If Obama wants to beat McCain, he'd better have Hillary as the VP.

...when she speaks to the convention's delegates, she will do so as a candidate vanquished by one issue, and one issue only: Bill.

"to win a political office, she was willing to live with the specter of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and a huge financial cost to our country, which, by one estimate, will be $3 trillion."

interesting comments here. amazing that some still defend hillary.

I think some of the defenders are conveniently overlooking one thing, which speaks to the quote above:

hillary and bill are former President and First Lady of the "most powerful country in the world." and as such, they have connections all over the world, and they have access to intelligence that regular congressional folk do not have access to. so when hillary uses the "I saw the same information that all the others saw" she is totally full of it, and to anyone who believes that line, I've got a bridge in brooklyn to sell you.

if iraq was such a threat the coalition of the coerced would have been a heck of a lot bigger than it was. other countries knew saddam was not a threat. and if other countries knew, then you can bet the farm that the former President and First Lady of the most powerful nation in the world also knew. they're both disgusting in their quest for absolute power.

and to those who would say: "well she was hoping the weapons inspectors would get to finish their job and there would be no war" - please. gwb. a man whose family fortune comes from oil and weapons, saying he would only start a war as a last resort. add cheney's halliburton career in the mix, and would you really believe these guys if they told you this? how dumb do you have to be? hillary and bill are many things but they are not dumb. they knew what was up. the clintons and the bushes are just opposite sides of the same coin.

Nice try, Little Brother. You should have continued your C&P ...

[H Clinton:]The mistakes in Iraq are not the responsibility of our men and women in uniform but of their Commander-in-Chief. From the decision to rush to war without allowing the weapons inspectors to finish their work or waiting for diplomacy to run its course. To the failure to send enough troops and provide proper equipment for them. To the denial of the existence of a rising insurgency and the failure to adjust the military strategy. To the continued support for a government unwilling to make the necessary political compromises. The command decisions were rooted in politics and ideology, heedless of sound strategy and common sense. [...]

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=6553

Hillary didn't commmit any SIN. She messed up big time though when she told about her frightening ordeal in Kosovo. Oops! That error cost her a lot.

76 other U. S. Senators voted YES on (prop 114) to authorize the war, (BUT ONLY) after Han Bliss's U.N. team had finished their inspections and then, ONLY IF, WMDs were discovered and, ONLY IF, if discovered, Saddam refused to allow them to be destroyed and ONLY-AS- a- LAST- RESORT.

In addition, not ANY of the senators were aware that George Tenet had altered the 2002 NIE report AS ORDERED to by Bush and Cheney. The COWARD and TRAITOR ~Tenet~ did then alter it, which THEN READ, that Saddam did have WMDs and he had purchased uranium from Africa. ___ It was lies and most Americans and 77 U.S. Senators believed those lies.

Her vote was no SIN, it was a big mistake.

Bush would have ordered the invasion of Iraq, no matter how the U.S. Senators had voted if it had been anywhere near close. It was a SLAM DUNK, remember? The vast majority of the American public believed the president and Cheney, Rove and Rumsfeld and our "loyal and Honest" MSN at that time in history. Bush had very high approval ratings then if you all recall. The Senators vote by how their constituents demand of them and Obama was not a U.S. Senator then.

When asked how he would have voted on Prop 114 if he had been a U.S. Senator, Obama replied, that he probably would have voted YES, the same way Senator Kerry did, as he would not have wished to embarrass his good friends Kerry and Joe Lieberman. But Obama made hay because of her vote. "Smart politics". ____ Very decieving too.

Finally, the very appropriate post here by ~ATHIEST~ August 15, at 7:54pm is accurate and credible.

Jonathan Tasini: engagement in dialogue about war was not your intention; I believe castigation is more the motivation. I didn't and don't like to war, the lies or the cost and the turmoil that it has foster on our nation. I have a brother who has gone to Iraq three times and I worry all the time.
Senator Clinton's vote on the war is understandable given that New York was the prime target of the attack and so many New Yorkers were killed. Her constituency supported the war at the time; she believed what Dubya told her and the Congress as well as the rest of us. I'm sure she has had her moments with that decision, but she made the decision believing terror was the prime issue. I cannot fault her for that. . .supporting the troops means financing the war. Senator Clinton has done much to help returning veterans with their issues and will continue to help others in the future.
Senator Clinton doesn't have an original sin; she is a woman and lots of Amercans are not prepared for a woman to lead. There was so much sexism during the primary campaign, it was more than a bit shocking. I will still vote for Senator Clinton for President; write-in votes are allowed in Georgia. If I see concrete things being done to enable the changes, Senator Obama talks about, I might reconsider. But so far, I have been underwhelmed and a bit disappointed.

