The Rest of the Story

Just as Bob Schaffer did when he read the first half of Mark Udall's resolution to prevent George W. Bush from invading Iraq, Bob Schaffer has been pushing a video on YouTube showing only the first part of his answer to the original question. We bring you the rest of his answer, and it isn't pretty.

Big Oil Bob's Big Oil War Profiteering

While we tend to find the rhetoric of "war profiteering" to be a bit overheated, the fact remains that Bob Schaffer went to Iraq at the height of the war to negotiate contracts with the Kurdistan regional government against the wishes of President Bush, the State Department, and the Iraqi national government.

Liberal activist group Progress Now asks the question: Would you support a candidate who voted for the war and then went to Iraq to profit from it?



We believe that there are lots of companies and people who profit from war, and that is at least a somewhat unavoidable consequence of privatizing our military to corporations like KBR. More important to us as independent, security-conscious voters is the possibility that Bob Schaffer's actions of supporting a regional regime inside of and in opposition to the national regime in Iraq will destabilize the country, prolong the war, and cause needless loss of American soldiers as well as civilians.

Rebutting Bob Schaffer's Sleazy Attack

Vince Carroll of the Rocky Mountain News gets it exactly right.

Carroll begins:

Republican Bob Schaffer has spent the week suggesting that his opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Mark Udall, is a hypocrite because he sponsored a resolution in 2002 denouncing Saddam Hussein in the strongest terms, stipulating that he possessed a variety of terrible weapons and describing Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The resolution was even billed as a "preliminary authorization for the use of force against Iraq."

If you fail to look closely, you could easily conclude that the supposedly anti-war Udall was actually on the same page as the congressional majority that ultimately did authorize war - and that Udall's vote against their resolution amounted to splitting hairs.

That's rubbish. Schaffer should cut it out.

Here's where Mark Udall stood on the war in 2002 and where he stands on it today: