U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) George Stern
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
40%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
August 03, 2010 04:16 PM UTC
100 Comments
From the push-polling to the robo-calls, to the slanderous television ads, to the lies about Bennet, Andrew Romanoff has been a disgrace to the Democratic party in CO. I wouldn’t lift a finger, or spend a penny to help him get elected in November.
I’m embarrassed to be in the same party with him.
and 3rd party robocalls. Just checking.
and she knows it.
promoted this story and then quickly promoted two other stories (one on South Carolina?)
once the narrative for Bennet started going south.
(perhaps due to Bennet’s website overly hawkish statements of increasing the military?)
If they had promoted it out of chronological order, you would be complaining about that. Did you ever consider that you complain too much, and people stop listening?
If AR wins the primary, I will do everything possible to defeat him in November. He is a bald faced lying career politician and he is most certainly not “for the rest of us.”
Bennet supporters must be getting desperate to quote Mike Miles on Colorado Pols…Maybe they are worried Bennet is being haunted by
http://www.coloradopols.com/di…
This site has made Mike Miles it’s whipping boy for all things related to an unelectable candidate – not that this was fair by this site, but here their quotes go.
http://www.coloradopols.com/di…
Not taking anything from your diary – you might just want to post at a site more sympathetic to Mike Miles.
I…can’t…resist…
http://coloradopols.com/showDi…
Maybe it’s time for Colorado Pols to write a new story called
and hint to you the author – you should use the ‘google’ before you post here- would have helped you steer clear of the Miles reference.
(and if the Bennet campaign thought this up as a way to get to the Mike Miles contingency of the Democratic party, it really means that they are grasping for any straw left to save their campaign)
You have nothing to say about your candidate vociferously supporting the rush to war?
I was expecting a less feeble reply.
As I recall, he voted to fund the war over and over again, and it happens to still be going.
Appears to be ending the Iraq War – nice try.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes…
Summary of Romie shill defense (up early as always):
1. Pols has made fun of Mike Miles. But they didn’t write this diary, and that doesn’t negate his criticism of Fitz-Gerald. That criticism would apply doubly to Romanoff as a sponsor of the resolution. Miles is a Romanoff supporter. Can you resolve this glaring problem?
2. Apparently Obama did not run on a platform of ending the Iraq war, which he did, and we are not really pulling out of Iraq right now like my New Yrk Times link above says. Romanoff supporters are very skilled at rewriting history, but I don’t think that’s going to wash either.
In short, this is big problem for The Myth of Andrew Romanoff, and the immediate presence of Romanoff shill to offer surprisingly weak comebacks proves it.
#1 are you trying to taunt Joan Fitz-Gerald?
#2 sure – Miles compared Bennet and Romanoff and endorsed Romanoff.
(maybe because in 2004 Bennet was working for a Republican?)
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Things are not always as they seem.
He took office 18 months ago. There has been no good reason for staying in Iraq since mid-November 2008, even before he took office. And yet he has only drawn down 90,000 troops, leaving 50,000 behind. For what ?
As long as US combat units remain in Iraq, with their armaments and ammunition and capabilities, even if we say they aren’t combat units,
they remain a catalyst of civil conflict between the majority of Iraqis and the ethnic groups we have chosen to support.
Most Iraqis want Moqtada al-Sadr to lead their government, but the US has issued an order to assassinate him (December 2003) and has never canceled it.
(Al-Sadr cannot be PM or any other senior official; he didn’t compete in the election. But most supporters of the 2 main Shi’a blocks want a government that follows his lead.)
The Iraqis had their last election in March 2010 (deferred from December 2009,) and yet still have not formed a government, because the US says that al-Sadr cannot be in charge.
Obama pulled out troops at the last possible moment allowed by the surrender document signed in November 2008 by Ryan Crocker on behalf of Prez Bush. He could have withdrawn all US forces last year. But the Pentagon is advising to stay as long as the surrender agreement allows in order to intimidate the Iraqi people into making some CIA tool their Prime Minister. Instead, the Iraqis have decided to wait for the milestone at the end of August, so that our combat units remaining in their territory have the least impact.