Maybe she was right, looks like Micky J is going to win because he is strong and willing to "Win" in E-rack if it takes a hundred years, while he'll "Bomb,bomb,bomb, bombE-ran", an' keep them Ruskies in Czeck. Who knows maybe he'll Cuba-libre Cuba, and open up new off shore drilling in Venesuela, smash the FARC, and slash and burn the cocoa crop in Latin America, too. Might as well start Armageddan while we're at it and prepare the world for the second coming of the "Savior"(Reagen)

Hmmmm....a choice between someone who voted for "congresssional authorization" for war, after DIPLOMACY, someone who stood up to her actions at the time, someone who said if Iran got nuclear, she would take action...at least she stands up for her actions and doesn't back down.

Now, our current choice, Obama, is tacking and backtracking and turning out to be a corporate shill in liberal's clothing. Gee, I hate to say I told you so.

And if McCain gets selected (trust voting machines, anyone)? Our choice is frying pan or fire, far as I can see. Only solution seems to be to organize on a grassroots level, elect local and green candidates, and keep it up. First we take the locals, then we get a governor. HOw about secession?

I couldn't agree with you more, auntEm.

This loooong campaign season with all the dirty tricks and over-managed debates full of empty rhetoric did it for me. The final straw is the attitude that my party owns my vote when it tries to shame me into voting for a candidate I don't want.

Sorry, folks. I've left the Democrats for good after 50 years. It feels good.

The only grownups running now are Nader, McKinney and Barr.

The Democrats should be ashamed of what they did to Kucinich. And the Republicans should be ashamed of what they did to Ron Paul.

YO! all your Clinton haters?
You seem to have forgotton the you gave Georgie Bush a 90percent confindence rating long after 911, Why some of you actuaaly called for Nuking Afghanstan.
And you all seemed to have forgotton that Senator Hillary Clinton Represented the number one target of the terrorist attack.
She acted on what New Yorkers wanted her to do.
And last you Clinton haters What If Their never was A Clinton Presidency?
Look back at your other Democratic Choices against Daddy Bush and remember Ross Peroe?

This Slick Willie BS. I'll bet you don't even remember that the term Slick Willie came from Republican mouths .
And most of your Clinton hatred came by a constant bombardment from people like Rush Limbaugh.
So go ahead and continue old Mo Udall's over 30 years joke about the Democrats Circle Firing Squad.
You do not want to be a part of the majority.Why because then who could you putdown and complain about?
READY AIM FIRE!

I could have forgiven Clinton's warmongering back in 2002/2003 if she hadn't started
full on warmongering with regards to Iran in 2007 and if she had not been so close
to AIPAC.

they say if you don't vote, you can't complain.
I always write myself in, thereby, having voted, gaining the right to complain.

"If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from." ~ Hillary Clinton February 2007 She made that comment last year!

She continued to support her vote, in part because she thought it was politically expedient, but more so, because she probably doesn't oppose military action to get corporate gain.

That vote was only one of her many reasons that she has never been a progressive.

And the same is true of Obama, and most of the democratic party leadership.

Don't support the corporate status quo, vote Green Party, third party, but vote. The less percentage the winning corporate candidate will get could at least be an indication that the community at large isn't buying into the lies. Of course, most continue to believe the lies told by both corporate parties.

My younger friends are more likely to vote once more for the Party of Optimism's Candidate, since they only want to be left alone to live out their personal dreams...... while I at 64 no longer could possibly vote for any rank and file member of this Party Of Opportunism.....the so-called "Democratic" party is a disgrace and has self destructed. What will it take to wake up the masses to this pitiful reality? To vote for O-bomb-a is to prolong the agony and delay any meaningful change. All the third party candidates are wonderful people and deserve our votes.....it's called beginning the actual revolution.

And an angry, unified and growing minority vote. I am not AA but me and my peeps watched and paid attention. We are not importantto her either. She's toast.

Lordee, lordee. Tasini is a self appointed nobody, who nearly ran into the ground the National Writers Union, then he runs as a Democrat for Senate, and now he is an Obama believer. To listen to Tasini is to admit defeat; only the Democrats can save us, and the only "true" Democrat is the Messiah Obama.

That he is even quoted, let alone published, shows the depth of the ditch teh Democrats have lead their flock into.

tj: I think you're right, the DLC has taken over the Obama campaign. Maybe that was the deal that was struck. They'll support him if they call the shots. Then they rise again after he loses. The trouble is, next time she'll have to contend with Jim Webb.

william street-- Since I am an accomplished and enthusiastic ranter, it's only natural that I disagree with your characterization and analysis.

