Obama's record shows caution, nuance on Iraq
WASHINGTON -- As Senator Hillary Clinton continues to take heat for her vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq, her presidential rival, Senator Barack Obama has used his long-running opposition to the war as a cornerstone of his campaign, telling enthusiastic supporters that he opposed the war from the beginning -- a claim neither Clinton nor the other top-tier Democratic contenders can make.
But a review of Obama's record during his 26 months in Congress reveals that he has taken a more nuanced and cautious position on the war than the full-bore opposition.
Campaigning for the Illinois Senate seat in 2003 and 2004, Obama scolded Bush for invading Iraq and vowed he would "unequivocally" vote against an additional $87 billion to pay for it. Yet since taking office in January 2005, he has voted for four separate war appropriations, totaling more than $300 billion.
Last June, Obama voted no to Senator John F. Kerry's proposal to remove most combat troops from Iraq by July 2007, warning that an "arbitrary deadline" could "compound" the Bush administration's mistake. And last week, he voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution that stated the Senate would not cut off funding for troops in Iraq.
Though liberals want Congress to stop funding the war in order to end it, Obama has indicated that he will vote for the latest $95.5 billion Iraq appropriation when it comes before the Senate this spring.
Aides say the senator's opposition to the war has been strong and consistent. They said he opposed the initial $87 billion as a Senate candidate because the White House wanted to set aside $20 billion of it for reconstruction, and Democrats feared the money would be distributed in no-bid contracts.
Obama has voted for war appropriations because he wants the troops provided for fully, said Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman. Aides said that Obama has criticized the war several times early in his Senate career, but that he delayed rolling out specific plans and major Senate speeches while learning about his new office.
"He was against it from the very start and has a clear plan to bring a responsible end to the conflict," Burton said.
But last week the New York Post quoted Bill Clinton questioning Obama's position on Iraq, and Obama's antiwar position sparked a testy exchange between two panelists at a Harvard University forum last night.
Mark Penn, a Clinton pollster, criticized Obama for not detailing his position on the war and voting for Iraq appropriations. "Senator Clinton has taken responsibility for her vote," Penn said. "I think the voters are smart enough to get the full records of the candidates."
But David Axelrod, a top Obama strategist, told Penn that Obama is being cautious about an Iraq withdrawal strategy and chided Penn for attacking a Democratic comrade. "Are we going to spend the next 10 months savaging each other?" Axelrod said.
Still, the contrast between Obama's rhetoric and his votes in the Senate could damage his reputation among anti war liberals, some of his strongest supporters.
John Cabral, a member of the Oak Park Coalition for Truth and Justice, an anti war group in suburban Chicago, said Obama now seems more concerned with avoiding Republican accusations of harming the troops than ending the war. "It's disappointing that he got swallowed up in the Senate in his two years there," Cabral said. "He didn't do some of the things we would have liked him to. He is worried about his political future."
Since he decided to run for president in January, Obama has contrasted his anti war credentials with other contenders : Four of his Democratic rivals -- Senators Clinton of New York, Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, as well as John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina -- voted for the war in 2002.
Obama, an Illinois state senator at the time, has taken numerous indirect shots at his rivals: "We're in the midst of a war that never should have been authorized," he told supporters at a March 10 rally in Dubuque, Iowa.
Obama's aides hand out copies of a 2002 speech he gave in Chicago, two weeks after the Senate gave President Bush the power to wage war. In it, Obama denounced the coming war as "dumb" and "rash" and said members of Bush administration were trying "to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives and in hardships borne."
In recent weeks, Obama has said his early opposition to the unpopular war is significant.
"I think it's a contrast between me and the other candidates," he told The Des Moines Register earlier this month. "I have consistently believed that this war was not just a problem of execution, but was a problem of conception."
As a Senate contender in October 2003, with the Senate on the verge of approving the $87 billion war budget, Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times that approving additional funds "enables the Bush administration to continue on a flawed policy without being accountable to the American people" or to the troops.
A few weeks later, at a Democratic forum outside Chicago, Obama said that he would have "unequivocally" voted against the $87 billion "because, at a certain point, we have to say 'no' to George Bush." As Democrats, "If we keep on getting steamrolled, we are not going to stand a chance," he said.
Nevertheless, Obama had muted some of his strident criticism of the war even before arriving in Washington. In 2004, Obama defended pro war votes by Kerry and Edwards, that year's Democratic presidential ticket; although he thought the invasion was wrong, "there is room for disagreement," he said.
After taking office, Obama criticized the war in other settings but did not deliver a major speech about Iraq until November 2005 -- 11 months after taking office.
Obama initially ruled out a 2008 presidential run, but shifted gears in January and formed a presidential exploratory committee and made his candidacy official last month. He has ramped up his criticism of the war since then and is now pushing a bill that sets a goal of withdrawing combat troops from Iraq by the end of March 2008. But unlike Kerry's withdrawal plan, Obama's bill would not set firm deadlines and would allow troops to remain in Iraq if the government meets specific benchmarks.
As last week's vote attests, Obama opposes using Congress's power of the purse to force the war to end. That's a deep disappointment to some liberals, who recall Obama as a Senate candidate speaking forcefully at antiwar rallies.
And with liberals questioning Clinton's support for the war, her camp is fighting back. According to the Post, her husband quoted Obama as saying "I'm not sure" when he was asked how he would have voted on the 2002 war resolution. A spokesman for the former president declined to comment, and the public record could not verify the quote attributed to Obama, who has consistently said that he would have voted no based on what he knew at the time.
But Obama has often added a caveat: He did not have access to the classified intelligence that members of Congress saw, and he might have voted differently if he had.
Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com. Susan Milligan of the Globe staff contributed to this report from Cambridge. 