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I guess it all depends on your point of view. To me,
Not to put too fine a point on it, GW Bush surrendered to his own puppet, Nouri al-Maliki. The USA did not win the Iraq War, and Bush did not win. His one accomplishment was the “Surge,” which was the linchpin of the Shi’a effort to expel Sunnis from almost all of Baghdad. The “Surge” was a successful effort to ethnically cleanse neighborhoods. It was a success, I give Bush that much credit. But ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity, so that needs to be mentioned whenever the success of the “Surge” is mentioned.
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Obama never a ran as a progressive. Never ran as liberal . Never ran as a leftie. That was all made up by the right who now want us to believe he’s a radical socialist/commie/nazi. Obama never attempted to disguise the fact that he is a very mildly center left centrist. Just because you hear it on Fox doesn’t make it true, Wade.
The whole reason we have President Obama today is because State Representative Obama spoke out against the war in 2002 (when it was building up before it actually started). And only an irresponsible jackass would have voted against funding it once it was underway – nice way to get even more of our troops killed.
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President Bush implied that exact argument, over and over. It was false when he and Cheney used it, and it’s still false. But it would take an adult to stand up to such specious reasoning, which explains why Dennis Kucinich was about the only one in Congress to point out it’s vacuousness.
The argument amounts to:
Let me break it down.
The Pentagon has a plan to conduct belligerent operations at a certain level, and requests funding at the level that would require.
The Congress says no, and says that combat operations against the civilian population must stop, since that is inconsistent with American values. No more funding for the Iraq War.
The Pentagon responds (if the President allows them) with a plan that was developed many months earlier, a contingency plan for immediate withdrawal. They ask for that funding.
Congress authorizes the funding for a withdrawal under the terms worked out by military planners.
The military has plenty of money to withdraw, but none for additional attacks on civilians.
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Some may be offended by the suggestion that our military is fighting against civilians. Good.
Once we vanquished the Iraqi military, what was left ? Who was fighting us ?
The Feydayeen was former military personnel, organized into irregular resistance forces. Those were legit military targets.
The rest of our military activity, kinetic operations, was directed against civilians conducting their own disorganized resistance against a foreign invader. Under the laws of war, it’s not clear that we had any legal justification for warring against them.
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if the Pentagon was requesting that and the pols in Congress and the White House were playing politics, that’s different, isn’t it? I certainly don’t recall any reporting saying that the military themselves were asking for less funding.
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The Pentagon is full of folks who never have to go to war. Generals don’t have to go to war. The Pentagon was in favor of all war, all the time. They did NOT want to pull out.
But they have contingency plans to do that, or any of a hundred other options.
What I meant was, if the Congress refused to fund a war that was making us less secure, a war that weakened the country and the military,
and that “if” never happened,
but if the US Congress had acted in the nation’s best interests and refused to fund further warfare in Iraq,
the military would have pulled back without exposing soldiers to any more danger than if they were ordered to keep fighting.
Cutting off funds for warring DOES NOT MEAN that soldiers would drop their weapons and run naked for the border.
But that was the Bush / Cheney argument that you suggested.
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I opposed the war from the outset. I knew that if there were any actual WMD’s, we would have had much better evidence than what Bush presented at his infamous State of the Union address, and the UN inspectors, harassed as they were, likely would have found some clue. I also knew that there was pressure to “take care” of Saddam and that Iraq has vast oil reserves. Finally, it was apparent that the “coalition of the willing” was being strongarmed into joining, and most were committing only token forces (the UK being the only notable other participant, in terms of manpower and materiel, IIRC). It all added up to bullshit, and I still don’t see how thinking individuals could have been fooled by it.
However, once I saw how quickly our forces destroyed Saddam and the Baathists, I knew we would have to be there for a long haul, because the Baathists had ruthlessly wiped out all opposition and that there was nobody ready to take their place. So, morally speaking, what was the United States to do now? To me, the answer was stay and occupy until sectarian violence was quelled and until a new Iraqi government could walk on its own. I supported remaining in Iraq until those conditions were met, basically under the principle that we need to take care of the mess we make. That, IMO, is well within our nation’s interests.
It seems that we’ve been there for some time now, and I’m sure we could or should have left already, if not years ago. But I know how politics works in this country. Principled stands result in ballot box defeats. Just as Bush and the ‘pubs were unprincipled in starting this war, they were also unprincipled in representing it to the nation, and made sure to publicize and politicize funding votes. Maybe the Dems should have taken the principled stand and voted no, but I doubt we’d have Dem majorities in both chambers and a Dem president if they had. That might be all the same to you, but it isn’t to me.
There are many myths and falsehoods in this race.
Some Romanoff has created about himself.
Some Romanoff has created about Michael Bennet.
He truly has sold his soul to try to win this race at all costs.
I believe that Colorado Democrats will reject Romanoff and his tactics and elect Michael Bennet. I think we will look back on this hideous last two weeks and say that it made the difference between electing the right guy and electing the wrong guy.
he sold his house.
To raise the 300 K to stay competitive.
Bennet, apparently, can just go to the ATM to get that kind of cash for his campaign.
Must be nice – wonder how he got that money?
oh yeah ….
and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians. The blood is on his hands as much as it is any other supporter of the war.
You have nothing to say about the actual subject at hand?
You may have strong feelings about the Iraq war and the futility of it, but in 2003, the vast majority of Americans believed what they were being sold.
To say Romanoff ‘sold the lives of thousands of dead soldiers’ and ‘blood is on his hands’ is the epitome of hyperbole.
A vote on a joint resolution does not equal war crimes nor make a man culpable in the deaths of thousands.
God, I can’t wait till this stupid primary is over….
I am not a peacenik antiwar activist (though I did always oppose the Iraq war).
But if Joan Fitz-Gerald is a baby killer whose “lack of foresight and fortitude has cost America gravely,” then so is Andrew Romanoff.
Be consistent.
you are attacking Fitzgerald for a resolution which Andrew also supported and Mike Miles condemned.
But Fitzgerald was involved in a primary – and her opponent’s position was judged as superior by Mike Miles, so he wrote the letter.
It would be like Mike Miles compared Andrew Romanoff and Michael Bennet and judged Andrew Romanoff as superior and endorsed him.
Oh wait, that is what happened.
And also proves my point that primaries make for better democrats.
Bye bye now.
Thilly – I don’t read CoPols all the time and may have missed some of your stranger comments, but I thought you fairly reasonable.
I appear to have misjudged you.
And, BTW, I would take Fitz-Gerald and Romanoff as leaders in the General Assembly any day of the week over the leadership we have today! Of course, I would also like one of the houses to switch since, IMHO, we govern much better from the middle than from the wings…
At issue is Andrew Romanoff’s vocal support for bombing Iraq and then running for Senate calling himself the “true progressive” and the “senator for the rest of us.”
Whether it’s PAC money, war, immigration, gay issues, the DLC, social security privatization, Andrew Romanoff wants you to ignore his entire record and trust what he says now. He was wrong for a decade, but trust him–he’s changed!
Who are you going to trust, Andrew Romanoff or your own lying eyes?
I don’t love Romanoff’s record, but I don’t hate it either. What I hate is him bamboozling people into thinking he’s some left-wing champion when he’s not. He’s a political triangulator. He’s everything the left hates about DLC Democrats.
n/t
But I’ll take About-face Andrew.
,,,,,
I have been saying plenty about the subject at hand.
If you have a transcript of Bennet in 2004 denouncing the Iraq war as corporacratic operative of Anschutz, produce it.
….. nothing???????
How about this ?
http://bennetforcolorado.com/i…
That’s a quote from Michael Bennet’s website – where Bennet states that the US military surely must grow and grow – despite the United States has the largest defense budget in the world – so big in fact that our military’s budget for night vision goggles is larger than most other countries’ entire budget.
http://www.envirosagainstwar.o…
Bennet sounds like a hawk, not a dove.
Miles probably saw that when he endorsed Romanoff.
That’s changing the subject.
Your candidate supported the war. Answer to that.
The diary has me once again thinking that I will undervote the primary. But, I sure would be interested to have anybody demonstrate that Bennet opposed the War on Iraq from the get-go. That might get me–and some other voters–energized for the primary.
Bennet wasn’t a career politician before the war when this resolution was cosponsored by Romanoff. Like Obama, Bennet’s public record started after the war was well underway.
But the bottom line for me is that this is just another hole in the theory that Andrew Romanoff is anything other than a politician through and through who will say whatever is politically expedient at the moment.
That’s the only defense given so far for his bold public stand in favor of the war.
I could name at least a dozen people for you who could confirm that I was a vocal opponent of the war before it started.
Romanoff was a state legislator. State legislators have no more say in deciding whether the United States launches a war than do unelected citizens. That being said, the resolution was really disgusting, and Romanoff ought to be (but probably isn’t) ashamed for sponsoring it.
Oy. Talk about two crappy choices! But, I’ll take either one over Uncle Buck or “Sweet Jane.”
but in the totality of the issues, I think he’s still better than Bennet. And ultimately that’s what matters, and apparently Miles came to the same conclusion.
He flip flops so much that he could only be trusted to do what is in his own personal interest.
And the resulting threat to national security.
Makes sense to me. And I’m sure AR would agree.
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How can it get any bigger ?
Living in Somalia Springs, my perspective may be skewed, but it looks to me like half of us already work for the war industry.
I have some MSU data for all to ponder.
Right now, the US has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet a couple of times over. When you include the costs of R&D, delivery systems, and the Israeli nuke program, which is funded 125% by the US taxpayer, that accounts for over 30% of our War budget.
Yes, we spend more than double on nuke capability than on ground combat capability, which includes the two current ground wars.
The two that are in the news, I mean.
We spend more on space systems than on ground combat related stuff. In violation of several treaties, we have hundreds of nukes in space, ready to shut down ALL telecommunications – even American Idol.
About 2% of the entire War budget is spent on providing private jet aircraft for 400 Air Force Generals to fly to Air Force Academy football games. Check out the aprons at Peterson AFB during the AF-Army game. Heck, a lot of 2-stars have to park at Buckley and drive down, because all space at Peterson is full. 1-stars often are required to jet-pool due to the parking situation.
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The USA would be safer if the War budget, which includes most of the budget for the Dept of Energy, which is really related to nuke weapons, was cut by 50%.
Contrary to the baloney on the Bennet website, MORE is not BETTER. We need to realign and restructure to address real and future threats, and worry less about making sure that former jet jockeys have billets commensurate with their status as demi-gods.
The USA would be safer if the entire Intelligence budget was cut 75%.
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himself in this campaign, it’s clear he doesn’t have a soul or ethics.
Funny — I don’t recall Bennet being involved with the anti-war movement. I guess he was too busy raking in millions working with right wing anti-gay bigot Phil Anschutz
where was Bennet?
I attended several protests at that time and I don’t recall seeing him there…
Enlighten us….what did Bennet do for the anti-war movement?
The subject is AR’s support of the Iraq war.
Does he still?
What’s Bennet’s private sector job got to do with that?
As to SJR03-016, other ‘progressives’ also co-sponsored the resolution. Paccione, Sandoval, Hagedorn, and Stafford…
Romanoff also co-sponsored SJR03-011, which called for China to disarm missiles aimed at Taiwan – does that make him an Sinophile?
He also co-sponsored SJR03-010, (with a bunch of other Dems), which honors Ronald Reagan – does that make him a Republican?
Finally, in regards to the special session on immigration. You don’t believe this, but Romanoff’s political maneuvers at the beginning of that session prevented the Republicans from making a circus of the special session and allowing them to use immigration as a wedge issue for voters in the fall.
If you remember, then Gov. Owens called the session and Romanoff displayed excellent political skill and savvy in introducing that bill. He prevented worse bills from being debated and prevented bad bills from becoming law.
She’s a Focus on the Family Republican who switched parties on her way out to stick it to the lobbyist and her party leadership who were screwing her on some parochial issue.
Debbie Stafford is the woman who claimed domestic partnerships would upend the criminal justice system because cops and domestic violence counselors wouldn’t be able to tell who was pretending to be a man and who was pretending to be a woman.
But your prior comments still border on rabid.
And if Stafford is reading this, I apologize for calling you a progressive.
I am willing to give Romanoff the benefit of the doubt re the need for that savvy, political maneuvering, etc. Lawmaking is, indeed, a sausage factory and there is no purity to be found.
BIG PROBLEM: AR supporters will NOT accord Sen. Bennet the same benefit. You all fight every attempt to get at the details, nuances and need for political maneuvering that led to Bennet voting as he did in the instances that you use to demonize him.
So pardon me if my respect for the fairness and integrity of AR usual suspects is less than overwhelming.
In fact it’s not only ok- it’s good, smart and even a sign of excellence. But only if you are AR. For all other D’s its th emark of the devil or dinoism or some other bs.
