The Vault - Unto the Breach

THE VAULT OF THINGS LIBERALS WANT US TO FORGET

Democrats Support, then Oppose, then Support the Surge

President Bill Clinton

Against the War in Iraq
"Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning, I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers."

- Campaigning for Hillary in Iowa November 27, 2007

For the War in Iraq
"I supported the president when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

- May 18, 2003

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. We have to defend our future from these predators of the Twenty-first Century. They'll be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There's no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

- Speaking to Joint Chiefs and Pentagon staff February 17, 1998

"I don't think that you can criticize the president for trying to act on the belief that they have a substantial amount of chemical and biological stock. That's what I was always told."

- New York Daily News April 16, 2003

"I supported the president when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

- Tougaloo College commencement speech May 18, 2003

"After 9/11, let's be fair here, if you had been President, you'd think, Well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you're sitting there as President, you're reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I've got to do that. That's why I supported the Iraq thing."

- June 28, 2004 Time Magazine interview

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)

For the War in Iraq
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
" It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.
". . . This is a difficult vote. This is probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make. Any vote that may lead to war should be hard, but I cast it with conviction.
". . . So it is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him - use these powers wisely and as a last resort. And it is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein - this is your last chance - disarm or be disarmed."

-October 10, 2002 Congressional Record pp. S10288-S10290

"There is a very easy way to prevent anyone from being, uh, put into harm's way, and that is for Saddam Hussein to disarm -- and I have absolutely no belief that he will. I have to say that this is something I followed for more than a decade. If he were serious about disarming, he would have been much more forthcoming. I ended up voting for the resolution after carefully reviewing the information, intelligence that I had available; talking with people whose opinions I trusted, trying to discount political or other factors that I didn't believe should be in any way a part of this decision. I would love to agree with you, but you can't based on my own understanding and assessment of the situation."

- Transcript from meeting with Code Pink March 7, 2003

"[B]ut the fundamental fact remains that this man posed a threat to his neighbors. There is no doubt in anyone's mind - because we had already seen him use it - that he would have employed weapons of mass destruction at some future date. Although we may have gone a little too far, we believe we made the right decision."

- October 17, 2003 Congressional Record p. S12828

Against the War in Iraq
"If I had been president in October of 2002, I would have never asked for authority to divert our attention from Afghanistan to Iraq, and I certainly would never have started this war."

- Remarks at Democratic National Committee February 2, 2007

On Media Matters
"We are certainly better prepared and more focused on, you know, taking our arguments, and making them effective, and disseminating them widely, and really putting together a network, uh, in the blogosphere, in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress."

- YearlyKos Convention, August 4, 2007

Petraeus Report
"[I] think that the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief."

- Statement to General Petraeus at Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, September 11, 2007 transcript

Tough on Iran...
"U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. And in dealing with this threat as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table."

- Remarks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, February 1, 2007 transcript

"I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations. I don't believe you face threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines. But let's be clear about the threat we face now: A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond. The regime's pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only underscores the urgency of the threat it poses. U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot and should not — must not — permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons."

- Address at Princeton University, January 18, 2006 transcript

...Soft on Iran

"The new declassified key judgments of the Iran NIE expose the latest effort by the Bush administration to distort intelligence to pursue its ideological ends.The assessment of the NIE vindicates the policy Senator Clinton will pursue as President: vigorous American-led diplomacy, close international cooperation, and effective economic pressure, with the prospect of carefully calibrated incentives if Iran addresses our concerns. Neither saber rattling nor unconditional meetings with Ahmadinejad will stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Senator Clinton has the strength and experience to conduct the kind of vigorous diplomacy needed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons."

- Statement from Lee Feinstein, Hillary Clinton Campagn's National Security Director, December 3, 2007

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)

"On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."

- Remarks from Senate floor September 16, 2005

“It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”

- June 27, 2007 The Hill

General Võ Nguyên Giáp (Commander of the North Vietnamese Army)

"What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it.

But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!"

- From his memoirs in the Vietnam War memorial in Hanoi

Senator John Kerry (D-MA)

“I think the Fairness Doctrine ought to be there and I also think equal time doctrine ought to come back. I mean these are the people who wiped out one of the most profound changes in the balance of the media is when the conservatives got rid of the equal time requirements. And the result is that, you know, they’ve been able to squeeze down and squeeze out opinion of opposing views and I think it’s been an important transition in the imbalance of our public…”

- June 26, 2007 Bryan Lehrer radio show

"And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the-of-the historical customs, religious customs."

- Face the Nation, Dec 4, 2005 transcript

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."

- Told to a group of California Students, Oct 30, 2006

MoveOn.org

“In the last year, grassroots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the Party doesn't need corporate cash to be competitive. Now it's our Party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back.”

- December 9, 2004 email signed by MoveOn PAC team (story)

click to read full-size ad

Representative John Murtha ( D-PA)

On Haditha
"There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. They actually went into the houses and killed women and children."

- Press Conference May 17, 2006

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ( D-NV)

"Now, I believe, myself, that the secretary of state, the secretary of defense -- and you have to make your own decision as to what the president knows -- that this war is lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything…"

- Press Conference April 19, 2007

General Ricardo Sanchez

"The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me, is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war.

"My assessment is that your profession, to some extent, has strayed from these ethical standards and allowed external agendas to manipulate what the American public sees on TV, what they read in our newspapers and what they see on the web. For some of you, just like some politicians, the truth is of little to no value if it does not fit your preconceived notions, biases and agendas."

- Statement to reporters, October 12, 2007

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

"Well, in my view, talk radio tends to be one-sided. It also tends to be dwelling in hyperbole. It's explosive. It pushes people to, I think, extreme views without a lot of information…But I do believe in fairness. I remember when there was a fairness doctrine, and I think there was much more serious correct reporting to people."

- Fox News June 27, 2007

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY)

"And let me be clear, the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn't that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here. And that is because there was no one else there protecting."

- Remarks from Senate floor September 5, 2007

George Soros

"I like to influence policy. I was not able to get to George Bush (Senior). But now I think I have succeeded with my influence...I do now have great access in the (Clinton) administration. There is no question about this. We actually work together as a team."

- with PBS Host Charlie Rose in 1995