Morning Joe: Obama Would Have Voted For Iraq Invasion If He Was In The Senate In 2002
By Logan Murphy Monday Mar 03, 2008 2:45pm
During the primary coverage on this morning's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough attacked Barack Obama on his stance on Iraq. The Scar says that Obama shouldn't be so high and mighty about speaking out against the invasion of Iraq in 2002 because it was easy for him to speak out against the war during a Democratic primary, and if he had been in the Senate at that time, Scarborough knows Obama would have voted for the authorization. Impressive psychic abilities from the guy who also knew Rove had nothing to do with outing Valerie Plame, despite it being in the court records.
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Brzezinski: "So you're questioning his motives when you say that."
Scarborough: "I'm not questioning his motives, Mika, you're not listening to me. I will tell you again, he spoke his heart, he said what he believed. He did not have the burden, the responsibility of voting on the most important vote in a very long time and I would bet you that if Barack Obama were in the Senate in 2002 he would have voted the way Joe Biden voted, Christopher Dodd voted, John Edwards voted, Hillary Clinton voted, the establishment of the Democratic Party voted."
Speaking of pulling facts out of thin air, Joe also gives John McCain partial credit for winning the Cold War and says that this is a winning issue for McCain to beat Obama.
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Scarborough is a lot of things......moron, bigot, liar, sycophant, misanthrope, egomaniac....but "psychic" he is not. Get a life, Joe, before this stint of making a jackass out of yourself on national television is over.
frist
This is why Scarborough makes the big bucks: He can guess what can never be proven.
What are you now Joe, a mystic? Another arrogant right wing ass crack licker who needs his fucking agenda driven fat butt kicked.
Joe is never for one to let facts get in the way of a good storyline. He's a lot like FOX News in that regards.
The same dipshit who voted for impeachment just before he got caught fucking around on his old lady. DEAD GIRL FOUND IN HIS OFFICE Please don't ever forget this ........
I would love to see what master political cartoonist Tom Toles would do with Joey Scab. Big giant head, thick mat of "hair", itty-bitty eyeballs... it would rock.
osiris @ 1:
Mel Morgan gone, Glenn Beck whining about "changes are coming" (he's gonna go!!!), As a psychic I say that Joe's gonna be gone.
Let's get some liberal voices on the air. Abrams has found that righteous liberal outrage sells so he's selling it. Joe is denying that fact, (global warming part deux?) so his days may be numbered. Can only hope.
Maybe so, Joe....Cuz in this article by another Joe (Amb. Joe Wilson) over at HuffPo there's this:
"In his book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, he wrote, "...on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried." And, in 2006, he clearly said, "I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of US intelligence. And for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices."
Even Obama said "the benefit of US intelligence....it might have led to a different set of choices."
So yes. That's probably right.
NBC/MSNBC is such a fucking clownact. Keith Olbermann and his close associates are the sole source of credibility that this shameless neocon/GOPer propaganda organ has....and they are to far gone down the rabbit hole to realize that he's doing them a favor by working for them.
I wouldn't trust GE/NBC/MSNBC if they told me that the sky is very often blue in color.
And Joe . . . if you weren't a Republican you'd be human.
I think McCain should run on a platform of standing up to the Soviet Union.
Wow, some people can predict the future, but he can predict the past.
He needs to get himself a 900-number setup and make some bucks.
I was in Chicago's Federal Plaza in 2002 when Barack spoke against the war. Jesse jackson was also there. There were very few people at the rally - DFH (as they are known) and me and my two four year olds. Barack was a lone voice in the primary on Iraq 'cause everyone was still trying to ride Bush's 9/11 coattails - either for gain or out of fear. What the primary results showed - a large majority among a crowded field for Barack is that many ordinary Americans knew the war was wrong before fokls in Washington and New York and in the think tanks knew the war was wrong. That is why genuine democracy and particiaption in this election is the only thing that will save us from the lies and decet of our current imperial elite. Washington must feels like Vienna in 1914.
The truth is that Obama has made conflicting statements about what he would have done about the Iraq war, s, even telling the New York Times at one point, "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0407270351jul27,0,3085726...
Also in 2004: "When asked about Senators Kerry and Edwards’ votes on the Iraq war, Obama said, '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.'"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E2DF153DF935A15754C0A...
His much-touted 2002 speech wasn't as anti-war as he'd like you to believe. In the speech, he never said "Do not attack Iraq", or "If I were in the Senate right now, I'd vote against any resolution that could in any way be construed as giving the President the authority to send troops to Iraq." That gave him deniability, in case the war went well.
http://www.barackobama.com/2002/10/02/remarks_of_illinois_state_sen.php
In 2003, when the war was popular, he took the speech off his website.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...
