When Hillary Clinton Got Her 3 A.M. Phone Call, She Voted for War in Iraq

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Hillary Clinton has made much of the vast experience and readiness to serve which supposedly makes her more qualified for the presidency than Barack Obama. Clinton again tried to hammer this point home in her recent "3 a.m. phone call" TV campaign ad, clearly designed to play on voters' fears of terrorism and to convince "security moms" in particular that Hillary is the only safe choice for President of the United States. When the presidential hotline rings at 3 a.m. with an emergency in some part of this "dangerous world" in which we live, the ad asks, "who do you want answering the phone?"

Yet, when Senator Clinton's "3 a.m. phone call" did come in the form of an up or down vote on the October 2002 Iraq war resolution, one of the most important U.S. foreign policy decisions in recent history, she dropped the ball and voted for war. While Clinton has repeatedly called her decision "a sincere vote based on the facts and assurances that I had at the time," she has admitted that she cast her vote without even bothering to read the 90-page National Security Estimate (NIE) on Iraq that was made available to her, and which contained authoritative doubts that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. As The Nation observed last year, Clinton's Senate colleague Bob Graham, then chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, urged Clinton and other Senate Democrats to read the NIE. Graham, who did take the time to read the NIE, voted against the Iraq war resolution as did 146 other congressional Democrats, seven Republicans, and two independents including senators Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Patrick Leahy, Carl Levin, Jack Reed, Russ Feingold, and Lincoln Chafee. Barack Obama, then an Illinois state legislator, also spoke out against the authorization for war. Clearly, there were dissenting opinions on the authorization for war of which Clinton was aware, not only in Congress and across the United States but also from America's friends and allies around the world. Had she even bothered to read the NIE she might have voted differently, as others did. To me, this does not speak well of her vast experience or her readiness to serve.

Whom do I want answering the presidential hotline at 3 a.m.? On a decision so critical as that of going to war, I want a president who gets it right the first time.