Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama finally came out swinging at rival Hillary Clinton on Thursday, the five-year anniversary of Clinton’s vote for the Iraq war.
“Five years after the original vote for war in Iraq, Sen. Clinton has argued that her vote was not for war — it was for diplomacy, or inspections,” Obama wrote in an editorial published by the Union Leader newspaper in Manchester, N.H.
“But all of us knew what the Senate was debating in 2002,” he added. “No one thought Congress was debating diplomacy. No newspaper headlines ran on Oct. 12, 2002, reading, ‘Congress authorizes diplomacy.’ This was a vote to authorize war, and without that vote, there would have been no war.”
In a swipe at Clinton’s veracity, Obama said: “America needs a leader who will be straight with them.”
The missive was a clear escalation of rhetoric by Obama, who has long been portrayed as reluctant to attack Clinton. Clinton supporters mock him as “Obambi,” while Washington Post columnist David Ignatius accused Obama on Thursday of “holding himself back.”
A Clinton spokesman did not immediately respond to Obama’s belated criticism.
Five years ago, Clinton voted for the Iraq war resolution after publicly saying she knew it could lead to war.
“Any vote that may lead to war should be hard, but I cast it with conviction,” she said on the Senate floor.
Clinton even voted against an amendment that would have required President Bush to come back to Congress for a second, more explicit authorization in the event that the United Nations balked at war.
Clinton gradually turned against the war, although she refused to join fellow Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards in admitting the vote for the war was a mistake.
“The mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress into a war that should not have been waged,” Clinton said in February.
Obama used the five-year anniversary as an opportunity to remind voters of Clinton’s reluctance to admit a mistake.
“John Edwards has renounced his own vote for the war, and he should be applauded for his candor,” Obama wrote in his editorial.
He also noted that he, unlike Clinton, was against the Iraq war from the beginning.
