Video: Hillary Cited Experience As Reason For 2002 War Vote, Now Blasts Obama on Foreign Policy

Clip from Hillary Clinton’s 2002 Floor Speech on Her Iraq War Vote

In 2002, without reading the National Intelligence Estimate, Hillary Clinton voted to send troops to Iraq. At the time she said:

This is a very 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.

And perhaps my decision is influenced by my eight years of experience on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House watching my husband deal with serious challenges to our nation. I want this President, or any future President, to be in the strongest possible position to lead our country in the United Nations or in war.

Today, Clinton is criticizing Barack Obama, who opposed the war from the start. The AP reports:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Iowans Thursday against voting for a candidate who doesn’t have foreign policy experience, suggesting her leading rivals would be no better than President Bush in that regard.

“It is tempting any time things seem quieter for a minute on the international front to think that we don’t need a president who is up to speed on foreign affairs and military matters,” Clinton said.

“Well, that’s the kind of logic that got us George Bush in the first place,” she said to laughter from her friendly audience at a high school auditorium. “Experience in foreign affairs is critical for ending the war in Iraq, averting war in Iran, negotiating a Middle East peace and dealing with North Korea.”

It’s kind of sad that those people laughed. Do they not know that George Bush had the same if not more ‘experience’ than Hillary Clinton? Like Clinton, Bush also had a family member who had served as President and presided over the nation through a war plus he had been elected twice as Governor of Texas.

The Barack Obama campaign responds:

While Senator Clinton takes a break from her ‘likeability tour’ to go back on the attack, Senator Obama, the only major candidate who opposed both the Iraq war and the rush to war in Iran, will continue to demonstrate why he has the judgment to turn the page on the Bush-Cheney foreign policy.