How opinions change.
Political Punch
Political Punch
It was a very different time, the Iraq war was just over a year old, and then-State Sen. Barack Obama was in a very different place.
In 2004, former "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel interviewed the keynote speaker of the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
It never aired, though it will air tonight.
Some very interesting stuff.
Koppel asked Obama about comments he'd made to the Chicago Tribune about the convention focusing on the war.
"There were people who supported the war and people who opposed the war inside that convention hall," Obama said. "But what people are unified about is that, when we make a decision to go to war, that it should not be ideologically driven, that it should be driven by a set of facts and common sense with regards to how we mobilize our country and our national interest.
"And I think that there is a strong feeling that, even among those that supported George Bush’s decision initially to go in, that there was some fudging of the numbers and shading of the truth, and that, as a consequence of our inability to create a strong alliance around our actions, that we are now stuck in a quagmire that is going to cost us not only billions of dollars, but thousands of lives, and will require a much longer-term commitment than the American voters had intended when they rallied behind the president."
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