John Edwards 2008: What’s not to like

-Had you felt pressure to essentially recant on that vote?

-No, I don’t feel pressure today. I never felt any pressure. I thought it was the right thing for me to do. It was more important for me.

-If John Kerry were president and you were vice president, what would our Iraq policy look like today?

-I hope that we would — I can only speak for me, I can’t speak for John — I would hope that we would begin by telling the truth about how we got there. I think that is important, important in terms of the way the rest of the world views us.

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-How do you feel that the U.S. got into this fix — and you clearly think it’s a fix and it caused you to recant your vote in 2002? You must have thought a lot about this whole situation and how we got taken to war in a way that you clearly think was wrong.

-I think there were multiple things that happened at the same time. One is there was clearly bad information, bad intelligence — information that was given to the Congress, information that was given to the administration. I think in addition to that the administration hyped the information that was available to them, and I think they did as subsequent reports have indicated, cherry pick what was available to them. I think there were multiple things happening at the same time.

I’m only speaking on my own behalf now. I think that it’s very important for those of us who voted to take responsibility for our vote. I made my own judgment. I made it based on what I heard in the Intelligence Committee based on conversations with military leaders at the time, based on — and this is not insignificant — based on meetings with Clinton administration leaders including people like Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke and others. All of that information led me to the conclusion that was wrong.

From my perspective it’s important to hold Bush and others around him accountable for their misleading the American people, but I made my own independent judgment. And I’m responsible for that.

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-How optimistic are you that the Bush administration can bring it to a successful conclusion?

-Less optimistic. I didn’t want to spend all this time talking about the Bush administration, but I will since you’re asking. I want it to be clear in these tapes that I am responding to your questions because I think it is very important for us — the Democratic Party — to talk about a positive vision for the country and not spend all our energy on what’s wrong with George Bush.

The Fix Interview 3/13/06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/12/AR2006031200744.html

THC: What do you think about recent nominations by President Bush and how would you have voted?

JE: [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales—no. Although I have to say, so far he’s doing a reasonable job from what I’ve seen. I know him—I got to know the Attorney General reasonably well because I was on the [Senate] Judiciary Committee and I interacted with him a fair amount about judges when he was in the White House. I always found him to be smart and trustworthy in my interaction with him. My problem with him is he was directly connected to the abuse issue and was very involved in the administration’s dealings with torture and abuse, and I think it sends the wrong signal to the rest of the world.

snip

THC: And [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice?

JE: I would have voted against Condoleezza Rice. I will say the same thing I said about Gonzales: I think so far she’s actually done a pretty good job as Secretary of State. But her connection to the lead up to the Iraq War and the statements made by the administration and her continuing to stand by those statements in the face of overwhelming factual evidence was not right.

The Harvard Crimson, 4/14/05
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=507083