I for one am glad that President Obama is appointing a pro-war, pro-free-trade secretary of state.

[BuyingThyme]

It's exactly what I've always wanted.

You guys are just silly.

[dkf]

1. Yes, it sucks big time.

Ironically, I'm more resigned to Gates as SecDef than Hillary as SOS. I still think she isn't qualified. Brzezinski says she doesn't have the depth of knowledge to do the job without direction. That tells me all I need to know.

[BuyingThyme]

2. Oh, shoot.

I meant to say "state."

There's gonna be trouble.

[RC]

9. That's understandable. Hillary likes to fight.

[dkf]

10. Hee hee...

I was wondering why you care about the SecDef's trade policies.

[Maven]

21. Right. You're pro-Republican appointee, anti-Democratic Senator

That should tell everyone all they need to know about your rationality and your credibility.

[JVS]

25. Gates is a short term thing. A matter of not having to have a learning on the job while we should..

be leaving type of situation.

[patrice]

3. What does not kill The Left will make it stronger and, hence, LARGER. nt

[Pirate Smile]

8. A significant segment of the Republican Party now wants to purge their party of anyone not

pure RW in their ideological views. We could go that route - but I don't think that would be wise. ;)

I wish them luck in their party purges. :evilgrin:

[patrice]

18. You can't be a "card carrying Liberal" without ALSO being Inclusive.

That said, depending upon how things go with the trans-national corporations vs. the people, Liberals will be getting their priorities straight RELATIVE to the goals and priorities of other factions.

[L0oniX]

4. Yes ...I also enjoy that (Ross Perot) giant sucking sound n/t

[lunatica]

5. Once this was edited it threw everything off.

So far the comments don't make any sense.

[polichick]

6. LOL - as I've said before, this cabinet would be frightening if not for Obama.

[polmaven]

26. This Cabinet

would not EXIST if not for Obama, so your premise is a little off, don't you think?

[polichick]

27. Once again, you missed the point.

[polmaven]

32. Well, please explain

the point to me, then.

[Zhade]

36. Man, you said it!

I'm watching him very closely in the hopes that his policies will be different from what these conservatives have pushed in the past. The thought of him teaching them how to really serve their citizens is an enjoyable one.

[TexasObserver]

7. I'm glad he's appointing someone who is great for the job.

[JVS]

11. It seems like a bad idea to me.

[AtomicKitten]

24. I think the OP forgot the sarcasm smilie thingie.

[OKNancy]

12. I'm glad he picked Biden too........ oh wait

he and Hillary both have moved over to Obama's point of view about Iraq.

[JTFrog]

38. Link please. n/t

[Upton]

13. Yeah, I like it too...just the "change" I was looking for

[LibDemAlways]

34. Don't forget the big "change" at DoD with a Bush

hanger-on at the helm. Yep, exactly what I voted for. :puke:

[IndianaGreen]

14. Will Hillary reject and denounce Plan Colombia and School of Americas?

Will Obama?

[S_E_Fudd]

16. Hillary will carry out the policies of the President of the United States...nt

[BuyingThyme]

19. I just think we should trust our president in every decision that he makes.

[S_E_Fudd]

15. What...is Hillary not getting the job?...nt

[CrispyQ]

17. ...

;)

[Skip Intro]

20. It won't be the SOS taking us into any wars in the near future, it'll be Obama.

But the drama queens throwing themselves against these cyber walls is quite a show.

[tomp]

23. yes, we all know hrc is just an obama puppet...

...with no mind or agenda of her own.

besides, does it really matter who gets us into the next war? the point is to stop the current wars and avoid the next one.

we drama queens would very much like peace and justice in the world. you with us?

[Zhade]

37. Not a puppet, but she WILL have to follow his orders - or be fired.

I like the idea of her being humbled under him, after all the bullshit she said about him during the primaries.

