Iraq Politics: Obama hits the field, and Dodd hits Obama

Today was a big day for the Obama campaign: It marked the 5th anniversary of Barack Obama's 2002 speech in opposition to the Iraq War, and Obama had every intention of reminding Democratic voters that he had opposed the invasion from the start. Set to give a major foreign policy speech to celebrate the correctness of his judgement, Obama emphasized two themes: (1) He stated a new goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and (2) he argued that his anti-war stance demonstrated his superior judgement, and why he should be president.

Obama senses that time is pressing. He has not been able up to now to distinguish himself from Hillary Clinton, even on the Iraq issue, and he needs to do so convincingly if he has any hope of clinching the nomination. He has long tried to use their pro-war vote against Edwards and Clinton, but he has not made much progress with that strategy. Frustrated, his campaign has apparently decided to up the rhetoric:

The American people weren't just failed by a president. They were failed by much of Washington. By a media that too often reported spin instead of facts. By a foreign policy elite that largely boarded the bandwagon for war. And most of all by the majority of a Congress – a coequal branch of government – that voted to give the president the open-ended authority to wage war that he uses to this day.

In a very similar vain, Obama tried to appeal to Democratic activists by pointing out he is a true unwavering progressive, much unlike the other candidates: "We were counseled by some of the most experienced voices in Washington that the only way for Democrats to look tough was to talk, act and vote like a Republican." But aware that Hillary has been able to deflect criticism on her vote until now, Obama voiced an even more pointed attack:

Some seek to rewrite history. They argue that they weren't really voting for war, they were voting for inspectors, or they were voting for diplomacy. But the Congress, the administration, the media and the American people all understood what we were debating in the fall of 2002. This was a vote about whether or not to go to war.

Also today, Obama went on a more direct offensive in a CNN interview, this time explicitly naming Hillary Clinton. He accused her of deliberately blurring the lines between them on the Iraq issue:

I think Sen. Clinton has been effective in trying to blur the distinctions. And it's our job to make these distinctions clear to the American people, because it really ends up speaking to how we're going to make decisions in the future and how we're going to make decisions about a series of significant threats and how we are going to make decisions about getting out of Iraq.

The other focus of Obama's speech was laying out a goal of a non-nuclear world, and said that as president he would pursue “the long road towards eliminating nuclear weapons.” While that might seem uncontroversial, the speed with which the GOP came out with a press release blasting Obama for being weak on defense and pandering to the "fringe elements" of his party indicates that it might not be so uncontroversial. And this despite Obama's assertion that he is not considering unilateral disarmament because "America must retain a strong nuclear deterrent" as long as other nations have nuclear weapons. It is worth noting that very similar goals have been endorsed by people as diverse as John Edwards and Henry Kissinger! Which means that Obama's proposal shouldn't be very controversial; but it also means Obama isn't being particularly original or radical here, especially if Edwards had already addressed this.

And then came Dodd's answer. Chris Dodd has made sure to be the first to issue responses, to be the one to lead the rest of the field on important issues that come up on Iraq (or even Cuba!), and his strategy is certainly also to appear as pure as Obama when it comes to unwavering progressivism. And thus, Dodd came out blasting Obama:

Today, the Obama campaign is celebrating the 5th anniversary of the speech that then-State Senator Barack Obama gave opposing the invasion of Iraq. But unfortunately, they forgot to celebrate another anniversary. July 26th marked the 3rd anniversary of the New York Times story in which Obama admitted that he did not know how he would have voted on the Iraq resolution had he been serving in the United States Senate at the time of the vote.

Here is that full 2004 NYT article quote:

In a recent interview, he declined to criticize Senators Kerry and Edwards for voting to authorize the war, although he said he would not have done the same based on the information he had at the time. 'But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,' Mr. Obama said. 'What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made. [The New York Times, 7/26/04]

I had never heard this used against Obama before. Did Dodd's opposition research uncover this? Or was it already used by other candidates? While Obama's response is that he simply said that to avoid criticising Kerry and Edwards (the NYT article was set in the context of the 2004 election), will the Clinton and Edwards campaign now seize on this to rebut the purity of Obama's anti-war stance, and argue that their position was very different than Obama's was when the was resolution came up? That would seem to be rather unfair (say what you will about Obama, he was opposed to the war from the start, and that quote does just seem to be a way to not be critical of Kerry), but it could still be effective.