I had hoped Kucinich would seize the moment at the Democratic debate in New Hampshire and make it clear whether or not he had read the Oct 1 2002 NIE. I felt sure he would have gone to the locked room and done so before voting against the IWR. But he didn’t say one way or another and he wasn’t directly asked. I will change his Yes? to No for now. Otherwise, our list remains the same.
2008 Candidates:
Biden (Read Yes; Voted Yes) (chair, Foreign Relations Committee)
Clinton (Read No; Voted Yes)
Dodd (Read No; Voted Yes)
Edwards (Read No; Voted Yes; Co-sponsored) (Intelligence Committee)
Kucinich (Read No; Voted No)
McCain (Read No: Voted Yes)Others:
Allard (Read Yes; Voted Yes)
Bayh (Read Yes; Voted Yes)
Bunning (Read Yes; Voted Yes)
Byrd (Read Yes; Voted No) (Armed Services Committee)
Dayton (Read Yes; Voted No)
Durbin (Read Yes; Voted No) (Intelligence Committee)
Feinstein (Read Yes; Voted Yes) (Intelligence Committee)
Graham (Read Yes; Voted No) (chair, Intelligence Committee)
Hagel (Read Yes; Voted Yes)
Rep. Jane Harman (Read Yes; Voted Yes) (House Intelligence Committee)
Hatch (Read Yes; Voted Yes)
Kennedy (Read Yes; Voted No) (Armed Services Committee)
Leahy (Read Yes; Voted No)
Levin (Read Yes; Voted No) (Intelligence Committee)
Mikulski (Read Yes; Voted No) (Intelligence Committee)
Roberts (Read Yes; Voted Yes) (Intelligence Committee)
Rockefeller (Read Yes; Voted Yes) (Intelligence Committee)
Shelby (Read Yes; Voted Yes)
Stevens (Read Yes; Voted Yes)
Warner (Read Yes; Voted Yes)
Wyden (Read Yes; Voted No)
(List updated 6/19/07 based on survey by The Hill.)
Transcript
The Democrats’ Second 2008 Presidential DebatePublished: June 3, 2007
The following is a transcript of the 2008 Democratic primary presidential debate hosted by CNN. The participants were Senator Joesph Biden, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Senator Barack Obama and Governor William Richardson. The debate was moderated by Wolf Blitzer, with additional questions by Tom Fahey, State House Bureau Chief of the New Hampshire Union Leader and Scott Spradling, Political Director of WMUR-TV. Transcribed by the Federal News Service, a private transcription agency.
snip
MR. BLITZER: Senator Clinton, do you regret voting to authorize the president to use force against Saddam Hussein in Iraq without actually reading the National Intelligence Estimate, the classified document laying out the best U.S. intelligence at that time?
SEN. CLINTON: Wolf, I was thoroughly briefed. I knew all the arguments, I knew all of what the Defense Department, the CIA, the State Department were all saying. And I sought out dissenting opinions, as well as talking to people in previous administrations and outside experts.
MR. BLITZER: So let me just be precise; that the question was, do you regret not reading the National Intelligence Estimate?
SEN. CLINTON: I feel like I was totally briefed, I knew all of the arguments that were being made by everyone from all directions. National Intelligence Estimates have a consensus position and then they have argumentation as to those people who don’t agree with it. I thought the best way to find out who was right in the intelligence community was to send in the inspectors. And if George Bush had allowed the inspectors to finish the job they started, we would have known that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD and we would not have gone and invaded Iraq.
MR. BLITZER: Senator Edwards, you didn’t read that National Intelligence Estimate either. Do you regret that?
SEN. EDWARDS: No, actually I think that — I would agree with some of what Hillary just said. I think it’s true that — I was on the Intelligence Committee, I don’t think Senator Clinton was, but I was on the Intelligence Committee. I received direct information from that. I met with former high-level people in the Clinton administration who gave me additional information and I read the summary of the NIE. I think I had the information I needed. I don’t think that was the question.
snip
MR. BLITZER: Senator Obama, you didn’t think the war was the right thing to do, even though you weren’t in the U.S. Senate, you didn’t have access to any intelligence information at the time. Do you think someone who authorized the use of force to go to war in Iraq should be president of the United States?
SEN. OBAMA: I don’t think it’s a disqualifier. I think that people were making their best judgments at the time.
I will say on the National Intelligence Estimate that Chairman Graham, Bob Graham of Florida, who at the time was the head of the Intelligence Committee, cited that specifically as one of the reasons that he voted against it. So obviously there was some pertinent information there.
snip
MR. BLITZER: Senator Gravel, do you think someone who voted to authorize the president to go to war should be president of the United States?
MR. GRAVEL: Not at all, because it’s a moral criteria. And there’s information coming out — Senator Durbin, Mr. Strum in his book — that really points out that these people knew that there was two sets of intelligence going on at the same time, and they made a political decision to vote the way they voted, a political decision that cost — stop and think, we have killed more Americans than was done in the 11th of September.
MR. BLITZER: When you say –
MR. GRAVEL: More Americans died because of their decision. That disqualifies them for president. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people, it just means that they don’t have moral judgment, and that’s very important when you become president.
I agree with Mike Gravel on many things, including the above and the following:
MR. GRAVEL: Totally. Totally. It’s just that simple. Four of these people here will say that it’s George Bush’s war. It was facilitated by the Democrats. They brought the resolution up, one of them authored, co-authored it here, standing here, and so it’s — sure, it’s George Bush’s war, but it’s the Democrats’ war also.
As unlikely a Democratic nominee that he is, Gravel is the conscience of these debates.