[Skip Intro]

54. lordy

[Onlooker]

22. Hillary, like Obama, has a very progressive early record ...

... and have since positioned themselves to achieve more powerful posts. Now that Obama is at the top, and Clinton is with him, we will see their true colors. My guess is that they will be quite progressive on a number of fronts.

Given that Clinton went to a very progressive, very feminist college and Obama was involved in community activism, I think they will work extremely well together.

[JTFrog]

40. You mean the college where she was President of the young Republicans for crying out loud?

:wtf:

[Onlooker]

43. Perhaps you're not familiar with the college

Like many people, Hillary was the party of her family, but was enlightened while at college.

[JTFrog]

45. So enlightened that she not only joined the Young Republicans but was the President.

Gotcha.

She contributes her leaving the republican party to the 1968 republican convention because she was upset at the way Nixon portrayed Rockefeller.

But I guess you know would know better about when and where she found her enlightenment.

[Onlooker]

47. Well, I know about Wellesley

but if your whole view of a person is through the narrow lens of politics, I can understand where you are coming from. And perhaps you were a Vientam War supporter, so that's why you would have expected Clinton to be so loyal to the Democrats back in 1968?

[JTFrog]

48. You were the one who used a narrow lens to base your reasoning of why she and Obama would work

well together.

I merely pointed out that thinking was flawed. How you got around to making it about me personally is beyond me.

"Given that Clinton went to a very progressive, very feminist college and Obama was involved in community activism, I think they will work extremely well together."

You called that a Given. I say bullshit.

[Onlooker]

51. Actually, Alinsky who they both followed ...

... believed you may have to compromise to get to the position where you can do the most good. I think Clinton and Obama have fairly good credentials and are both fairly liberal. I believe they were informed by their youth and then, opting for traditional politics, had to play ball, which they are both very good at. Obama would not have brought Clinton on board if he thought they had significant disagreements. My comment grew personal because of your snide remark in #45, and your lack of understanding of what anti-war Democrats and liberals were going through in about 1968.

[JTFrog]

55. Snide Remark? You didn't make that assumption in your post about her enlightenment?

:wtf:

And I'm not even gonna touch my lack of understand of what was going on in the world when I was four years old.

Once again.... The point of my post was that you came along and acted as if you knew as a "given" that Hillary's attendance at a "progressive and feminist" school meant she and Obama would be a perfect fit. Yet the facts are that most of the time she spent at that progressive and feminist school she was President of the Young Republicans. She doesn't give the school any credit for "enlightening" her. She gives that credit to the 1968 Republican Convention.

I didn't say anything about Democrats in general, didn't saying anything about anybody's military service or feelings about Vietnam.

Get your facts right if you're gonna take it badly when someone comes along and disassembles your argument. That's the kind of thing that happens here at DU...

Your argument was ridiculous. That's not to say they will or will not work well together, just most likely not for the reason you tried to sell us.

[Onlooker]

57. Having trouble figuring out your reasoning

I simply cited one piece of evidence why I think they will work well together, namely that in their youth they both had progressive connections (and again, if you know anything about 1968, you would know that liberals were trying to assert themselves in the Republican Party and hawks were asserting themselves in the Democratic Party, thus your main point about Hillary being a Republican shows your ignorance of history). But, of course, my comment was in response to the original post claiming Clinton was pro-war, which is an oversimplification of her stand or the reality of what propelled politics (especially in New York State) in the aftermath of 9/11 and the oversimplification of her stand on free trade. Many of us are pro free trade and globalization, but not from a corporate perspective, from a worker's rights perspective. The original post was a simple presentation, as was mine. Hillary and Obama will work well together in part because their progressive roots date back to when they were in college, which is a very formative period time for most people.

[JTFrog]

59. So now you are saying that Hillary was really a liberal infiltrating the Republican party?

At first you said she was a Republican because of her family.

And again, I don't see "progressive roots" in being President of the Young Republicans.

We'll just obviously have to agree to disagree with each other's reasoning.

And as you'll see by my post down thread, this is not the only area in which we disagree. Hillary Clinton is a WarHawk.

