MR. RUSSERT: Back in 2002, your tone towards the president and the war was much different. Let me show you. "In this serious time for America and many American families, no one should poison the public square by attacking the patriotism of opponents, or by assailing proponents as more interested in the cause of politics than in the merits of their cause. I reject this, as should we all. Let me say it plainly, I not only concede, but I am convinced that President Bush believes genuinely in the course he urges upon us. ...There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is [a] tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated." What happened? Why did you change your...

After making the incorrect assertion that President Bush and Congress were acting on the same information, Russert asked the $64,000 question: Was John Kerry wrong to vote authorization for war?:

So the president and the Congress was acting on the same information, and now you're saying the president lied when, in fact, your colleague, Senator Kerry, voted for war, voted for the authorization and said on the floor of the Senate, "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction."
---------------------------------------- ------
MR. RUSSERT: Was John Kerry wrong to vote authorization for war?

It is at that point that Kennedy started making pretty much the same case that Hillary is making now:

SEN. KENNEDY: Look, he has explained his position. If John Kerry had been president of the United States with that vote, we never, I don't believe, gone to war, certainly not at that
time. He would have worked through the inspection system. He would have worked through the international kinds of system, and I don't personally believe that we would have gone to war. I think he was...

MR. RUSSERT: His vote was a mistake?

SEN. KENNEDY: His think--no. I think he was thinking about what he would want if he was president of the United States, and I think he would have probably wanted that power.

Ted Kennedy was not the only one who basically agreed with Hillary's position at the time.  Bob Somerby, Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall (link) all seemed to be taking on the idea one hears most often from Obama supporters, that anyone paying attention should have known better than to trust George Bush at the time.  In August 2004 this position was taken, among other places, in the New York Times (link):

Mr. Kerry, as almost everyone now knows, voted to give President Bush the authority to invade Iraq, in a post-9/11 climate of fear and widespread conviction that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that might be used against the United States or its allies in the near future. Now that we know differently, some senators have said they regret their vote. Not Mr. Kerry. He affirmed once again last week that he believes he did the right thing. It was Mr. Bush who erred, he continued, by misusing the power he had been given.
...After nearly two years of working with the Bush administration, Congress had a very good idea of how Mr. Bush viewed the world, what advisers he listened to, and what he was likely to do with American troops if Congress gave him a broad authorization to go to war. It was for precisely that reason that some senators, led by Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar, struggled unsuccessfully to narrow down the resolution. Senator Biden says Senator Kerry worked with him behind the scenes.

Bob Somerby said (link)

Readers, get ready for some real brain-work! Here goes: Kerry says Bush should have had the authority to go to war, but then went to war prematurely. Wow! Have you finished scratching your heads about all the nuance involved in that statement? It's hard to believe that any grown person could pretend that this is complex or confusing. But that's the official RNC line -- Kerry is simply filled with nuance -- and obliging scribes are typing it up, pretending this claim makes good sense.

Kevin Drum said (link):

You can decide for yourself whether you like this position, but it's not hard to grasp. That's especially true for the press, since they know very well that there are lots and lots of liberal hawks and other former war supporters who have exactly the same position: pressuring Saddam was good, inspections were good, and eventually war might have been good too.
But Bush blew it: he failed to rally world opinion, he failed to get the Arab world on our side, he failed to let the inspections process run its course, and he failed to plan properly for the postwar occupation. The result is a loss of American power and prestige, a diminished chance of Iraq becoming a pluralistic democracy, and an al-Qaeda that's been given a second lease on life thanks to George Bush's Queeg-like obsession with Saddam Hussein.
Not so hard to understand at all.

Josh Marshall chimed in:

I think I've demurred from discussing or rather defending Kerry's position on this issue because I have an element of bias, since it is also my position. But as Kevin notes, whether or not you agree with that position, it is really not difficult to understand so long as you are not being willfully obtuse.
...In any case, all of this is merely a too-lengthy way of noting that giving the president the authority and the muscle to force the inspectors back into Iraq (i.e., giving him the authority to go to war if they were not allowed back in) simply cannot be equated with giving the president the go-ahead to game the process and go to war immediately even if they were allowed in.

Problem Number 2

The second problem that Barack Obama has with the Iraq War Vote is that in July of 2004 he said me might have voted for the war if he had seen different information. (link):

"`But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,' Mr. Obama said. "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.'"

He obviously was not as clear in his support as was Ted Kennedy or the abovementioned well-known political bloggers, but he was certainly not as vocal against a vote for the war as he had been in 2002 or as he is now.  The main problem with this statement is that it opens up discussion of other things he vociferously opposed before he was elected to the Senate and yet ended up supporting once in office and having to deal with the political realities of the moment.  A case in point is war funding.  Although he said he would never vote for war funding, his actual record is similar to Senator Clinton's.  (link)  Here he is stating "unequivocally" that he would not vote to fund the war once in office.

Here is what he said there:

"Just this week, when I was asked, would I have voted for the $87 billion dollars, I said 'no.' I said no unequivocally because, at a certain point, we have to say no to George Bush. If we keep on getting steamrolled, we are not going to stand a chance."

