I know people hate her, but how was she not qualified?
People often say lots of things “disqualify” someone, rather than just looking at a set of prerequisites. I personally thought her vote on the AUMF was a war crime. I thought her vote on the MCA was abhorrent. I’m sure some people would say that because she used e-mail, she’s disqualified, but I’m not among them. I don’t think these things disqualify so much as significantly push down her appeal. Frankly if she’d never been a Senator, and she’d only been Secretary of State and First Lady (and all her qualifications from before), I may have happily voted for her, rather than with the same shudder I gave when I voted for Kerry. Nevertheless, the fact that she had any qualifications at all, and that she wasn’t endorsed by the Klan, and that she wasn’t the Kremlin’s pick, put her over the top for me. It’s a low bar, but she cleared it easily.
As for qualifications, she doesn’t rank up there with Jefferson or Bush I, but she’s up there. She was extremely qualified. But her record as a Senator was troubling.
So she’s a war criminal, but at least she’s not endorsed by people you don’t like?
I think “war criminal” is a bit hyperbole. It was a vote to use force against terrorists days after 9/11.
There are lots of opinions on that matter, but I’m using the Nuremburg standard. The AUMF was a blank check to someone who’d already made it very clear he planned to attack the Iraqis on any dreamed up pretext. If Bush had been a little more guarded about his plans, or if there was ever any credible link between Iraq and Sept 11, there’d be more room for argument. As it was, Hillary knew the Iraqis posed no threat, and she knew she was authorizing an attack on them. The only thing she didn’t know is that we weren’t just planning to attack, we were planning to occupy–and that there would be political fallout because of that. Had she known that, she may have calculated differently.
She was fortunate that Trump was also in the “I supported the invasion until it started losing popularity” club, or he may have gotten more votes than her.
Oh you mean the Iraq Resolution? Well that’s a bit different, though we still should remember people thought they had WMDs at the time.
Which the Bush administration deliberately LIED ABOUT just so his cabinet could get rich off Iraqi oil reserves (and no, this isn’t a conspiracy theory). Cheney planned the invasion and occupation of Iraq all the way back in 1992, and all he needed was a terrorist attack to justify imperial conquest (again, 9/11 was preventable, this is not a conspiracy either, read the commission report).
Half a million civilians were murdered in Iraq by Bush administration, and yet none of the people responsible will ever face punishment for their war crimes. This is the reason why today the government can check every single person’s internet and phone call history without regard civil liberties. This is why Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden sacrificed their freedom to expose the Orwellian dystopia the United States has become int he last fifteen years. This is why Donald Trump became president and ISIS took over in the Middle East. This is why any nonwhite person can be detained regardless of guilt or innocence, and spend the rest of their lives imprisoned at a CIA black site because of suspected terrorism.
All this happened because an illegitimate presidency (Bush v Gore installed it) wanted to make more money at the expense of the rest of the world.