[Onlooker]

62. As I said, she was informed by her university days

Wellesley is a very liberal and feminist college. Clinton was head of the College Republicans during her freshmen year and supported the likes of Rockefeller, Lindsay, and Edward Brookes (the first black Senator elected by popular vote). There's a good chance that in 1968, most of us would have supported those Republicans too (though Rocky was kind of nutty, I think). I do not think Hillary is a war hawk, any more than I think John Kerry (who voted as Hillary did) is one. She, like Kerry, made the mistake of falling for Bush's lies.

[JTFrog]

63. Hillary Clinton is a war hawk.

I provided a little something more than just my opinion on it down thread.

See how that works?

[Onlooker]

65. War hawks listen to the UN?

She advocated use of force to conduct inspections and cited her husband's use of the 1991 UN resolution to justify it. I don't see how that makes her a war hawk. I don't think hawks are typically governed by the UN and getting Saddam to allow inspections made a lot of sense at that time. And the fact that she cites a specific UN resolution that her husband used, according to the essay you linked to, to take a shot at regime change is irrelevant, unless you think that Hillary, being a woman perhaps, thinks like her husband.

[JTFrog]

67. Cognitive dissonance, not just for Republicans anymore.

Add it all up. IWR vote, interrupting anti-war speech in order to push IWR, her vote on Kyl-Lieberman, her No vote on banning cluster bombs, and telling Iran that we could OBLITERATE them.

To me those things add up to WarHawk. And it's not as if she didn't to try to bolster that image with her made up sniper fire stories.

Again, we agree to disagree and this has obviously been a huge waste of time.

[madrchsod]

58. hillary rejected alinsky

read her Wellesley paper. hillary and barack have opposite views alinsky`s ideas.

[Onlooker]

66. The MSM articles I read ...

... suggested she admired Alinsky but felt some of his ideas were dated. I've read nothing detailed on Obama's support for Alinsky's ideas.

From Wikipedia's entry on Alinsky, it says this: "She later noted that although she agreed with his notion of self-empowernment she disagreed with his assessment that the system could only change from the outside." I suppose then that Hillary was perhaps a Trotskyite, who believed in the idea of "boring from within." It's unclear whether Obama believes that change can take place from the inside, but I certainly hope that's the case given that he's president.

[LWolf]

28. DUzy.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[anonymous171]

29. lol It's like you don't even know what a SoS does.

[leftstreet]

30. LOL

Nice one!

[AJH032]

31. Pro free trade?

Her No vote on CAFTA suggests otherwise.

[JTFrog]

44. Her campaigning FOR NAFTA and CAFTA while her husband was president suggests otherwise.

Her work with TATA also suggests otherwise.

I think the OP has it right.

[Jennicut]

33. Pro War? I guess Kerry and Biden and lots of other Dems are too.

Her vote mattered in the primary but not to be SoS. I wanted Obama as president and we got him but SoS? Since when is SoS more important then being president?

[BlooInBloo]

42. Everyone else worth talking about admitted their mistake.

[karynnj]

46. The only way that Kerry, HRC and Biden are equally "pro-war" is

if it is based on ONE vote - ignoring all others and the postions they took sense. Kerry is by far the least pro-war and in fact was LABELED anti-war in early 2003 - because he was arguing against rushing to war. Kerry's entire adult life was against unneccesay war. You might also consider that Kerry/Feingold was an important vote too. Biden worked hard to get Biden/Lugar as the resolution.

But, the fact is the SoS will not make the decision on going to war.

[Jennicut]

52. True but I don't see Hillary as pro-war. The only people who were pro war

in my book were the neocons. I don't love Hillary but to see her as pro war... I don't know, its doesn't seem right.

[JTFrog]

56. Well let me help you see the light. She was definitely pro-war.

Hillary was one of the most vocal democrats pushing for the IWR. In her infamous speech she proved that not only did she know she was voting for war, but she even laid out the blueprints on how to use force the same way her husband did.

