Background: America Rising needs to get their facts straight. Today they launched an attack against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, accusing her of distancing herself from the Administration’s decision to go to Congress for authorization on Syria. America Rising posted a partial video clip from the Q&A portion of her speech yesterday, where Secretary Clinton stated that Obama’s decision was “his and his alone.” If you listen to the rest of the video, however, Secretary Clinton reinforces her respect for President Obama’s decision, as she has from the beginning.
ATTACK: Secretary Clinton distanced herself yesterday from the Administration’s decision to go before Congress on Syria.
FACT: Secretary Clinton has made clear that, even though she advocated a plan to arm the Syrian rebels, it was “President Obama’s call” and she “respected his deliberations and decision.”
In her book Hard Choices, Secretary Clinton wrote, “[T]he risks of both action and inaction were high. Both choices would bring unintended consequences. The Presidents’ inclination was to stay the present course and not take the significant further step of arming rebels. No one likes to lose a debate, including me. But this was the President’s call and I respected his deliberations and decision. From the beginning of our partnership, he had promised me that would always get a fair hearing. And I always did. In this case, my position didn’t prevail.” [Hard Choices, 2014]
FACT: Secretary Clinton stated that the decision to go to Congress was President Obama’s and “what troubled him was not having support by what was by then a quite contentious Congress.”
In a question and answer session with former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Frank McKenna, Sec. Clinton said, “Well I had supported the President’s statements around that time that there had to be consequences. And people say, why did he draw this red line, you should never draw red lines, and in fact it was because the use of chemical weapons has been outlawed and ostracized since WWI. And it’s the kind of aggressive action that cannot be allowed to go forward. So even if you aren’t willing to support certain elements of the opposition with arms, the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons, which it was not clear at first and then it became clear that they had, had to be stopped. It was a threat to the region and it would just lift off the top of the Pandora’s box. So I said at the time that I supported the President saying that there would have to be consequences, and I supported the President going to the extent of saying there would have to be military consequences. The decision he made about going to the Congress was really his and his alone. And I really think what troubled him was not having support by what was by then a quite contentious Congress. Because even though we have what is called great ‘standoff military power,’ we have aircraft carriers, we have cruise missiles, we have all kinds of means of trying to pinpoint chemical weapons storage facilities or convoys, you are never going to predict what’s going to happen.” [Sec. Clinton speech at Toronto’s Sheraton Centre, 6/16/14]
FACT: Secretary Clinton reinforced her respect for the Administration’s decision to go to Congress on Syria, stating her thought that President Obama “knew he wanted to do something” and that “I made a statement endorsing the effort to get out, the chemical weapons.”
In a question and answer session with former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Frank McKenna, Sec. Clinton said, “[The] other problem is, militarily destroying chemical weapons is a terrible risk. You don’t know everything that’s in those warehouses. You don’t know what it means to blow them up. So, I think the President knew he wanted to do something, and do something very definite. But he also believed he wanted to get the Congress behind him because of unintended consequences. And then when the Russian’s responded that they’d work with the United States, I actually was prescheduled to be at the White House, which I write about, so I made a statement endorsing the effort to get out, the chemical weapons. And, you know, enormous progress has been made, so on the one hand it was kind of an unfortunate sequence of events, but on the other, the result people were trying to get has been largely achieved.” [Sec. Clinton speech at Toronto’s Sheraton Centre, 6/16/14]