Breaking News: Gov. Mark Warner Takes a Stand on Iraq

By Daniel McKivergan
Published May 10, 2006 6:22pm ET
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I have to make a correction related to one of the many postings I have done on the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. A while back I wrote,

As to foreign policy, though, Warner has been virtually content free. For example, on Iraq he won’t say how he would have voted on the war authorization had he been in Congress at the time. He won’t tell voters if he would have regretted his vote today had he supported the authorization back then. He won’t say whether he believes the president made the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power in March 2003 or whether he believes the President should have given UN inspectors more time. Guess he’s waiting to see how things look in Iraq a year or so from now.

Well, at a DLC-sponsored foreign policy event yesterday, Warner, according to the AP, informed us that he won’t “be lectured [to] by Karl Rove about what is needed to keep this country safe.” And on Iraq,

He told reporters afterward that while he hopes the Iraq war is successful, he would consider pulling U.S. troops out if the country did not make progress in coming months on democracy and security. “I think you don’t take that off the table,” he said when asked about troop withdrawal.

I’m sure the Iraqis working with the U.S. will be encouraged by the words of the governor. Of course, Warner still refuses to answer basic questions about Iraq. But that can’t last. In a speech to the National Press Club, another presumptive presidential candidate, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, said that Democrats “must get out of our political foxholes and be willing to clearly and specifically point out what a strategic error the Iraq invasion has been.” Well Mr. Red State governor, was Iraq a “strategic error” or not?

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