No amount of denial or cognitive dissonance is ever going to change that fact.

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0303-23.htm

See Hillary Run (from Her Husband's Past on Iraq)
by Scott Ritter

Senator Hillary Clinton wants to become President Hillary Clinton. "I'm in, and I'm in to win," she said, announcing her plans to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2008 Presidential election. Let there be no doubt that Hillary Clinton is about as slippery a species of politician that exists, one who has demonstrated an ability to morph facts into a nebulous blob which blurs the record and distorts the truth. While she has demonstrated this less than flattering ability on a number of issues, nowhere is it so blatant as when dealing with the issue of the ongoing war in Iraq and Hillary Clinton's vote in favor of this war.

This issue won't be resolved even if Hillary Clinton apologizes for her Iraq vote, as other politicians have done, blaming their decision on faulty intelligence on Iraq's WMD capabilities. This is because, like many other Washington politicians at the time, including those now running for president, she had been witness to lies about Iraq's weapons programs to justify attacks on that country by her husband President Bill Clinton and his administration.

"While there is no perfect approach to this thorny dilemma, and while people of good faith and high intelligence can reach diametrically opposed conclusions, I believe the best course is to go to the UN for a strong resolution that scraps the 1998 restrictions on inspections and calls for complete, unlimited inspections with cooperation expected and demanded from Iraq," Senator Clinton said at the time of her vote, in a carefully crafted speech designed to demonstrate her range of knowledge and ability to consider all options. "I know that the Administration wants more, including an explicit authorization to use force, but we may not be able to secure that now, perhaps even later. But if we get a clear requirement for unfettered inspections, I believe the authority to use force to enforce that mandate is inherent in the original 1991 UN resolution, as President Clinton recognized when he launched Operation Desert Fox in 1998."

Hillary would have done well to leave out that last part, the one where her husband, the former President of the United States, used military force as part of a 72-hour bombing campaign ostensibly deemed as a punitive strike in defense of disarmament, but in actuality proved to be a blatant attempt at regime change which used the hyped-up threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as an excuse for action. Sound familiar? While many Americans today condemn the Bush administration for misleading them with false claims of unsubstantiated threats which resulted in the ongoing debacle we face today in Iraq (count Hillary among this crowd), few have reflected back on the day when the man from Hope, Arkansas sat in the Oval Office and initiated the policies of economic sanctions-based containment and regime change which President Bush later brought to fruition when he ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

"My vote," Hillary said with great sanctimony, "is not, however, a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for unilateralism, or for the arrogance of American power or purpose -- all of which carry grave dangers for our nation, for the rule of international law and for the peace and security of people throughout the world." But by citing the policies of her husband, there can be no doubt that this was exactly what her vote was about.

...much more at link

Scott Ritter served as a former Marine Corps officer from 1984 until 1991, and as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 until 1998. He is the author of several books, including "Iraq Confidential" and "Target Iran". He also co-authored "War on Iraq" with William Pitt.


And never forget that she doesn't care if you don't like that vote:

"If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from," Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

She even went so far as to interrupt Senator Byrd's ANTI-WAR speech and take away his floor time in order to cram the IWR down our throats. The same woman who voted for Kyl-Lieberman and voted NO on banning cluster bombs. The same who told Iran we could OBLITERATE them.

Hillary Clinton is a WarHawk.

[Jennicut]

68. Okay, fine she is a war hark. and her vote and lack of apology does kind of piss me off

but playing Devil's Advocate here, is she worse then Bush or not as bad as Bush? Being a war hawk does not mean you are a neo con and think regime change is going to work everywhere. Bill Clinton seemed to want to try regime change in Iraq but never wanted to fully commit there. I remember that debate well. We really did not end up getting involved in the 90's because we would have been bogged down like we are now. He tried bombing strategic targets, it was kind of half-assed but BC always had a hard time committing to things. I do think that Hillary will have to follow Obama's policies as if you constantly fight with your president it never ends pretty. We shall see what happens.

