1115.org

Barack Obama and his campaign like to refer as frequently as possible to the anti-war speech Obama delivered on 26 October 2002 in Chicago at an anti Iraq war rally:

I don’t oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

A fine speech, by any standards.

And it would certainly give Obama the moral right to rub the noses of other Democratic presidential candidates in the ignominy of their support for the Iraq War resolution (and many subsequent Iraq War votes). If it wasn’t for this (from a New York Times piece dated July 26, 2004):

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.”

Funny how Obama or his campaign never talk about this at all, huh? Funny how little anybody else talks about it either.

He doesn’t really know how he would have voted on the war if he had been in the Senate then. He spoke at an anti-war rally in October 2002, so he gave a fine anti-war speech. But he knew all along — or came to realize by July 2004 — that if had been asked to make the same vote that some other presidential aspirant Senators were asked to make, he might well have voted to authorize the war.

But that doesn’t stop him now from making fine and fiery speeches castigating other candidates for their vote. Even though his July 2004 remarks are on the public record.

And this is the guy we’re supposed to believe is a different kind of politician? Not only kinder and gentler but also more lofty, more moral.