One of the things that has struck me unpleasantly during the long surrealistic agony of our perpetual campaign season is how profoundly anti-intellectual progressives can be. I suppose it would be pouring salt into the wound, or adding insult to injury, to employ the same descriptive terms you've come to abhor to further explicate my perspective.

Your exasperation reminds me of the furious critics of Kurt Vonnegut when his popularity justifiably skyrocketed in the late Sixties, especially after "Slaughterhouse-Five" was published. As he afterwards wrote with typical self-deprecation, every time he made a public appearance someone would stand up and ask scathingly, "What right do you have to lead Youth to such apathy, nihilism and despair?" (Vonnegut goes on to apparently agree with such critics, but only to the extent that he wryly notes that indeed, he had no business making public appearances and setting himself up as a would-be Leader of Young People when he should've just stayed home and kept writing.)

I can't speak for the other ranters, but YOU'RE the one making the interpretation and drawing the conclusion that constant criticism of a terminally corrupted and moribund political system plays into the hands of the iniquitous plutocrats, insofar as it discourages optimism and activism and infects citizens with despair and apathy.

I find it ironic and mordantly amusing when desperate pragmatists decry so-called "ideological purity". From where I stand, it's the IMPURISTS who ought to be worrying about their integrity. Put another way, if you are indeed a proud and confident Ideological Impurist, thriving in the dim light that obscures inconvenient hypocrisies and doubt, you oughtn't to be much troubled with we cynics yapping on the fringes.

If we Ideological Purists are so wrongheaded, corrosive, and tiresome in the first place, then you and your allies ought to have long ago left us in the dust. With all due respect, I suggest that if you find us so pernicious and offensive, it may be because we're undermining your faith in the virtue of Applied Impurity.

william street (aka, Bill from Saginaw) -

Good points, one and all, and well stated. After the Iraq vote, I watched Hilary more closely and listened to her speeches. My impression was of a politician willing to go wherever the political winds blew, so long as they blew her into the White House. I've heard her post-vote rationalizations. It just seemed to me that she was trying to cover her political a** in case things went awry, which, of course, they did. If her feelings were so strong, she should have went with her principles. Instead, she allowed herself to be carried along with the "cowboy justice" mentality that swept our nation after 9-11, ignoring the few voices of reason in Congress (like Kucinich, Feingold & Byrd). Like a bunch of lemmings, Hilary and her compatriots followed George Bush over the cliff. Certainly not the kind of leadership I look for in a president.

The final irony here is that the Billary gang have pretty much taken over Obama and his organization and have gotten everything they want in terms of policy, appointments, etc.

They pretty much control the party and will control the Obama administration (should enough white U.S. citizens overcome their racism and actually vote for OB).

Of course that will never satisfy their Narcissism, but there is no satisfaction for that.

Apologies for exhuming this execrable utterance to those who haven't fully digested dinner:

"It has been five years this week since our president took us to war in Iraq. In that time, our brave men and women in uniform have done everything we ask of them and more. They were asked to remove Saddam Hussein from power and bring him to justice and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi people the opportunity for free and fair elections and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi government the space and time for political reconciliation, and they did. So for every American soldier who has made the ultimate sacrifice for this mission, we should imagine carved in stone 'they gave their life for the greatest gift one can give to a fellow human being, the gift of freedom.'"

-- Hillary Clinton, speech on Iraq at George Washington University, March 17, 2008.

Here is the crucial point: "To win a political office, she was willing to live with the specter of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people." Knowing this, which I take as axiomatically true, what are we to make of her supporters, especially those who saw her as the great hope for a first female president? They also seem to have been willing to live with the specter of the deaths of hundreds of thousand of people. Indeed, when you take into consideration her language about "obliterating" Iran, they seem willing to live with the spector of the deaths of millions of people. Shameful hardly does justice to this cynicism.

5280 August 15th, 2008 7:25 pm said:

"Vote for Nader, McKinney or stay home.

Stop the murder by The Party."

...by committing suicide.

Dreamjoehill, you need to get your facts straight.

Hillary did not "break the rules" by, as you claim, campaigning in Michigan and Florida. She didn't campaign in either state ! She was on the ballot in Michigan, but she never, as you claim, promised to remove her name from the ballot. She only promised to not campaign there, and she did not.

You say "Clinton's calculating opportunism is only too obvious". And I say the exact same thing about Obama. The only difference between the two is that Obama brown-nosed the Dem party grand poobahs in order to be their golden boy candidate.

