John Edwards: I Voted For the War Because I Was Burdened With Information

From Althouse, a particularly dumb comment from Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on “Meet the Press.”

Edwards, who now vehemently opposes the war, is confronted with the fact that Barack Obama opposed the war at a time when Edwards was voting for it.

He wasn’t burdened like a lot of us with the information that we were receiving on the intelligence committee and as members of the United States Senate. We were getting very detailed, intimate information about what was actually happening in Iraq.

Yes, Senator, you were. And it led you to favor the war. And your opposition now looks opportunistic.

Interestingly, Edwards doesn’t claim that the Bush Administration bears the responsibility for hoodwinking him.

SEN. EDWARDS: For the same reason a lot of people were wrong. You know, we — the intelligence information that we got was wrong. I mean, tragically wrong. On top of that I’d — beyond that, I went back to former Clinton administration officials who gave me sort of independent information about what they believed about what was happening with Saddam’s weapon—weapons programs. They were also wrong.

[. . .]

I’m not defending what I did. Because what happened was the information that we got on the intelligence committee was, was relatively consistent with what I was getting from former Clinton administration officials.

All this, of course, is perfectly consistent with saying that Bush made a mistake invading Iraq. But it’s not consistent with saying he was some sort of Machiavellian manipulator.