His war funding voting record has been exactly the same as Clinton's.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_01/012953.php
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
I think it's fair to say that Barack Obama gets way to much credit for a speech opposing the war in 2002 when he was campaigning in a heavily Democratic district in Ill.
That said I didn't vote for him because of a speech he gave in 2002. I voted for him because he's a fresh face and expect him to deliver on things like SCR, Science, RD from Iraq, Health Care, etc
i have felt that way before too....he certainly didn't mind funding the war.
look at his policy statements now
sure he says he will pull out the troops...so did the dems in 2006
is he talking about shrinking our INSANELY BLOATED defense budget...no
is he saying he will defund Israel unless they get out of the west bank...no
at least he says he will talk to people
Johnny2Bad @ 9:
This is a good point. As with Tweety, much as it pains me to agree with Scarborough on anything, he's probably right on this one.
What a Jackass! 'nuff said.
One of Obama's biggest problems is explaining to the American public why he befriended a terrorist named Bill Ayers who bombed the Pentagon. That is an extremely negative unsavory association for a black man named Hussein who aspires to be President of the United States.
jake @ 14:
I think it's fair to say that he probably would of voted the same way Joe Biden did, or the same way John Kerry did, or Clinton, or Dodd or the countless other Democrats who voted for this war.
Why? Because they were privy to cooked misinformation from this administration. That is not to fault the judgment of one Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton, that is to fault the administration for their blatant lies.
why is it hard to believe that maybe hes been making the right choices even before he got into the senate.
'If' is the biggest word in The Universe. IF My uncle was my sister,I'd be in counciling until I die. Fortunately ,in The Real World,that didn't occur.
Chris Gamble @ 20:
Yep.
Umm, I thought we'd stopped paying attention to Joe . . no?
Gee did his psychic powers tell him how Lori Klausutis ended up dead in his office? I'm sick of him and his magic sweater. He needs to shut his piehole.
Another "family values" guy who is about anything BUT family values.
JudyLou @ 13:
Joe "Miss Cleo" Scarborough?
As I asked last week....
Hey Joe.....
Do you take any coffee with your morning cup of absinthe?
Obambam has been misleading people about this vote, along with boosh.
The authorization was for boosh to present some findings and the evidence to support it before he attacked Iraq, presumably with missles not armies.
boosh used his initial request as the findings and presented no evidence. The evidence was vanishing under David Kay's surprise inspections.
boosh used the vote to spread the blame around for his illegal actions, particularly to anti-war democrats
Obambam has been using the same arguments to win himself an office.
I was against the war from the beginning to, but I wasn't in the Senate
And who'd vote for me for president?
Here's a view of how morning joe views citizens right to protest..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtXNKZh3Cqo
Typical Republican spin technique: fantasy based. How we got into Iraq.
Why wouldn't Obama have sided with Kennedy and Byrd and Sanders and a few others who were against the war? I really hope people don't take this sort of revisionism seriously.
Speaking of pulling facts out of thin air, Joe also gives John McCain partial credit for winning the Cold War and says that this is a winning issue for McCain to beat Obama.
Excellent! Yes, a winning issue, absolutely. That's just what everybody wants, the same old bullshit.
so McCain has both Joey the Scab and Tweety on his side. Sounds fair and balanced.........
If you look at the quotes from Illinois Senator Dick Durbin http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/7860.html
You will note that Obama was continually in touch with our (I am from Illinois) Senator during the debate over the war resolution and he stated that Obama was very much against this resolution. In fact Durbin was one of the 23 Senators who voted against the resolution, so I think Joe's supposition is completely off base. Not surprising, as this guy is way off the scale as biased and I hope that MSNBC is reconsidering his contract for this morning program.
But he wasn't in the Senate because of the dead intern in his office. OOOOOOOPPSS!!! That intern just broke!!!
John H. Farr @ 32:
Y'all ever hear the old Shel Silverstein song "Don't Rollerskate in the Buffalo Ring?"
Joe Scarborough is making a speculative, weak argument.
i hate agreeing with Joe, but Obama only had information available to a State Senator. If what was shown to Colin Powell convinced him (and by extension), I have no doubt whatsoever it would probably have convinced Barack. Basically, State Senator Obama made a lucky guess, that's not judgement.
abob @ 19:
I think one of your biggest problems is you're a bigot.
The TV 'pundits' will pull all kinds of 'ifs' out of thier assholes to not discuss
'Real' issues. Another corperate talking head taking orders from above.
