Why is it so hard for Democrats to say this?

When Harry Reid brought attention to the slow-rolling Republicans in the Senate who are working day and night to make sure nothing is accomplished in the way of finding out whether or not the President lied to get us into the war, he was asked:

Knowing what you know now, would you vote for the war in Iraq?

My guess is that this is going to be a recurrent question from reporters who take their cue from the Republican disinformation machine. Therefore, as a public service, I am offering this simple answer for use by any Senator who needs it, whether or not she is running for President.

Let’s get something straight right now. I didn’t vote for this war when I voted to authorize the President to use force.

Knowing what I know now, I never would have trusted him. What we know now is that he was cherry picking the intelligence, and then twisting it to make his case. That’s what we know now and I suspect we will find out much worse when the full story comes out. So far, we know that the White House undertook a vicious campaign to ruin anyone who disagreed with it, and when they crossed the line into treason, the response was to lie to the FBI, lie to the Grand Jury and otherwise obstruct justice.

We gave the President authority to use force at a time when we were trying to convey to Saddam Hussein that there was no alternative but to cooperate and produce the evidence of dismantling his WMD regime. But we did not expect the President to go into Iraq without adequate troops, without an exit strategy, and without a plan for the peace. If we had known that he would run the war like the incompetent bungler he has proved to be, if we had known that he would use the war as an opportunity for profiteering by his cronies, if we had known that it would be a distraction from the war on terror, and that because he would fail to listen to military planners the country would become a breeding ground for terrorists, well, don’t be ridiculous, of course we wouldn’t have voted to trust the President.

... and tell 'em Big Mitch sent ya!