Obama’s Iraq Attacks: Some History

ABC News’ Rick Klein Reports: Newsweek reported Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign is eagerly pointing out a passage in a speech Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton gave in 2002 in explaining how Obama’s views on Iraq differed from Clinton’s at the time.

"Intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability and his nuclear program," Clinton, D-N.Y., said in 2002, in explaining her decision to vote for the war. "He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001."

But it bears remembering that while Obama came out against the war publicly before Congress voted to authorize, he has also conceded publicly that he had he had access to the same intelligence available to members of Congress, he may have come to a different conclusion.

In his 2006 memoir, "The Audacity of Hope," he described the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in roughly similar terms as Clinton did in 2002.

"Like most analysts, I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear arms," Obama wrote. "I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UN resolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences. That Saddam butchered his own people was undisputed; I had no doubt that the world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him."

In the book, Obama goes on to explain that he still thought the threat posed by Saddam "was not imminent." As he said in Iowa on Wednesday, "The case for war was built on exaggerated fears and empty evidence. . . . But conventional thinking in Washington lined up for war."