Keep digging Bill, Keep FUCKING digging

“I think that his story line is not accurate,” he said. “And in 15 debates, no one ever once bothered to ask Sen. Obama, ‘How can you say you were always against the war, and your judgment is better than theirs, and they were wrong to vote for that resolution which authorized force, when two years after you gave the anti-war speech in 2004, you, Sen. Obama, said you didn’t know how you would have voted on that anti-war resolution, number one, then two days later, you said there was no difference between you and President Bush on the war?’ ”

As the keynote speaker, Obama was trying to be loyal to the Democratic nominees, John Kerry and John Edwards, both of whom had voted in favor of the war authorization resolution, along with Hillary Clinton. In a July 26 interview with the New York Times, a few days before the convention, he reiterated his opposition to the war but declined to criticize Kerry and Edwards, saying he was “not privy to Senate intelligence reports.”

He then continued: “What would I have done? I don’t know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.”

(The Clinton campaign left out that important last sentence when it e-mailed reporters with backup material for the inconsistency claim, which was also made by Hillary Clinton in the televised debate Saturday night.)

In an interview the following day with the Chicago Tribune (July 27,2004), Obama said that he would have voted “no” on the Senate resolution. But he said he was not in favor of “pulling out now.” On the issue of whether to stay in Iraq , he said “there’s not much of a difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” The context of his remarks makes clear that he was not referring to the original decision to go into Iraq, but the question of whether to remain.

His views on whether to stay in Iraq have changed, of course, as he now advocates a phased withdrawal.