Reply #21: Not necessarily, because they knew there were enough votes to approve it. [View All]

The Dems who voted against it could do so knowing that the compromise bill would be approved anyway, and we wouldn't have to face the possibility of Bush's preferred resolution being passed in January. But if the Dems had voted en masse to defeat the IWR in October, that wouldn't have stopped the war. All it would have done was to have delayed the IWR until January, when the Rethugs would have had the votes to pass the version Bush wanted, giving him a free hand in Iraq, Iran, and virtually anywhere he wanted.


Clinton and the other Dem Senators all had a very difficult choice to make. It wasn't pro war vs. anti war. It was much more complicated than that, as life -- and politics -- often is.