D-DE)
* Kit Bond (R-MO)
* John Breaux (D-LA)
* Sam Brownback (R-KS)
* Jim Bunning (R-KY)
* Conrad Burns (R-MT)
* Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO)
* Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
* Jean Carnahan (D-MO)
* Tom Carper (D-DE)
* Max Cleland (D-GA)
* Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
* Thad Cochran (R-MS)
* Susan Collins (R-ME)
* Larry Craig (R-ID)
* Mike Crapo (R-ID)
* Tom Daschle (D-SD)
* Mike DeWine (R-OH)
* Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
* Pete Domenici (R-NM)
* Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
* John Edwards (D-NC)
* John Ensign (R-NV)
* Mike Enzi (R-WY)
* Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
* Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL)
* Bill Frist (R-TN)
* Phil Gramm (R-TX)
* Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
* Judd Gregg (R-NH)
* Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
* Tom Harkin (D-IA)
* Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
* Jesse Helms (R-NC)
* Fritz Hollings (D-SC)
* Tim Hutchinson (R-AR)
* Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
* James Inhofe (R-OK)
* Tim Johnson(D-SD)
* John Kerry (D-MA)
* Herb Kohl (D-WI)
* Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
* Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
* Joe Lieberman (D-CT)
* Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
* Trent Lott (R-MS)
* Richard Lugar (R-IN)
* John McCain (R-AZ)
* Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
* Zell Miller (D-GA)
* Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
* Bill Nelson (D-FL)
* Ben Nelson (D-NE)
* Don Nickles (R-OK)
* Harry Reid (D-NV)
* Pat Roberts (R-KS)
* Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
* Rick Santorum (R-PA)
* Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
* Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
* Richard Shelby (R-AL)
* Robert Smith (R-NH)
* Gordon Smith (R-OR)
* Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
* Arlen Specter (R-PA)
* Ted Stevens (R-AK)
* Craig Thomas (R-WY)
* Fred Thompson (R-TN)
* Strom Thurmond (R-SC)
* Robert Torricelli (D-NJ)
* George Voinovich (R-OH)
* John Warner (R-VA)
