These wacky antiwar Dems and their shifting...

"Revisionist History" (John Hinderacker at Powerline blog)


A reader points out a remarkable bit of revisionist history in Barack Obama's Nobel Prize speech. No doubt others have commented on it and I've just missed it; but, in any event, it bears repeating. Here is the excerpt from Obama's speech:

Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait - a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.

Really? "The world" "recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein"? Well, not all of the world did. Our reader comments:

"It strikes me that this is real news. His Oneness endorsing Gulf War I as a just war!!!...So NOW He tells us???!!!.....did He talk to Slow Joe Biden about that?..John Kerry?...ALL the many, many Dems who opposed that.....and in the FACE of U.N. endorsement!!!....the entire left opposed Bush I on this....

"Furthermore, the Iraq War Resolution was based in part, and certainly as a legal matter, on the Gulf War I post-war settlement...the armistice....REPEATEDLY violated by Saddam Hussein in every respect....including inspections for illegal WMD....

"You cannot endorse Gulf War I ---- and not just as a "realist" strategic "war of choice" but as a "just war"....REQUIRED by morality to "confront" "aggression" --- and oppose the IWR which on one level is just enforcing the UN judgment on Gulf War I.

"If we had listened to all of His Oneness's pals --- including His own VP!!!!....Saddam Hussein would still be alive, still be in Kuwait and possibly Saudi Arabia with control of world oil pricing.....and ALREADY have nukes....if we had listened to them....

"Everything they've touched they have screwed up or got wrong.....on THEIR OWN NARRATIVE!!!!!.....So why do they have ANY credibility now??"

They don't, of course. Our reader is right. The vote in the Senate on the authorization of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, which took place on January 12, 1991, was 52-47. The Democrats controlled the Senate at the time; they voted 45-10 against the "consensus" on "the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait." John Kerry, Joe Biden and 43 other Democrats voted to let Saddam Hussein keep Kuwait and expand his control over Middle Eastern oil from there, while continuing to develop nuclear weapons--which, we later learned, he would have had by 1992 or 1993, at the latest.

In the House, the story was similar. The vote was 250-183, with a large majority of Democrats voting with Saddam Hussein. Sure, it would be possible to be more pathetic on national security than the Democratic Party, but it wouldn't be easy. What is interesting about all of this is the Democrats' need to rewrite history. Can anyone doubt that if Barack Obama had been in the Senate in 1991, he would have joined 45 of his Democratic colleagues in voting for Saddam Hussein's control over the Middle East? Of course not. Yet today, Obama is forced to pretend that ousting Saddam was a "consensus" decision taken by "the world." Thus does truth force itself on even the most unwilling auditors.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/12/025154.php