In the end – it’s just campaign bs.
AR even said we should judge actions not words and his actions tell us all we need to know: he’d be as practical and pragmatic as he was int he past. maybe even more so because getting anything done in the US Senate requires it.
Key in your comment “because getting anything done in the US Senate requires . .” pragmatism and practicality. Those balanced with principle will garner my respect.
AR will not be a barn-burning lefty clone of Dennis Kucinich if he makes it to the Senate. What a shame for his true believers. And what a shame that the rest of us will have less respect and trust in him because of the way he’s campaigned.
First, don’t lump me into the crazy AR supporters here. I like the guy, voted for him, but that’s as far as it goes.
It makes me mad to see MB and AR supporters go at each other like this, but it is to be expected.
Second, you’re right, some AR supporters are making this race much more personal than it should be. There are nuances in every vote. There are politics on every vote. There are opportunities to be lambasted on every vote. The worst negative political ads (and they ALL suck) are the ones that claim a certain candidate voted a certain way on a certain bill without explain the complexities behind the politics. Happens all the time, but I still find them frustrating.
It’s politics. I hate it as much as you and think it denigrates otherwise good, respectable men, but they’re running a campaign and this is what it takes to get elected – sucks, but it’s true…
All good things to me – why has AR run away from that and tried to appear to be hard leftie progressive populist?
AR needs the support of voters who are likely to vote in a primary, which means the loonier base of the Democratic party.
He also needs to distinguish himself from MB to those same voters.
When he wins the primary we’ll see him come on back to the more moderate, pragmatic stance that his history reflects.
Happens all the time all over the country. Play to the base to get elected, govern from the middle.
Yes, however, in CO 2010, it’s a losing proposition.
The R is debating whether and how fast to repeal healthcare* and AR wants single payer.
The R is debating austerity to reign in the deficit and AR wants revenue neutral cap and trade.
The R is going to kill him – that’s why they want him to win the nomination.
A real lefty cannot win CO in 2010. Yes, move to the base in the primary and move to the middle in the general is tradition – but it’s not going to work for him in 2010 if he manages to win the primary.
It might for Buck
*I’ve always agreed we should repeal the death panels and the 16,500 IRS agents, armed or not.
but, what do I know?
A real lefty can’t win in Colorado and if AR wins the primary he’ll move to the middle once again. There are defensible, moderate points to counter the healthcare and deficit arguements you mentioned above and AR or MB will make them and look reasonable compared to either Republican candidate.
Will AR be too damaged by the positions he took in the primary, doubt it, but we’ll see….
In any case, I’m kinda surprised to see you jumped into this blog battle. Romanoff must have pushed one of your hot buttons.
short of a implosion from the R nominee.
He’s moved so left in the primary and the R’s and R leaning U’s will never believe him when he attempts to get back to the middle.
True U’s might agree that it was all traditional primary posturing – I’m not the only one who has sad so from the start – but then how are they supposed to believe he’s anything other than an opportunistic politician who will say anything to anyone to get elected?
And, of course, he will have pissed on the lefties (not like they aren’t used to it, esp in Colorado) and alienated more moderate D voters like me.
Unless he can find a bunch more D voters in a massive voter reg and GOTV – he’s done. On the bright side- his lack of PAC or DSCC money won’t matter.
Sorry, I don’t.
The things he’s moved to the left on are things the majority of voters support – stronger Wall St. reform, public option, broken Senate…
He said single payer and publicly financed elections.
Left.
If AR wins the primary many D’s will either hold their nose and vote for him, rally behind their candidate or not vote/undervote.
Personally, I think the first two will outweigh the third, but, again, we’ll see. I think the D’s will rally because Buck and Norton just aren’t viable choices for D’s and they won’t want to lost the seat.
We’ll see. All I know is I can’t wait until the primary is over!
And in COlorado math, they don’t go much farther left of center than they have to.
Bennet will do well in the precicnts and counties where Obama did well with U’s and even R’s. AR1.0- maybe. AR2.0 – NFW. Especially when they start asking themselves about what would AR3.0 do. And even if Buck doesn’t ask it- the push polls and 527’s will.
unless the Senate majority were clearly in jeopardy and he looked like he could win.
If he wins the primary, I will not vote on the senate line unless that condition exists, which it won’t, because he is not viable in the general election.
