Presidential hopeful Barack Obama joined other Democrats on Monday in suggesting that one of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent votes could lay the groundwork for going to war with Iran.
Clinton voted last month for a resolution urging the State Department to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, a move aimed at bringing additional economic pressure on Iran. The proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, but a small group of Democrats said they feared that labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force in Iran.
“There’s nothing wrong with identifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, but it is a problem when you start using Iran as a justification for troop structures in Iraq and providing language that could potentially lead to military action in Iran,” Obama told The Associated Press on Monday following a campaign event in Nashua. Obama missed the vote on the resolution because he was campaigning in New Hampshire.
“Sen. Clinton and others should have learned from 2002 that if you give President George Bush a blank check that he’ll cash it. You’ve got to be very cautious and very sober regarding any kind of language or rationale that leads him to make more disastrous foreign policy decisions,” Obama said.
During a debate held the day of the vote, former Sens. John Edwards and Mike Gravel took Clinton to task for voting for the Senate resolution. They said it signaled a march toward invading Iran.
“I have no intention of giving George Bush the authority to take the first step to war with Iran,” Edwards said, saying Clinton hadn’t learned the lessons, as he had, of voting in 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq.
Gravel congratulated fellow candidates Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd for voting against the resolution, then said, “And I am ashamed of you, Hillary, for voting for it. You’re not going to get another shot at this because what happens if this war ensues, we invade, and they’re looking for an excuse to do it. And Obama was not even there to vote.”
Clinton responded that her understanding of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran is that it is promoting terrorism. “It is manufacturing weapons that are used against our troops in Iraq. It is certainly the main agent of support for Hezbollah, Hamas and others,” she said. Voting to designate it a terrorist organization “gives us the options to be able to impose sanctions on the primary leaders to try to begin to put some teeth into all this talk about dealing with Iran,” she said.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson also has criticized Clinton’s vote
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