Duncan Hunter Draws a False Comparison

“I was an artillery officer, and we fired hundreds of rounds into Fallujah, killed probably hundreds of civilians. Probably killed women and children if there were any left in the city when we invaded. So, do I get judged too?”

— Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) said he probably killed “hundreds of civilians” while serving as an artillery officer in Fallujah, KPBS reports.

Trump Can’t Stop Lying about Opposing the Iraq War

logo-trump-lies-150In his speech on terrorism last week Donald Trump repeated the lie that he opposed the Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I was an opponent of the Iraq War from the beginning – a major difference between me and my opponent,” Trump said, reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter.”Though I was a private citizen,whose personal opinions on such matters were really not sought,I nonetheless publicly expressed my private doubts about the invasion. I was against it, believe me. Three months before the invasion I said, in an interview with Neil Cavuto, to whom I offer my best wishes for a speedy recovery, that quote, perhaps we shouldn’t be doing it yet and that the economy is a much bigger problem.”

Factcheck.org, the rigorously nonpartisan fact checking organization, says this statement is not true:

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Rumsfeld Now Claims He wWas Against Iraq War

I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories. The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.

— Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, telling the Times of London “that efforts to oust Saddam Hussein and replace his tyrannical regime with democracy were unworkable, and that he had concerns about the plan from the beginning.”

Axelrod Hits Clinton Over Her Criticism of Obam’s Foreign Policy Stance

Just to clarify: “Don’t do stupid stuff” means stuff like occupying Iraq in the first place, which was a tragically bad decision.

— Former Obama adviser David Axelrod on Twitter (@davidaxelrod), hitting back at Hillary Clinton for her comments rejecting President Obama’s self-stated foreign policy principle, “Don’t do stupid stuff.”

Clinton: Cheney’s Remarks on Iraq ‘Unseemly’

If they hadn’t gone to war in Iraq, none of this would be happening. Mr. Cheney has been incredibly adroit for the last six years or so attacking the administration for not doing an adequate job of cleaning up the mess that he made. And I think it’s unseemly. And I give President Bush, by the way, a lot of credit for trying to stay out of this debate and letting other people work through it.

— Bill Clinton, in an interview with NBC News.