If you and others on either side of this primary fight are still too busy pouting as the general election nears, then of course the polls will continue to show the winning candidate to be not viable.
Get a grip.
Doesn’t Grossman run an “progressive” environmental group, isn’t Isgar an appointee of the Obama administration? Nichol, now a Adams County Commissioner (D), we all know that Paccione was the golden candidate that almost took out Musgrave. Oh, and Suzanne Williams is in a leadership position in the state Senate.
I’m not the biggest Romanoff fan in the world, but I guess all the rest of those Ds that are on this resolution should be painted with the same brush. And that isn’t even counting the Ds that actually voted for it. (Only 2 no votes in the Senate, only 8 in the House).
if he had stood up and said racial profiling is wrong and will forever be wrong, then he would have shown that he cared about civil rights.
If the R’s had passed a harsher bill, the government would have thrown it out.
Instead he served corporate interests by punishing people, and breaking up families of folk that work very hard.
Just as I’m not worrying about the similar gotcha resolution on Social Security.
I don’t even care that he was a co-sponsor; these resolutions were all about trying to paint Democrats in a bad light.
This resolution and a second similar one (I seem to recall from the same debate during the CO-02 election) had wording essentially supporting Bush in the war against terrorism (without mentioning pre-emptive strikes in Iraq) and then supporting the troops overseas (IIRC, the one mentioned here…).
This stuff is all gotcha politics, and I’m sorry to see (once again) Democrats attacking Democrats for votes Republicans created for just this purpose.
This resolution is all about how Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, is seeking more weapons of mass destruction, and needs to be bombed to keep him from getting more weapons of mass destruction. This is the same resolution as the one Joan Fitz-Gerald was excoriated for just voting for–not cosponsoring.
So was about 85% of the rest of the country, including our vaunted intelligence agencies, the news media, elected leaders, average citizens and most other world leaders.
Of course, I bet you knew all along there were no WMDs.
Me too. 😉
when Jared Polis raked Joan Fitz-Gerald over the coals for simply voting for the thing?
If it was a legitimate issue then, why is it not now?
Duh.
And don’t even get me started on Polis! 🙂
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but I don’t think that any intelligence agencies concluded that Saddam had viable weapons programs.
I think what you are remembering is what top Bush Administration officials said about the Intelligence Agencies, not what the agencies themselves said.
Bush, Chaney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, Tenet, these folks spoke to the press about what they said the Intel Community had concluded. They lied.
Infrequently, actual members of the IC leaked the actual findings, and they never supported what the politicians said.
Members in Congress with access to the IC knew better. When it came down to conscience vs. wet finger in the air, most chose to follow, rather than lead.
You say that only 15% were paying attention. I think it was more like 40%.
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Dick Cheney (if you are to believe such things) got his hands on the intelligence in such a way as to make things look much worse than they were.
One CIA analyst, if you’ll recall, stated that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes for the separation of fissile material. Other reports noted that we were never able to confirm destruction of all of Saddam’s WMD stockpiles. And then we had ‘Curveball’ stating that Saddam had restarted some WMD programs.
Reports counter to these were downplayed or removed from intelligence briefs released to some cabinet officials and most of the intelligence committees. This was enhanced by media and political efforts to downplay reports like the DOE analysis that said the aluminum tubes weren’t suitable for refining uranium but rather were good for making (legal) rockets.
This ridiculous game about who thought what about WMDs is totally irrelevant. Romanoff didn’t have to vote for this, and he certainly didn’t have to sign on as a sponsor.
What this shows is that Romanoff’s core progressive convictions, which I assume includes opposition to war, are an inch deep. Maybe it’s a common problem, but not among candidates running to the left and trashing their opponents as not progressive enough.
It’s so amazing that a politician would do this! Pander to a political base to get elected.
Say it isn’t so!
There are many assumptions bandied about these days, but I would wager that Romanoff opposes war.
It’s a common problem for many candidates, including ones who run to the left.
Methinks your passions are a little misplaced here.
And no, it’s not irrelevant. If the facts available at the time were generally supportive of this kind of resolution, then Romanoff’s decision was defensible.
See my post of the full resolution text below and see why he might have supported it. It was an attempt to diffuse Republican rhetorical attempts – and it was supported by most of the State House and Senate at the time for just that reason.