Problem Number 3

The third problem that Barack Obama has with the Iraq War Vote is that he actually said he thought Saddam had developed weapons.  In his famous 2002 speech against the war.  (link) :

He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

At the end of the quote Obama explained that he thought containment would have worked, which may well have been right.  But, to believe he is dangerous and yet not support getting inspectors back in seems incongruous at best and weak on National Security at worst.  I'll leave it to my readers to guess which part of that the Republican Party will talk about the most if he is the Democratic nominee.

Problem Number 4

The inspectors admitted that if it had not been for the threat of force, Saddam would not have let them back into the country. (link):

Feb. 20, 2003
 While diplomatic maneuvering continues over Turkish bases and a new United Nations resolution, inside Iraq, U.N. arms inspectors are privately complaining about the quality of U.S. intelligence and accusing the United States of sending them on wild-goose chases.
In fact, the U.S. claim that Iraq is developing missiles that could hit its neighbors - or U.S. troops in the region, or even Israel - is just one of the claims coming from Washington that inspectors here are finding increasingly unbelievable. The inspectors have become so frustrated trying to chase down unspecific or ambiguous U.S. leads that they've begun to express that anger privately in no uncertain terms.
U.N. sources have told CBS News that American tips have lead to one dead end after another.
·  Example: satellite photographs purporting to show new research buildings at Iraqi nuclear sites. When the U.N. went into the new buildings they found "nothing."
·  Example: Saddam's presidential palaces, where the inspectors went with specific coordinates supplied by the U.S. on where to look for incriminating evidence. Again, they found "nothing."
·  Example: Interviews with scientists about the aluminum tubes the U.S. says Iraq has imported for enriching uranium, but which the Iraqis say are for making rockets. Given the size and specification of the tubes, the U.N. calls the "Iraqi alibi air tight."
The inspectors do acknowledge, however, that they would not be here at all if not for the threat of U.S. military action.
So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they've been getting as "garbage after garbage after garbage." In fact, Phillips says the source used another cruder word. The inspectors find themselves caught between the Iraqis, who are masters at the weapons-hiding shell game, and the United States, whose intelligence they've found to be circumstantial, outdated or just plain wrong.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are planning to present a new resolution to the U.N. Security Council on Monday in a bid for support to use force to disarm Iraq.
Finishing touches were being put on the resolution on Thursday. Adoption is by no means assured. A majority of the 15 council members are opposed to war at least until U.N. weapons inspectors report in mid-March.

For those who think we could have gotten inspectors in without the threat of force, I addressed that here.

Problem Number 5

The charge, against Senator Clinton, that not reading the NIE was inexcusable, fails to take into account the skewing of all the information that was fed to congress.

I wrote about this skewing of information in June 2005 here.  The CEIP showed the difference in intelligence statements starting in 2002, when those responsible for intelligence statements switched from cautious to alarmist.  These alarmist intelligence estimates were what was given to Congress.  

It is true that Hillary did not read the entire NIE.  But to say she failed in her duty on this is misleading.  Although Bob Graham said if she had read it she would know it was misleading, it is fair to say that she may well have known, based on what her briefers were saying, the sorts of things that were in the report.  Most of us know a lot if not every detail of what is in some books we have never read.  

When Hillary says she went to other sources to see what the international intelligence community really knew about Iraq at the time, it seems fair to characterize this as responsible investigation.  And the international intelligence community could not satisfactorily disconfirm whether Saddam had weapons, which is what she was trying to find out.  Yes there was solid conjecture that he did not.  But no one knew for sure, despite some claims of omniscience from those currently opposed to Senator Clinton's candidacy.  The world was in support of getting inspectors back in to find out for sure.

Further Observations

There will be those who will bring up the Levin Amendment and say that Hillary should have voted for it.  And they will reject any rational discussion of this as "rewriting history."  Clearly, they do not understand just how complicated votes are at times.  For them it has to be clearcut and black and white that not voting for the Levin Amendment was the same as giving the President a blank check.  It will not matter how many times these people are told that George Bush lied to congress to get their votes.  Even when Ted Kennedy is quoted from 2004 it will not satisfy them.  It will not matter when you explain that sometimes you do not vote for one amendment when you are advocating for another, as Hillary was at the time.  It will not matter when you explain that sometimes it is not the actual words in something but rather the general impression that it gives.  They will still say that Carl Levin and others said that his amendment did not submit the US President to the authority of the UN and fail to accept that a reasonable person could see the amendment as giving that impression whether it actually says it or not.  Nothing will satisfy these Obama supporters.  They will continue to get animated and yell "Levin Amendment, Levin Amendment" like Gomer Pyle shouting "Citizen's arrest, citizen's arrest" in an episode of Mayberry.

These same people will say that Hillary supported George Bush even in March 2003 when it was evident that he meant to go to war no matter what.  They will not listen to rational explanations about the use of the threat of force as a diplomatic tool.  And they will not listen when you carefully point out that at the very end George Bush misused the support Hillary was giving him because he did not really want to find out if Saddam had weapons but rather wanted to have an excuse to depose Saddam and get control of Iraq. A case in point here.

And if you somehow convince them to accept they are wrong about the Levin amendment or about Hillary's actions in March 2003, they will then talk about her vote on Kyl Lieberman.  If they do not, you can share with them the facts you will find here, including how leading members of the blogosphere failed to understand what really happened when the authorization to use the military against Iran got taken out of the amendment.