You claim that she's a "war monger". Why ? Because she voted to authorize Bush to declare war ? Are you willfully ignorant or have you simply not had time to do your homework ? I suggest you do it now before you spew more misinformation. Have you never read the lengthy and detailed statement she made prior to that vote ? Go read it and be enlightened.

As for race baiting, Obama is *constantly* complaining that he's being picked on because of his race. B Clinton made a factual statement and Obama and his surrogates screeched as if Obama had been lynched. Even now, unprovoked, Obama continually whines that people won't vote for him because he "looks different", mistakenly attributing people's dislike and distrust of him to his color when in fact many of us don't like him because he's an egomaniac and a fake.

And you too race-bait. You "wonder" about my "prejudices". I would say that the problem is yours, that you would assume that the only reason a person could possibly dislike a half-black candidate is because of his color ? Should I assume that you dislike H Clinton because she's a woman and you're a misogynist ? Or maybe you don't like women who wear pants, is that it ? Or maybe you just don't like working women, did I get it right this time ?

Tasini indeed a front row seat on Hillary's Liebermanplus routine. Problem was he was not allowed on TimeWarner
NY1 during the dem primary debate against Hllary

TimeWarner said tha-- even though he had 19% support with virtually no media exposure because so many knew what a Bush enabler Hillary was-- they would not allow Tasini on the debates because he DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY.. Thus did TIme Warner prevent millions from hearing what a Bush-Enabler Hillary was.

Time Warner and the Coroporate Media do not SHOW the election. They ARE the election.

If we do not make this point on MSM web sites, nobody will ever understand that and the Corporate Funded Fake Media Reform movements will only fund marginalization rather than a public challenge of the Billionaire liars called the news who choose our pols.

Click paste or you have wasted the last three minutes of your life.

Vote for Nader, McKinney or stay home.

Stop the murder by The Party.

Hillary lost to Barack because she was married to Slick. It had nothing to do with Iraq, since both Hillary and Barack are Republican enablers, not opponents to their war making around the globe.

Well I take that back. Many do remember that it was Slick and Al that screwed around with Iraq killing hundreds of thousands of children there for 8 long years. That might have cost Hillary some votes, too. Some are not as forgetful as all the liberal Democrat apologists are at the CD corral.

Whether Senator Hillary Clinton voted wrong on the Iraq invasion AUMF in 2002 because she was a true believer militarist or a partisan opportunist who read the tea leaves poorly is a moot question, as far as I'm concerned.

By the time the insurgency kicked in, the American mission in Iraq had been clearly exposed as a military occupation, rather than something that was arguably at least more temporary, or morally justifiable. That was the time for Democrats to stand up and be counted, or else to at least get out of the way of the antiwar movement and the hand full of Dems willing to confront Bush/Cheney on the related issues of torture, indefinite detention, and warrantless domestic spying.

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton (not unlike John Kerry) chose to hang tough, stay the course, and never actually admit that the invasion and occupation of Iraq (and her support for it) was wrong. Whether this choice was one of substance, or of renewed cynical political miscalculation, is basically beside the point.

The party grassroots and independents held Hillary Clinton accountable on the war issue in the primaries. That she was actually willing later on to ally herself temporarily with the likes of Scaife and Limbaugh in a futile effort to sabotage the Obama campaign merely made those earlier bad policy decisions irreparably worse.

That said, I think it's worth reflecting a bit on just how self-destructive it is for progressives to continually rant about sham democracy, duopoly, lesser evilism, and the like.

Yes, yes, I certainly agree that the Democratic party's beltway leadership did a miserable job as loyal opposition to the Bush regime, enabling many of the worst excesses of the neo-cons to be enacted with a shameful veneer of bi-partisan support. But yammering on incessantly about how all the politicians in Washington are crooks and war mongers (without a dime's worth of difference among them) plays right into the GOP spinmeisters' hands, establishing the melody line for Karl Rove's favorite theme song.

Since they're all alike, since there's really no difference between the two major parties, since it's all a shell game anyway with nothing differing but the exterior packaging of the candidates, just give up on trying to make the system work. Toss a protest vote of ideological purity to the marginalized third party candidate of your choice, or better yet just stay home.

By all means, let the election boil down to a question of whether you want a crappy, ineffectual federal government that promises to cut taxes, or a crappy, ineffectual federal government that threatens to raise taxes.

Okay. Now let's count the ballots and see who wins.

Bill from Saginaw

How can she say she is wrong about Iraq when she was a bigger promoter of the invasion than GWB.

pkpman August 15th, 2008 3:17 pm
Hillary's sin was she was not as good a liar as Obama. People are dumb and they will continue to vote for the better liars. If you can't lie, don't be a politician.

