In the heat of a presidential campaign many questions are asked of the candidates. And, even when it looks like one particular candidate is enjoying a coronation as the darling of establishment politics, questionable answers are often giving. That may have happened yesterday on the town hall meeting program with Hillary Clinton and Chris Matthews. In many ways, MSNBC is a 527 for the Democratic Party, as few things positive are said about the Republicans on the network. Hardball host Chris Matthews, who is also an obvious Democrat, many times has nothing but softball questions for his party’s candidates. But, yesterday, he wanted answers on some troublesome issues that surround Hillary Rodham Clinton. Those extracted answers concerned foreign policy and assassination of foreign leaders.
Clinton was in the process of using 9/11 as an emotional topic when describing how she and Chuck Schumer approached President George W. Bush concerning funding for rebuilding the destruction in New York City. Clinton claimed that Bush was very receptive to the idea of directing funding to the city, but the “bad ‘ol Republicans” were already attempting to block repair dollars for the World Trade Towers. And then the topic shifted to the vote on the Iraqi War. Matthews hammered Clinton on the concept that we now know as truth concerning the needless invasion of Iraq, as members of Congress and the public alike were sold a false bill of goods with respect to responsibility for the attack and the need for a swift US response. Within 24 hours, the federal government claimed to know exactly who ordered the attack, complete with identification of the supposed pilots that somehow managed to survive an impact event that melted steel but could not melt a plastic identification card.
It is no secret that Hillary Clinton is a militarist war hawk. She explained that during the interview, suggesting that it would not also be a bad thing if Syrian leader Bashar Assad were assassinated much in the same fashion as Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. However, she also suggested that the United States would not do it, but a proxy military attack could be welcome. Hillary then stumped her toe in the interview by stating that no Americans died in Libya during the Gaddafi assassination, which is technically true. The Benghazi Attack was later. Libya was first to be designated as a no fly zone, but NATO dropped 12 bombs on the nation immediately following the “so called” request from the Arab League for the no fly designation. Gaddafi had recently been attempting to include others in the Arab League to join him in accepting gold only in payment for oil, which is counter to the 45-year OPEC Petro Dollar agreement which is coming to a close.
This discussion led to Matthews asking about the wisdom of Clinton’s vote to invade Iraq. This issue is central to the current presidential election as Donald Trump has called it a rush to war and a stupid decision similar to Matthews’ common rants, while Bernie Sanders also hammers Clinton on the issue of the classic botched vote for a needless and very expensive war. The connection between budgetary allocations for rebuilding New York City and the arm-twisting that was associated with the Iraqi War vote became obvious when Clinton explained her reasoning. She was originally against invading Iraq because there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein’s involvement. The administrative wisdom was invade anyway. The final result was a lopsided vote in Congress with only a handful of congressional members voting against the invasion. One of those voting against the war was current presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
So, the question remains: Did Hillary Clinton just admit to being bribed for her support of the Iraqi War? It surely appears that way. And now that issues in the Middle East have deteriorated to the point that critics said it would, the issue is front and center again in a historically crucial U.S. presidential election as the voters decide on real progressive change or a reset of old leadership.