Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who is going after former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2002 vote to invade Iraq as he weighs a possible presidential run, said he doesn’t want to put the issue in the rearview mirror.
“A lot of people want to put it in the rearview mirror,” Mr. Chafee, a former Republican and independent, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Campaigns, you want to talk about decision-making and judgment and I don’t want to put it in the rearview mirror. That was a moment in time that jeopardized everything we’re dealing with today.”
“Do you think [the] decision to invade Iraq has made the Middle East better? I don’t,” he said. “And so you can’t put it in the rearview mirror.”
Mr. Chafee announced Thursday that he’s considering running for president as a Democrat. Mrs. Clinton, the undisputed front-runner for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2016, is reportedly expected to announce her candidacy within days.
She wrote in her book “Hard Choices” that she got the Iraq vote wrong, but it played a major role in the 2008 Democratic presidential nominating contest and served as a key point of difference between Mrs. Clinton and President Obama, then a U.S. senator.
With regard to Iran, Mr. Chafee said: “Of course we should be talking with them.”
“That’s what we did right during the Cold War — talking with China, talking with Russia, ping pong teams going back and forth to China and dealing with Gorbachev — that’s the right way to make peace,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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