Leftist Jonathan Chait and my colleague Byron York both are reporting that Mitt Romney reversed/changed his position on Iraq. Here is the exchange with Chuck Todd both of them are citing:
ROMNEY: Well, if we knew at the time of our entry into Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction, if somehow we had been given that information, obviously we would not have gone in.
TODD: You don’t think we would have gone in?
ROMNEY: Of course not. The President went in based upon intelligence that they had weapons of mass destruction. Had he known that that was not the case, the U.N. would not have put forward resolutions authorizing this type of action. The President would not have been pursuing that course. But we did not know that. Based upon what we knew at the time, we were very much under the impression as a nation that they had weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussein was intent on potentially using those weapons, and so he took action based upon what he knew. But to go back and say, well, knowing what we know now would we have gone in. Well, knowing what we know now, they did not have weapons of mass destruction, there would have been no effort on the part of our president or others to take military action.
Chait and York both then cite this 2008 exchange with Tim Russert that they say is a different position:
MR. ROMNEY: It was the right decision to go into Iraq. I supported it at the time; I support it now.
I don’t see any difference between the statements. Romney is essentially answering two different questions here:
1. Knowing what President Bush knew then, was going to war with Iraq a good decision?
and
2. If President Bush could somehow magically know what we know about Saddam’s weapons today, would going to war with Iraq be a good decision?
One can answer ‘yes’ to the first question and ‘no’ to the second question and still be entirely consistent.
