During the presidential campaign, John Kerry had a pretty decent response when it came to describing his vote on the Iraq resolution that ultimately led to war. I gave the president the authority to deal with Saddam Hussein, Kerry said, but I didn’t know Bush was going to screw it up so badly.
It wasn’t a bad line, but it was the follow-up that seemed to get Kerry in trouble. Asked if he had it to do over again, knowing in 2004 what he knew in 2002, whether he’d vote the same way, Kerry said he would. That’s the part that never quite worked. If the Senate knew that there were no WMD, no nuclear program, no al Queda ties, no 9/11 connection, no unmanned drones, no mobile labs, no threat to the United States, and that Bush was cherry-picking the intelligence he wanted all along, why on earth would any sane person vote for the resolution? Why would there have even been a resolution?
Kerry didn’t want to say he made the wrong call. In a presidential campaign, no one ever does. The result was an awkward response to the most important issue of the campaign.
But what about now? What do Dems who voted for that resolution say about their choice? It seems to me they do exactly what John Edwards has done.
I was wrong.
Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told — and what many of us believed and argued — was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.
It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn’t make a mistake — the men and women of our armed forces and their families — have performed heroically and paid a dear price.
The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth.
While we can’t change the past, we need to accept responsibility, because a key part of restoring America’s moral leadership is acknowledging when we’ve made mistakes or been proven wrong — and showing that we have the creativity and guts to make it right.
The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president — and that I was being given by our intelligence community — wasn’t the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.
Edwards’ line seems so obvious, it’s amazing others haven’t gone there before him.
It’s an approach that accepts responsibility and acknowledges reality before moving forward. Just as importantly, it turns the question back around at the GOP — Bush, among others, insists he’d do everything exactly the same way, even if he knew then what he knows now. If there’s a compelling explanation for such a position, no one’s thought of it yet.
So, Edwards becomes the first to use the magical “I was wrong” phrase. Who’s next?