The next day in separate interviews with Iowa’s Quad-City Times, Clinton said Obama’s “yes” answer was “irresponsible and naïve.” In response, Obama told the Quad-City Times that it was “irresponsible and naïve” that Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to go to war in 2002. ]On the 2008 presidential campaign trail, Obama often reminds supporters of an anti-war speech he gave in 2002 as an Illinois state senator that is intended to highlight his foreign policy foresight. Obama likes to repeat a line from that speech, in which he called the Iraq war “a dumb war, a rash war” and warned that "U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined costs, with undetermined consequences.” He doesn’t, however, repeat the portion of his speech that precluded those lines and implied the Iraq War was constructed for political gain by senior White House advisor Karl Rove: “What I am opposed to is the attempt by potential hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty state, a drop in the medium income—to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone thorough the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I am opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war, a war based not on reason, but on passion, not on principle, but on politics.” Click the "play button" on the screen below to watch the video of Obama's August 13 statement: |