Bill Clinton 'Opposed Iraq' From the Start, Or Did He?

Bill Clinton, on the campaign trail in Iowa for his wife Hillary, told a crowd that he opposed the Iraq war from the start. "Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning," he said, "I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers."

The issue? Well, he kind of said the opposite at the beginning of the war. In May of 2003, Clinton was quoted as saying, "I supported the president when he asked for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," and later that year he told reporters that he supported President Bush's handling of the war.


Again in June of 2004 in an interview with Time Magazine, he said, "So, you're sitting there as president, you're reeling in the aftermath of (Sept. 11), so, yeah, you want to go get (Usama) bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, 'Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I've got to do that.' That's why I supported the Iraq thing."

Sounds to me like he supported it from the start, and now that it is unpopular, he has flip-flopped. But the bigger question is why he would take a position opposite of his wife, the one who he is campaigning for. Hillary was and still is proud of her support of the Iraq war in the beginning stages. She has since changed her opinion, but she is proud of the fact that she supported it when the best intelligence we had told us that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction.

Here is a piece of advice to all presidential candidates: Figure out what you stand for, stand for it from the start, and let your supporters know it from the beginning. We all know what flip-flopping can get you (John Kerry), so it really isn't that good of a strategy. Be firm in your beliefs, and be proud of them. A true candidate would rather not be elected because they held strong to their values, rather than be elected on someone else's platform. The American people are searching for a candidate who will be honest with them, and that is the only way anyone is going to have a successful term in the White House beginning in 2008.