Why do the let peope like Joe Scarborough appear, and not have someone from the "other side" challenge his mental non-sense?
Fair and balanced reporting means having opposing views; not two people who spew forth non-sense.
meant to and by extension Hillary...
I thought it was Roger Miller singing, "You Can't Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd" ??
I think Joe Wilson has a good point. Obama wasn't in the Senate so it's easy to say "I wouldn't have voted for the authorization". If I were Obama I would not press this point too much.
In contrast, Scarborough's point rests firmly on the top of his head.
Chris Gamble @ 15:
To baselessly suggest that Obama made that speech in 2002 because he was in a "heavily Democratic district in Illinois" is just as stupid as Scarborough's shitty comments. Has it ever occurred to you that just like many at this site, Obama was honest against this criminal occupation from day one?
Everyday his eyes get beadier and beadier. Scar is a joke. I predict Mika quitting in about two months just to get away from Scarmurderer .
While this kind of "I KNOW what he would of done" prognostication is absurd, it isn't entirely without merit.
Obama severely damaged my trust in his ability during the second debate (August) when he stated as fact that "I don't think anyone believes Iran is not developing nuclear weapons".
Then the NIE comes out in December that tells us they halted their program in 2003. There were a LOT of questions even back then as to whether this was true, yet Obama believed it was "fact". So how might of he voted had he of been in the Senate in 2002? Who knows. But that wisdom he supposedly had back then failed him in 2007. :(
"Speaking of pulling facts out of thin air, Joe also gives John McCain partial credit for winning the Cold War and says that this is a winning issue for McCain to beat Obama. "
McCain partially responsible for ending the cold war? Why did he have voting rights in the Soviet Union where he voted for a surge in their efforts in Afgahnastan - which bankrupted and broke apart that country thus ending the cold war?
Joe is starting to really over-compensate, since he got Imus's radio gig - http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/02/03/scarborough-draws-a-line-in-the...
RayC @ 26:
LOL! That's right!!
abob @ 19:
Tell me sense I don't watch FOX news and I see you are a regular watcher, do you still believe that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 or has that garbage finally filtered through to you?
Joe Scarborough's argument is absurd. He's asking us to believe that someone born in 2008 should be held accoutnable for "what they would have done" had they been alive in the year 1776.
Based on their future (speculative) statements, can we pre-judge someone in 2008 over what they 'wold have" done had they taken another view in 1776?
Joe Scarborough's comment is convoluted. How does someone like him continue on the air without a serious review by a producer for purposes of firing him? How? Someone explain to me how Joe Scarborough can get to work in the morning when he appears to have a problem with critical thinking.
The idea that its not the fault of those who voted for the authorization to go into Iraq because they were misled by the administration is ridiculous because the entire idea that we can decide what regime must live and must die is the problem. Even if Saddam DID have WMD's they should not have voted for authorization to invade Iraq because its not our problem.(What was he going to do, have 500 iraqi's throw a missle at us?)
Our foreign policy of doing whatever the hell we want should be the issue- and its not new and not limited to republicans.
"Say it Ain't So" Joe's idiotic arguement is that Obama was free to speak his conscience because he wasn't voting and therefore didn't have to fear any political blowback. By extension that makes all those who did vote for the war against their conscience hypocrites, or what is known as cover your ass politics as usual. One thing that Obama does offer is the hope that he, as president, will stand by his conscience and change the politics as usual culture.
True, there's no way for Joe to know Obama would have voted for it -- but there's also no way to say for certain he wouldn't have.
Ron @ 39:
One of abob's problems is explaining His birth when mad scientists crossed a roach and pig.
Joe, I have another idea for you: How the South could have won the Civil War if George Bush had been President in 1861. And would World War II have been different if the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Get your Ouija board and go to work Joe, the world can use a good laugh.
rtbwa @ 48:
If you believe that Ronnie ended the cold war then he may have a point. McCain was one of Rayguns biggest boot lickers.
abob , just another glue sniffer.
It's hard to say how Barack Obama would've voted if he were in the U.S. Senate then. Keep in mind that Dick Durbin, the senior U.S. Senator from Illinois, voted against the war authorization. Then again, he was serving on a committee that had access to the NIE, so he could see firsthand how thin it was.
I suspect Obama would've voted nay. If anything, it shows how intellectually honest he is that he's willing to cede that he can't say 100% for sure how he would have voted -- given that it's a hypothetical situation. Most candidates would say something like, "I spoke against the war, so I certainly wouldn't have voted for it; all hail my foresight", especially now that the war is so unpopular.
Maybe he's equivocating in his book to look more "centrist", but I think it's more a matter of him admitting that you can't speak definitively about hypotheticals, especially ones that will never occur.
