If were let Iraq become a free haven for Al Qaeda, supported by Iran (soon to be a nuclear power) and the oil money from Iraq, the results will be, not could be, catastrophic. The first thing that comes to mind is suitcase nukes in the hands of terrorists. It's a no brainer. I have yet to see the liberal media address that.

People who think they can support our troops and still be against the war are naive.

Michael, it's obvious that you are a committed and fervent Obama supporter.
Your lengthy replies are well thought-out and seemingly well researched to a fault. They are so complete that they could come directly from the Obama campaign, especially the cherry-picked polling, anecdotes and quotes on the military.

I commend you and the Obama campaign in your valiant efforts to continue in the face of double-digit deficits in the poll numbers and the efforts of former senator Edwards to overtake him for number two.

People have to realize the George H W Bush is currently not a candidate for president again and stop wasting their time and energy comparing the current candidates to him. That is just misleading and angering the public. How about comparing the candidates to each other, and looking at their merits and where they stand on issues.

Hillaryt Clinton has no experience. 8 yeas as a house wife in the White House doesn't count. She managed to get elected senator of New York on her husband's name. ow she's running for president, on her husband's name.

As senator of New York, she named a post office. And brought the #1 outsourcer of US jobs to india into New York. She voted for the war in Iraq that she now claims tobe so opposed to. And she voted for an immigration bill nobody wants.

The Clintons also have ties to the Bushes. They vacation together and have financial dealings. The Clintons are no better than the Bushes.

The past 20 years have been Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush. Voting for Clinton again is not change.
And change is what we desperately need now.

Hillary’s war vote cannot be written off as simply being misled by Bush. Hillary has said: "I believed that giving the president authority to go back to the United Nations and put in inspectors was an appropriate designation of authority."

Here is the truth, as reported by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta in The New York Times Magazine earlier this year. The full text is available at the URL below:

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F50712FD3F540C708CDDAF0894DF404482

It is a long article, so go to the sub-heading "A forgotten vote" for the details. "Clinton voted against an amendment to the war resolution that would have required the diplomatic emphasis that Clinton had gone on record as supporting - and that she now says she had favored all along."

"The long-overlooked vote was on an amendment introduced by Carl Levin and several other Senate Democrats who hoped to rein in President Bush by requiring a two-step process before Congress would actually authorize the use of force... The amendment called, first, for the U.N. to pass a new resolution explicitly approving the use of force against Iraq. It also required the president to return to Congress if his U.N. efforts failed and, in Senator Levin's words, "urge us to authorize a going-it-alone, unilateral resolution." That resolution would allow the president to wage war as a last option." In light of this, for Hillary Clinton to say, with a straight face, that it's all Bush's fault is completely disingenuous.

Furthermore, Barack's experience doesn't start with his election to the US Senate. This whole experience fallacy is being propagated by the Clintonistas because they know Barack is the superior candidate. She can't win on substance, so she needs some sort of generic way to convince people to ignore all of the ways in which Barack is better than Hillary. For starters, he's actually held elective office for a longer period of time than has Hillary. You can learn a great deal about Barack’s background by going to his website: http://www.barackobama.com/about/ and you can see a nice chart summarizing the more than 800 bills he sponsored in the Illinois State Senate at the following URL: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/07/29/us/politics/20070730_OBAMA_GRAPHIC.html

How do Hillary's legislative accomplishments, if any, stack up to those of Barack Obama? Is she counting her years as first lady as part of her experience? If so, then why can't anyone look at her records from that time period? Why will Hillary not release her tax returns or her earmark requests as Barack Obama has done?

Prior to taking public office for the first time, Barack was a community organizer and, after earning is law degree, a civil rights lawyer in Chicago. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. The bottom line is that Barack Obama has the right kind of experience, the right judgment as well as the right temperament and character to be a great president.

Even if one were to concede that Clinton has more experience (which I do not), let's talk about the record of those with experience in terms of the Iraq vote. Iraq is a case study on the kind of decision-making a president faces - serious consequences at stake, imperfect information, and passionate voices on both sides. Despite all of that, Barack had the foresight to know that it was a bad move. That kind of judgment and foresight is what I want in my President, which is why it should rightly be be considered evidence of his ability to sift through the complexities a president faces and make the right decision. We don’t know all of the tough decisions the next president will face, but we do know that Barack has what it takes to make such decisions.

The prescience Barack Obama demonstrated on the Iraq vote is highly preferable to looking at it in hindsight and saying "if I knew then what I know now..." as Clinton has said now that the political winds have shifted. Barack had the same general information a lot of us did. He listened to the case outlined by the Bush administration and, instead of supporting Hillary's position, he chose wisely. Hillary didn't even bother to read the entire National Intelligence Estimate. Hasn't her "experience" taught her that you need to read the fine print? How naive of her! Oh wait, it probably wasn't naiveté on HRC's part since there's that pesky issue of voting against the Levin amendment.

I don’t want Hillary to apologize for Bush’s erroneous war, but I do want people to stop allowing her to mislead them about her calculated move to vote with Bush. She has no one to blame but herself since that vote was an attempt to make sure that she wouldn’t be vulnerable from the right on the issue later on during the presidential campaign.

Now that it's fashionable to be against the war, she is simply trying to triangulate. For the moment, she's doing a very good job of that since a lot of people seem to be buying it, but I'm not one of them.

Hillary’s war vote cannot be written off as simply being misled by Bush. Hillary has said: "I believed that giving the president authority to go back to the United Nations and put in inspectors was an appropriate designation of authority."

Here is the truth, as reported by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta in The New York Times Magazine earlier this year. The full text is available at the URL below:

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F50712FD3F540C708CDDAF0894DF404482

It is a long article, so go to the sub-heading "A forgotten vote" for the details. "Clinton voted against an amendment to the war resolution that would have required the diplomatic emphasis that Clinton had gone on record as supporting - and that she now says she had favored all along."

"The long-overlooked vote was on an amendment introduced by Carl Levin and several other Senate Democrats who hoped to rein in President Bush by requiring a two-step process before Congress would actually authorize the use of force... The amendment called, first, for the U.N. to pass a new resolution explicitly approving the use of force against Iraq. It also required the president to return to Congress if his U.N. efforts failed and, in Senator Levin's words, "urge us to authorize a going-it-alone, unilateral resolution." That resolution would allow the president to wage war as a last option." In light of this, for Hillary Clinton to say, with a straight face, that it's all Bush's fault is completely disingenuous.

Furthermore, Barack's experience doesn't start with his election to the US Senate. This whole experience fallacy is being propagated by the Clintonistas because they know Barack is the superior candidate. She can't win on substance, so she needs some sort of generic way to convince people to ignore all of the ways in which Barack is better than Hillary. For starters, he's actually held elective office for a longer period of time than has Hillary. You can learn a great deal about Barack’s background by going to his website: http://www.barackobama.com/about/ and you can see a nice chart summarizing the more than 800 bills he sponsored in the Illinois State Senate at the following URL: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/07/29/us/politics/20070730_OBAMA_GRAPHIC.html

How do Hillary's legislative accomplishments, if any, stack up to those of Barack Obama? Is she counting her years as first lady as part of her experience? If so, then why can't anyone look at her records from that time period? Why will Hillary not release her tax returns or her earmark requests as Barack Obama has done?

Prior to taking public office for the first time, Barack was a community organizer and, after earning is law degree, a civil rights lawyer in Chicago. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. The bottom line is that Barack Obama has the right kind of experience, the right judgment as well as the right temperament and character to be a great president.

Even if one were to concede that Clinton has more experience (which I do not), let's talk about the record of those with experience in terms of the Iraq vote. Iraq is a case study on the kind of decision-making a president faces - serious consequences at stake, imperfect information, and passionate voices on both sides. Despite all of that, Barack had the foresight to know that it was a bad move. That kind of judgment and foresight is what I want in my President, which is why it should rightly be be considered evidence of his ability to sift through the complexities a president faces and make the right decision. We don’t know all of the tough decisions the next president will face, but we do know that Barack has what it takes to make such decisions.

The prescience Barack Obama demonstrated on the Iraq vote is highly preferable to looking at it in hindsight and saying "if I knew then what I know now..." as Clinton has said now that the political winds have shifted. Barack had the same general information a lot of us did. He listened to the case outlined by the Bush administration and, instead of supporting Hillary's position, he chose wisely. Hillary didn't even bother to read the entire National Intelligence Estimate. Hasn't her "experience" taught her that you need to read the fine print? How naive of her! Oh wait, it probably wasn't naiveté on HRC's part since there's that pesky issue of voting against the Levin amendment.

I don’t want Hillary to apologize for Bush’s erroneous war, but I do want people to stop allowing her to mislead them about her calculated move to vote with Bush. She has no one to blame but herself since that vote was an attempt to make sure that she wouldn’t be vulnerable from the right on the issue later on during the presidential campaign. Now that it's fashionable to be against the war, she is simply trying to triangulate. For the moment, she's doing a very good job of that since a lot of people seem to be buying it, but not me.

In response to your post...

First, Obama has more time as an elected government official than either Senator Clinton or former Senator John Edwards.

Second, in regard to his stance at the time of voting for the war... in a speech by Obama in 2002:

"I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars." -Barack Obama

Do you still think he'd have voted for an Iraq war with the words above?

I see that others have already provided links to the story on the military contributions, but here’s another one: http://www.capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=300

I readily admit it’s not a huge amount of money or a huge number of contributors, but Obama is ahead of everyone from either party by a substantial margin. Are you trying to say that Clinton would enjoy more support from the military than Obama? If so, please provide your evidence. In any event, I’m sure if it was Hillary Clinton leading in contributions from the military, it would be front page news everywhere.

Despite the small sample size, the support from the military for Obama dovetails nicely with a Zogby poll from early in 2006, in which an overwhelming majority (72%) of American troops serving in Iraq thought the U.S. should exit the country within the next year.

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075

As for endorsements from generals, I don’t know of a complete list anywhere, but I know of at least two generals and plenty of others with significant national security and/or military experience:

Major General Scott Gration (USAF-Ret); Former Commander, Operation Iraqi Freedom’s Task Force West; Former Director, Strategy Policy and Assessments, United States European Command. He had a 32-year Air Force career. As a fighter pilot, he flew 274 missions over Iraq during and after the first Persian Gulf War.

General Merrill “Tony” McPeak; Chief of Staff, United States Air Force (1990-1994).

Dr. Richard Danzig; Secretary of the Navy (1998-2001)

Dr. Tony Lake; National Security Adviser(1993-1997); Director of Policy Planning, State Department (1977-1981)

Dr. Susan Rice; Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs(1997-2001); Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs, the National Security Council, (1995-1997); Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping, National Security Council (1993-1995)

http://www.nhinsider.com/press-releases/national-security-and-military-leaders-praise-barack-obamas-.html

Zbigniew Brzezinski; former National Security Advisor
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20070824/pl_bloomberg/ank76qu5lafs_1

Ted Sorensen; John F. Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser, legendary speechwriter, and "alter-ego."
http://www.charlierose.com/activity/most-popular/page6

There is also Patrick Murphy, the only Iraq veteran currently serving in the US House of Representatives.

Murphy joined the Army in 1993 and later become a West Point professor and a Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps attorney. He earned a Bronze Star as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, serving in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004.

“Sen. Obama truly wants to unite America, and, speaking as a former captain in the 82nd Airborne Division, I know that he has the judgment we need to be our next commander in chief,” Murphy said Tuesday.

http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/congresss-only-iraq-war-veteran-endorses-obama-2007-08-21.html

As for labor union endorsements, ask Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean how that worked out.

Hillary Clinton attacked Lou Dobbs just few days ago in effort to pander to Hispanic audience during recent Dems debate...she was very specific about Lou Dobbs and it was also addressed on his show several times last week...

Yes, but 99% of that work was done by the 12 years of Republican administration that preceded Bill Clinton – maily by Ronald Reagan and some by daddy Bush. Bill Clinton has little to take credit for there, except, I guess that he didn't p*ss it all away. He got all that handed to him from the previous administration.

And he was still a scumbag who had multiple affairs, shady land deals, rented out the white house, stole from the white house, and (allegedly, because it was never proven, though highly probable) sold presidential pardons.

But he was charming enough to get away with all that and still have frothing-at-the-mouth supporters for him and his wife. A real politician – and one I can do without, thanks.

And don't forget that hubby Bill didn't serve, either. Just like W. The Republicans took John Kerry, who did serve, and got a purple heart, and turned his military experience against him with the "Swift Boat" ads. I can only imagine what kind of negative ads the Republicans have in store for Hillary. And every bit of it pure truth.

This is just one more nail for her presidential coffin. She is an evil woman with a lousy history who polarizes
the nation, and is not electable. She should quit now and keep all the campaign money for herself instead of throwing it away on a doomed presidential campaign.

He certainly carries more weight than Oprah or Magic Johnson or anyone from Hollywood.

Of course he may be angling for a job as Secretary of Defense, but what the heck, he'd be the best one since Cap.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Yes she does, and it shows compassion and forgiveness, humanity, and that like many others who have been through a crisis, in their family, in their marriage or in their own personal lives, that we can survive and come through stronger and better.
I think that that is an admirable quality, in a leader, and in a person.

Some of you, (those most nasty about Hillary) might want to think a bit more about voting for her, othersise you might well end up with Rudy G. We know he saved the world on 9-11 because he keeps telling us. NYC may be big babe, but it ain't the same as running the USA! Bill committed an indiscretion–over and done. Rudy, maybe he just marries his little 3rd rate romances.

Edwards? He was the first to start mudslinging and he was putting down his own party. I've always thought it was only necessart to cut someone down when you were a bit ubcertain, and you wanted to make yourself look bigger. Of course his wife has joined in the melee. Yeah, she has cancer, I'm sorry about that, bit lady, I can't let you pick my President. Edwards started losing me from those two points, and obviously he won't be able to keep her nose out of our business if he's elected.

Obama? Now here's a real laugh! Way back when Oprah appeared on Larry King Live. (with her latest batch of new best friends of course) SHE brought up the subject of who she'd like to see run ~ her dear senator Barack Obama. She says this is the first time she's ever endorsed anyone. I'm sure the fact that he's black had nothing to do with it. Now they're seen walking with his arm around her shoulder. (Gotta protect her from the adoring masses. Who wanted to know if he was black enough? You just might find out. Obama–"I need to go to the boys room" Raises hand and asks "Oprah, may I?

Michelle? She's the new look of beauty magazines, she does it all, knows it all. True, she's intelligent, highly successful, but she needs to find Elizabeth and the two of them need to calm down. Everyone was SO concerned that Bill would be a problem. You were wrong on that one too.

Now, let me clear up this BS about voting for the war. Hillary voted for it, just as many others did. Why? A.E. Neuman there told a few REALLY BIG LIES. You want HER to apologize for HIS lies?

Obama may have been against the war but HE DID NOT VOTE AGAINST IT! Why? BECAUSE HE WASN'T ELIGIBLE TO VOTE!

Hillary was not in the WH as president, but she has served in the senate, was the wife of Arkansas government I won't list everything, no need to. Obama? Isn't he still in his first term?

Don't think a military man will make a good president and keep us out of war, because he understands war. Anyone remember A really good military man named Dwight D Eisenhour?

One last thing. The "party" who says Hillary is a "fat slob, who's always eaten out of the public trough? (not verbatim) When did you visit that "trough" and find her there.? You called her a pig that got fat at your expense. Maybe you and a few others should watch CNN. I highly reccommend Wolf Blitzer, Lou Dobbs and Anderson Cooper. They aren't paid to take one side over the other, they can, however, challenge. You know, Just KEEPING THEM HONEST.