NY Times falsely suggested that Hagel and Clinton took different votes on Iraq war resolution

In a January 14 New York Times article, reporter Eric Lipton suggested that Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) took different positions on the 2002 resolution that authorized the use of force against Iraq. But, like Clinton, Hagel voted for the resolution (H.J. Res. 114), a fact nowhere to be found in Lipton's article.

Lipton reported that Sen. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton "appear[ed] to misconstrue the facts" in pointing to Hagel's assertion that his support for the resolution was, in Hillary Clinton's words, "not a vote for war" but rather "a vote to use the threat of force against Saddam Hussein, who never did anything without being made to do so." As purported evidence for the claim that the Clintons misconstrued the facts, the Times article suggested that the Clintons' assertion that Hagel "helped to draft the resolution" was contradicted by the fact that the version of the bill that Hagel helped write -- which "authorized only to secure the destruction of Iraq's unconventional weapons, not to enforce 'all relevant' United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq" -- was not the version that ultimately passed and that Hillary Clinton voted for.

Instead, a "slightly less restrictive" authorization bill passed, according to the Times. Yet at no point in the article did the Times note that, like Clinton, Hagel voted for the final version of the resolution, or that he praised the sponsors of the Senate version of the bill (which is "substantially similar" to the House version that passed) for reaching "a far more responsible and accountable document than" the version of the bill the White House was pushing.....

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