The way I see it is that I was just a dumb sophmore in High School when the invasion happened, and I think I was smoking a lot of pot too, but I'll never forget turning on the TV and seeing the build up outside Iraq. Even as a barely informed high school student (although I was a good student and in all the advanced classes where we actually talked about current events) all I could keep thinking is "Why in the fuck are we going into Iraq?"
abob @ 19:
Dude, you never ever make any sense with your comments. Is this a cry for help? I pray that you get it before you hurt somebody or yourself.
Joe Scarborough is a douchbag. But he's probably right. Do not underestimate the willingness of elected Democrats to cave in to the Bush political machine.
Jake @ 60:
So you were a doper and in all the advanced classes? Don't even get me started on the state of our educational system! ;)
WELL WE KNOW THAT IS PROBABLY TRUE. Anybody that said the BELIEVED bush about nuclear weapons in Iran and wanted to bomb them, would surely have voted to let bush search for the WMD like the rest of the senate. And we know he wanted to bomb Iran...he gave an exclusive interview to his hometown newspaper, the Chicago Trib. All you have to do is search the archives for the interview...cause the viagra poppers will say he didn't...but pop one more viagra and go search.
Jake @ 60:
All I could think of is, "This is all about oil."
Hey look. Joe's an asshole, and I'm an Obama supporter, but I think he's right on this one. At that time and under those circumstances, I believe that no senator or congress person would have had the guts, if they knew they were going to run for president, to vote against the authorization.
Scaborough should stick to mindlessly prattling on about his time in Congress and jamming with Huckleberry ; they're both half-assed amateur players and GOP pieces of shit so they're perfect together.........
I could see it happening because so many voted out of fear and cowardice of being branded anti-patriotic. BUT it didn't happen so stfu Joe.
Marge @ 64:
If I pop a Viagra, I may have to start trying to find you.
bmw 528 @ 56:
I like the idea of the wee-G board for mourning joe. And also a surfboard session.
PFELD @ 66:
And those people are completely unfit for the office of the president. Everyone who had even the slightest bit of common sense knew that it was unjust, arrogant, and a bizarre idea not to invade Iraq regardless of what the administration made up- why couldn't the congress?
this is joe "murderer" scumbag with an opinion.
BWA HA HA HA HA !!!
No credibility shortage here! ROTFLMBBAO!!!
Shoaib Qadri @ 71:
I mean a bizarre idea TO invade Iraq*
McCain stood beside Reagan and helped win the Cold War?
Wow.
Reagan was a piece of shit who should have been hanged for his war crimes.
Not to mention the fact that we didn't bring the Soviets down, they dug their own grave from the start. We only served as a mild catalyst.
McCain is worthless, he has made ZERO accomplishments!
Joementum @ 54:
Sure there is
Scaborough is a GOP dipshit who tried to have a popular sitting president impeached based upon his dalliances with a woman other than his wife ; something the hierarchy of the entire GOP has been doing for years.
Scaborough's stupidity and ability to look the other way because it was politically expedient proves he isn't worth a cup of spit ; and his opinions are even more worthless..........
Marge,
What is it with you and viagra? Are you a Pfizer rep?
In 2002 Obama was making statements against giving Bush authority to use force.
23 Senators voted against the bill.
Scarborough is talking out his Republican ass.
Joementum @ 54:
True, either way. But even though Obama has written that senate intelligence briefings "might have led to a different set of choices." He loudly touts his "anti-war stance" as proof of better judgement.
We'll never know what would have happened.
Anyway, another question is this: If the AUMF hadn't passed, would that have stopped the NeoCons from invading? Don't think so.
abob @ 19:
Wow, Jethro!!!!!!! D'ja thought that there idear up on yer own?
Ron @ 69:
Allan Roth @ 34:
Why did DICK Durban appear on Faux News? He's not playing by the Dem rules.
Filthy Harry @ 80:
David Hawes @ 55:
A pig crossed with a roach gets the munchies for some bacon.
One thing "I" know: Scarborough murdered Lori Klausutis. How about that revelation, Joe?
Rucka @ 38:
What?!? I had none of the information the Senate or Powell or anyone else remotely connected to this affair had and I got it right. Seems the more information available the quicker those who had it were to vote in favor of this war. Does that say something about the data? It does to me and that is that everyone was lied to. I honestly don't think this is that much of an issue. Why should we hold those who voted in favor of war accountable when all, and I mean all, the information they were given was false.
Rucka @ 42:
Short haired Hillary uses extensions
On what
Her pubes?
StirFry @ 46: