In his upcoming memoir, titled Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President, former Rhode Island senator Lincoln Chafee (R) “excoriates [President] Bush and his GOP allies” for exploiting “wedge issues,” but also “saves some of his harshest words for Democrats who paved the way for Mr. Bush to use the U.S. military to invade Iraq”:



 Quote:
Chafee was the only Republican senator to vote against prosecuting the war. “The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were,” writes Chafee. “They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom.

“Instead of talking tough or meekly raising one’s hand to support the tough talk, it is far more muscular, I think, to find out what is really happening in the world and have a debate about what we really need to accomplish,” writes Chafee. “That is the hard work of governing, but it was swept aside once the fear, the war rhetoric and the political conniving took over.”




Not to forget the media and the public who eagerly and willingly let themselves get swept right along and manipulated by the war fervor and need to avenge 9/11 on someone, anyone.

And I have to agree with his assessment of top Democrats. When the situation called for courage and risk, they chose cowardice and safety. Which is why I still can't stomach Hillary. Edwards voted for the war as well but he had the backbone to say that he made a mistake. I don't understand why admitting mistakes is still seen as weakness. It clearly takes backbone to admit a mistake and show you learned from it than to try to pretend that no mistake was ever made.