[JTFrog]

69. No she's not worse than Bush.

Believe it or not there are many things I like about Senator Clinton. I just think that this particular position is completely wrong given her hawkish stance while in office.

[karynnj]

70. I think the problem is forcing a binary definition - pro-war /anti-war is the problem

There are very few people who truly fit either category. On the anti-war side, there are people who are 100% against ANY war (ie the Quakers) The neo-cons are people who were looking for any excuse to go to war to create the change they thought would help. Not one of the people mentioned were in either camp.

Even in 1971, Kerry told the Senate that he was not anti-war and that if the US was threatened, he was willing to fight. Of the three, he was the most on record trying to avoid the war. Kerry also was the only one of the three who articulated abstractly when he thought war justified. In 2004, it was in the foreign policy debate with the "global test response". At the time, I thought it sounded like a secular version of the Catholic "Just war" (St Augustine). In 2006, in a speech on faith and policy - Kerry spoke of Iraq and spoke of why it was not a just war. (An incredible thing for a politician still possibly running - he said it more implicitly in 2004 - when he kept saying it "was not a war of last resort".) http://www.pepperdine.edu/pr/releases/2006/september/kerry.htm Kerry's underlying philosophy on when to go to war is better known than any other politician I can name. It is easy to say with certainty that had he been President, he would not have taken us to war. (Kerry was also the lead critic against the US covert war in Central America fought by the Contras - who the Clintons supported legally aiding.)
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has never spoken as deeply or personally on this. It is not just the IWR vote. It is also not even the reluctance to say it was the wrong vote, because the vote did not cause the war. (Saying it was the wrong vote cost Edwards, co-sponsor and advocate of the invasion, nothing.) It did bother me to read that she was as opposed to Kerry/Feingold as she was because she thought it bad US politics - not because she didn't think it the right thing to do in Iraq. (Then 8 or 9 months later, she adopted a similar plan to the plan she called "cut and run" - and used Kerry's words on why we needed to convince the Iraqis we were leaving) It bothered me that she voted against banning cluster bombs. It bothered me that she backtracked on torture, when the NY Daily News gave an unlikely scenario. It bothered me that she voted for Kyl/Lieberman.

These are the types of things that would cause me to place HRC far closer to the pro-war side of the spectrum than John Kerry. I would place Biden between them. This is what I mean by putting the IWR vote into context with what they did in the 5 months until the invasion - and Kerry was out there enough that he was labeled "anti-war" and what their postions have been over their careers.

Unfairly or not, I do think that if HRC was convinced that an attack could remove a problem and had a high likelihood of success, she would agree with it - whether it met the criteria of being a last resort or not. I am not 100% sure what HRC as President in March 2003 would have done - though I am pretty certain that she would not have invaded.

[PBS Poll-435]

35. ...

:cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:

[HughMoran]

39. I love liars

Don't you?

[BlooInBloo]

41. It's all good. She'll either do what she's told, or she'll be unemployed...

I can live with that.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

49. Obama could make Kissinger SOS if he wanted

Doesn't matter. The SOS doesn't declare war or set trade policies. Just because GWB was led around by the nose doesn't mean Obama will be.

[NYC_SKP]

50. Maybe it's his way of saying, "You broke it, you bought it"....

Now go clean the fucking mess up....

[Occam Bandage]

53. God, and to think Secretary of State is responsible for single-handedly

setting US trade policies and declaring war. And to think that Hillary Clinton has come out in favor starting lots of wars everywhere. Man, you're on the ball here.

[wyldwolf]

60. yeah! Someone who agrees with Obama!

[Deep13]

61. The problem with the brown-shirts of any campaign...

...is shutting them up after the campaign has succeeded.

[moondust]

64. Minds of their own.

No big deal when Hillary and Gates can simply repeat Obama's talking points. But what are they going to say and do when Obama is not around?

I'd guess that Lincoln could much more easily control the communications and actions of his administration of rivals than is possible in today's YouTube world.