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Citizen in Exile: Lincoln Chafee (Part 2)
Citizen in Exile: Lincoln Chafee (Part 2)
In the second part of our chat former Senator Lincoln Chafee makes the Iraq war vote “totally disqualifying” for higher office.

Lincoln Chafee at Watson
It’s a ban on all the Senators running except Barack Obama, an anti-war voice who hadn’t reached the Senate in 2002. The premise that Saddam Hussein, contained by arms inspectors and no-fly zones, was a threat beyond his borders “was so grossly hollow,” Chafee remembers from his own researches. “Even the Kuwaitis, who’d been invaded by Saddam, were telling us: don’t do it.” It’s Chafee’s guess that some unpredictable reckoning of responsibility for the war is still to come; that the striking feature of the early race for ’08 is the quiet unhappiness with the choices so far. “Americans would rather have a vigorous exchange,” he says. “We need a good tilt.”
Click to listen to part two of Chris’s conversation with Lincoln Chafee(15 MB MP3)
But who is to demand the reckoning? And to pick up the pieces from the fractured front-runners?