That's as well said as it is possible to say it and as succinct. HRC believes wholeheartedly in the occupation and should be a Republican, along with other MoFos like Lieberman, etc. Why they don't switch parties is beyond me.

Hilary's vote on the war back in '03 cinched it for me. I knew she'd be running in the next presidential election, and like many of us, I figured that her nomination was a forgone conclusion. I also knew that I would never, ever vote for her. For me, that one vote told me everything I needed to know about Mrs. Clinton and her political ethics.

Atheist - Leave my state (MI) out of it. To use your penchant for emphasizing with caps...THERE WAS NO DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTION HELD HERE!! I'm so sick of hearing about how anyone "won" the phantom Michigan Democratic primary. Nobody won! Nobody lost! I reiterate, THERE WAS NO DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTION HELD HERE!!

(And before the Obama-bashers pounce, I haven't made up my mind yet who I'm voting for...just glad I won't be seeing any Clintons or Bush's on the ballot.)

I suspect that aipac wanted the two contenders to be giuliani and clinton. With too many skeletons in the closet giuliani was abandoned. Thats when mccain went from driving the bus to being a pasenger. I agree that clinton lost because of the war. Now aipac supports mccain but obama will take the majority of jewish votes.

Hillary's sin was she was not as good a liar as Obama. People are dumb and they will continue to vote for the better liars. If you can't lie, don't be a politician.

Atheist,

Clinton and her supporters demonstrate their hypocrisy by harping on Michigan and Florida. She broke the rules by campaigning there and broke her own promise early on to abide by those rules.

I am no obamaniac, but Clinton's calculating opportunism is only too obvious.

Also she is essentially a war monger and pawn of the penatgon. This is why she lost support among the left.

As to race baiting, that was done by Bubba and Mark Penn. Your accusations of race baiting against Obama lead me to wonder about your own prejudices.

I can hardly believe some of these comments !

CLINTON GOT MORE VOTES THAN OBAMA ! How is this "self-destruction" ?? If Florida and Michigan hadn't been strangled, she probably would have won the nomination.

Let's talk about Obama's impending doom due to constant race-baiting. Clinton's only mistake was to let him get away with it, the Republicans won't.

RichM August 15th, 2008 1:37 pm

Gee Rich, does that mean you wouldn't have voted for her?

Her original (and deadly) mistake was in underestimating Obama if you ask me.

What Obama or Hillary say at the convention mean nothing.

As with every Democrat, watch what they do, not what they say. Until Americans stop voting for Republicans or Democrats, nothing will improve, things in fact will worsen.

This is a confused & disappointing article from someone who went so far as to actually run against Hillary, seeking to force a debate on the war issue. Tasini seems consumed with regret that Hillary lost the nomination, because (in his analysis) she made a poor choice, & refused to admit her Iraq vote was wrong.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse! Hillary voted as she did because she's an utterly unprincipled & unscrupulous person -- just the type that would put selfish careerist political calculations above the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. So there are no tears to be shed for the fact that she lost the nomination -- we should be grateful that she lost. Nothing so clearly exposes her rotten character as the combination of her corrupt & cynical Iraq vote, plus her inability to admit it was wrong.

The only things to be regretted are that she got as close as she did, despite being a lying warmonger with rotten charcter; and of course that she lost to someone who's no better than she is, but was better able to conceal his real makeup than she was.

This is a very necessary perspective. Tasini had a true front row seat as a witness to Clinton's slow but certain self-destruction. She never deserved the nomination because she was terrified of distancing herself from Bush's war, apparently stubbornly believing it would pay off for her politically, since she never had qualms about supporting it on any other level. A million or two dead, country destroyed, the whole world hating us? A small price to pay for real power, the chance to occupy the Oval Office once again and cement the Clinton dynasty as a political symbol for many decades to come. She's the worst kind of opportunist.

But then, Obama's just another variety of the same animal. He'll keep us mired in Iraq as much as Hillary would, only using different rhetoric and striking different postures. Maybe if we had a democracy instead of a duopoly political apparatus that excludes anyone not playing by corporate-controlled rules. If only the "Democratic" party meant anything its name falsely implies.

It is always a mistake for any non-Republican candidate to place "winning" above morality. It can only mean that the Republican policy will win regardless of who holds the office and undermines support for all the non-GOP. "Playing to the center" is what eliminates choice from politics.

I'm not a statistician but here is a teaser for you. What is the probability that in a democracy two members of the same family be voted in as president?