When yesterday’s Seattle Times quoted Mike McGavick saying: “If I had been in the Senate then and we did not think [Saddam Hussein] was in active pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, I would have wanted diplomacy to be given a longer chance…” —which netted McGavick this nifty headline: “Both McGavick, Cantwell say they’d now vote no”— I was surprised. McGavick had said the opposite thing to me a few months ago.

So, I sent the following e-mail to McGavick’s campaign team:

Elliott, When I talked to McGavick last May (our first conversation)…we had an extensive talk about the war…going back and forth in a tangible, helpful way trying to clarify his position… He walked me thru his rap about how he thought executive war powers needed to be checked and that there needed to be a national conversation about that… That was his main point. He gave examples like Iran, and how, if that came before him as a Senator, he would want a redefinition of Congress’ oversight role before authorizing military action.

However, he also told me that despite his sense that the Senate didn’t do its job thoroughly on Iraq, he still would have voted with the Senate for the war in Iraq. That was a confusing moment in the interview for me. I thought it was inconsistent that he thought the Senate hadn’t provided enough oversight, but at the same time he thought the vote to go to war made sense. We discussed that point for a while, and I asked him if he would have voted for the war if he knew what we know now about the lacking WMDs. He told me: “Removing Saddam Hussein was important in the war on terrorism.” I took that to mean McGavick stood by the President’s belief that Saddam had to go regardless of what we know today. I told McGavick that, and he said I understood his position correctly.

Again, this was a slow and deliberate conversation because we both knew the war was a defining issue, and we were both interested in having McGavick’s position on the war be as clear as possible.
I think you’d agree that my coverage of McGavick’s position on the war has been thorough and accurate to date.

Sooooo: I was surprised to see this morning’s articles about McGavick’s statement that he wouldn’t have voted for the war if he knew the truth about Saddam Hussein and the WMD.
What brought about the change?

McGavick’s campaign chief Elliott Bundy called me back, and again, we tried to get to some clarity on McGavick’s position.

First Bundy said McGavick’s quote in the Seattle Times was in response to a “hypothetical question involving going back in time and rewriting history, using current knowledge about WMDs….If you’re willing to accept that hypothetical in which the world knew then that our intelligence was not accurate..then in that hypothetical Mike believes we should have given diplomacy a longer opportunity.”

But this doesn’t clarify the point. The meat of the matter is this: Since Saddam didn’t have WMD…does McGavick still think this war has a point? McGavick’s quote in the Seattle Times implied that WMD were the issue and so the war is questionable. No WMD=No Vote for the war. I asked Bundy A) Why, when I presented this hypothetical to McGavick back in May, did McGavick say he would have still supported the war & B) Were WMDs the issue or not?

Bundy said Hussein was “In violation of UN resolutions, and he was still a threat to the international community and ultimately if that meant removing him would be necessary—after diplomacy had run out—then we should.”

So, it seems McGavick actually doesn’t think WMD are the defining issue. McGavick is saying, if there were no WMD, he still may have decided to attack Iraq.

Indeed, Bundy reiterated McGavick’s original point to me. He said: “Was removing Saddam Hussein part of the war on the terror? Mike says, ‘Yes.’”

This upends the impression the Seattle Times headline—he’d now vote no— gave, which was: McGavick would take this war back.

Bundy also reiterated another point McGavick has made to me: Despite all the hard questions and debates about the war, it is inappropriate to debate the war right now. Bundy told me, “[McGavick] does not think it’s the best way to show support of our troops… for congress to focus on that debate at this time.”

p.s. Elliott, given that your boss doesn’t want people to debate the war, I do appreciate your willingness to talk to me about this stuff.