I don’t think people are going to care as much about this resolution in 2010 as they were in 2006. Too much has changed since then for this to be regarded in the same light.
2 years ago.
Oops. Still, things are quite different now (perception-wise) that Bush is gone and Obama is president. I haven’t seen or heard of any antiwar rallies since his inauguration.
They’re the ones whose perceptions shifted.
All of these points were substantially true according to intelligence reports presented at the time leading up to the war. Saddam did not/could not provide full and accurate documentation that his weapons program had been dismantled, and for some time in the lead-up to the war was belligerent in his threats and rebuttals against demands for full disarmament. He did in fact maintain a fund paying the families of terrorists attacking Israeli interests.
Of course, on-the-ground inspections and other intelligence reports later turned out to be correct, that Saddam’s WMD programs had been largely disassembled.
Also note that the resolution, like the AUMF at the Federal level, expresses support for Bush in attempts to disarm Iraq, or to remove him from power. By adding in the ‘disarm’ part, it gains the “gotcha” status I referred to.
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I think that, at the time, most folks I dealt with only thought that the one about using chemical weapons in Halabja was true.
And we understood that Saddam didn’t really consider them to be his own people. Saddam thought that these Kurdish Resistance fighters were coordinating with Iranian security forces.
When that attack actually happened, in 1988, the Reagan Administration went to great lengths to “investigate” and to conclude that chemical weapons were not used, or that Iran was responsible, despite evidence to the contrary. So the US government had already sanctioned that attack, many years before we flip-flopped and decried it.
I’m pretty sure that no intelligence agencies bought anything Curveball was selling, especially not domestic ones.
Bush latched onto it and trotted it out repeatedly, and it was denounced at every turn by intelligence professionals.
Most folks I talked to thought that the only connection to “global terrorists” was Solatia payments of $25,000 to the survivors of Palestinian suicide bombers.
The one about posing a threat to Israel is too silly to respond to.
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Chaney famously went to CIA with the stuff his internal “intelligence” operation had developed and attempted repeatedly to get them to sign off on it. The CIA never did, not at the level of experts and analysts. Only the political leadership at CIA accepted the cooked evidence.
But I understand the sway of jingoism, and the danger of standing up to a groundswell of wrongheaded opinion. This is the same choice Richard Haass, #2 at the State Department, faced. He caved, just like his boss Powell. They chose to go with the flow, and hold onto their positions of power, in case they may in the future get the chance to ameliorate the pure evil President Bush was about to unleash on a country that posed no threat to us.
They and everyone else at the top levels of the administration, and the Congress, faced that challenge, one way or another. Almost all failed.
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The public got to see Cheney’s cooked reports.
I am noting that, to a less-than-involved player, this resolution was unfortunately reasonable. State legislators aren’t expected to be foreign intelligence experts, and a meaningless resolution which supports efforts to “disarm” is something that’s hard to put off in a year when the President’s approval rating and support for the “War on Terror” was at near-record heights.
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Yeah, U right. I’m still not over the decision to invade, 8 years later.
I am still a little overwhelmed by the death and destruction wrought, and for what ?
And now my otherwise sensible neighbor is saying that we need more of these wars to keep Illinois from coming under Sharia.
Whoo-boy.
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You live next to Tom Tancredo?
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I’m up the hill to the South, in Somalia Springs, if yer in Denver Metro.
Tom’s in Littleton.
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As for the linked item, Tancredo proposed not admitting immigrants who advocated overturning our constitutional form of government.
How do you feel about that ? Do you oppose 18 U.S.C. В§ 2384 ?
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That’s a U.S. citizen Tom’s talking about. You might as well revoke citizenship based on people advocating for a Biblical law system.
The public got to see Cheney’s cooked reports.
I am noting that, to a less-than-involved player, this resolution was unfortunately reasonable. State legislators aren’t expected to be foreign intelligence experts, and a meaningless resolution which supports efforts to “disarm” is something that’s hard to put off in a year when the President’s approval rating and support for the “War on Terror” was at near-record heights.
that in the name of gotcha politics the Republicans created amendments and other maneuverings in the the US Senate that caused Bennnet and Udall to vote the way they did at various times?
But you will excuse any vote your candidate cast that look a little bit less pure and progressive? As Madco said, IOKIYAAR?
n/t