The 2016 Democratic Nominee Must Be Someone Who Opposed The Iraq War

And unfortunately, that ain't Hillary. Greg Sargent explains it this way:

[T]he current line of questioning for Republicans and Hillary Clinton about Iraq — “would you have supported the invasion knowing what we know now?” — is deeply flawed, and risks whitewashing the real history of the run-up to the war. Now, however, it seems possible that this weak line of questioning might actually aid and abet the current GOP strategy for talking about Iraq. 

As Bob Costa notes, this whole history re-write thing by the GOP is ultimately geared toward blaming Obama -- and ultimately Hillary -- for what's going on in the Middle East right now:

The political endgame for Republicans is a general election where Clinton can be portrayed as someone who initially backed the U.S. mission but did not see it through. In that sense, foisting blame on Obama is only the first step in the GOP’s aims. Knowing their ownership of the invasion in the eyes of voters has not faded, they would like to distance themselves from the messy debate over weapons of mass destruction and make the Islamic State — how it rose and how to stop it — the central political battleground on foreign policy.

That's the whole problem -- Hillary supported the invasion of Iraq!  She is therefore in no position to call the GOP on all its recent history-rewriting bullshit, and neither is any Democrat who supports her run for the presidency.  And for Christ's Sake, we certainly can't count on the Mainstream Media to go after Jeb Bush and the rest of the GOP on this Iraq Re-Write Fuckery.

Indeed, perhaps the only folks who will ultimately be in the position to call bullshit on the GOP are the voters themselves, and that all depends on whether the American people have a good collective memory on how we got into Iraq in the first place.  But as I implied in my post yesterday, I think that memories might be fading in that regard.

UPDATE:  Obama chimed in on this debate today.  He said this (via Steve Benen):

"I'm very clear on the lessons of Iraq. I think it was a mistake for us to go in in the first place, despite the incredible efforts that were made by our men and women in uniform. Despite that error, those sacrifices allowed the Iraqis to take back their country. That opportunity was squandered by Prime Minister Maliki and the unwillingness to reach out effectively to the Sunni and Kurdish populations."

C'mon, Barack -- you can do better than that. Benen suggests the following:

I suspect, if I were in the president’s shoes, I might be tempted to say, “Wait, those guys who were wrong about everything and lied the nation into a catastrophic war that destabilized the region are trying to blame me? Are they insane?”

Fucking-A.