They're no longer in front of you each night but Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel are still huge in the social and professional circles of many in the news media business.   Tim Russert asked each for their opinions about the Iraq War recently and each said they thought Clinton would have done no differently than Bush - he would have gone to war.   Much of the discussion dealt with the underpinnings of Bush's rationale for going to war.   Russert and the gentlemen agreed that nobody questioned the WMD charge upon which Bush hung his hat.   They agreed that even had their been a Democrat administration in place, the same conclusions would have been reached.   No duh!   And they concluded that Clinton would have summoned up the troops and shipped'em off to Iraq.   Well, that conslusion is subject to a little more scrutiny.

Obviously you can conclude that Clinton would have had identical information since most of the intelligence was identical between the two administrations.   It was the Dem.s who first suggested that Saddam had WMD and that he might have transferred some over to terrorist organizations.   But nothing in Clinton's
actions while in office even remotely suggests he would have put significant numbers of troops in harm's way.   War is risky.   Clinton was risk averse unless it was for self-instant-gratification like sex play with interns.   There's not a single instance in his presidency when he took something that wasn't rock solid and ran with it beyond the trial-balloon stage.   Universal health coverage was perhaps "his" boldest move.   But as support for that waned, he pinned it to Hillary's blouse and dropped the issue.

What Bill Clinton would have done is fired some missiles from a ship safely located hundreds of miles from Iraq.   He might even have engaged the air force and navy in some bomb dropping to convince Saddam he was in earnest in an attempt to get the UN inspectors back in.   He might have gotten the French to apply some lip service to the UN sanctions.   But he would never have put troops on the ground in Iraq unless, and this is a big unless, there was absolute unanimity from the security council that Iraq was to be invaded.   And then the U.S. would have been a mere participant - would have made up less than half the force.   And as soon as there was any dissent, the house of cards would have crumbled.   You see, Clinton did in fact read polls.   He was driven by polls.   Clinton was controlled by acquiring power and if there was a way from him to achieve greatness without risking power, that would be fine.   But put risk into the equation and you could count on Clinton cutting and running.   Bill Clinton was, in fact, a holla-back girl.

The pro-liberal media pundits would like to take back all that anti-Bush, "he lied to us," "there's no evidence of WMD" talk.   They don't want any of us to think for even a moment that liberals or Democrats are whimpy when it comes to war, especially necessary war.   They are saying now that some level of victory has appeared on the horizon, "we would have done almost nothing differently."   Monday morning quarterbacks are boring.