We loves us some nuance when it comes to saying whether or not invading Iraq was a good idea. Or maybe just endorsing the resolution approving the matter. Or whatever. We hate nuance.
George W. Bush, October 9, 2004:
“Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision. The world is safer with Saddam in a prison cell.”
Dick Cheney, October 7, 2004:
Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in Miami Thursday that the report justifies rather than invalidates Bush’s decision to go to war. It shows that “delay, defer, wasn’t an option,” Cheney told a town-hall style meeting.
John Kerry, August, 2004:
Asked by a reporter, he said he would have voted for the resolution – even in the absence of evidence of weapons of mass destruction – before adding his usual explanation that he would have subsequently handled everything leading up to the war differently.
John Edwards, October 8, 2004:
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards said last week’s Central Intelligence Agency report confirming the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq hasn’t convinced him it was a mistake to authorize President George W. Bush to take military action.
“The vote on the resolution was the right vote, even in hindsight,” Edwards, a first-term U.S. senator from North Carolina, said in an interview aboard his campaign plane on Oct. 8. “It was the right vote to give the president the authority to confront Saddam Hussein,” he said. “That’s what would have given the president the power that would have allowed the weapons inspectors back into Iraq.”
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