Hillary's Fantasy Speech

Gary Kamiya over at Salon has penned a wonderful speech that Hillary Clinton might give in a perfect world. In this perfect world, she would be perfectly in tune with her Democratic base as well as with most Independents and even many Republicans. The fact that she never would, and genetically never could, even come close to delivering this speech, is only an indication of how far removed from the truth is the deception she has been living... how far from being honest with her constituents and the electorate she has been. Here is a little taste:

Until now, I have been saying, "If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have voted for it." That is a pathetic evasion. So let me say it clearly and forthrightly. I was wrong to vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq. Like most of my blue-state Democratic colleagues, I voted for the war out of cowardice, for purely self-serving political reasons. I didn't want to appear "soft on terrorism." I knew I was giving an incompetent president surrounded by ideologues with dubious motivations carte blanche to launch an unjustified and incredibly risky war. And I did it to save my own political skin.

Moreover, I knew I was wrong even as I did it. It was the greatest mistake of my life, and I will never stop regretting it. I will feel to my last breath that I bear some share of responsibility for an unjustified war that has become America's greatest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, and has needlessly cost the lives of more than 3,000 American troops and as many as 700,000 Iraqis.

[snip]

For far too long I have been a follower, not a leader, timidly shaping my views to correspond to some imagined political center, some vague sense of a "silent majority." It's the same gutless deference to "Middle America" that caused the media to cave in to Bush's war. Well, I've decided it's time to lead, not follow. The truth is, Middle America is more sensible, and conservative in the traditional sense, than we give it credit for. And it's waiting for someone to tell it the truth.

There are many more big and juicy truths, facts and insights that we will never hear from the mouth of the Senator from New York, even though this knowledge, we sense, must exist in her mind to a great degree. Read the entire thing. It's an eye opener.