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See Timeline of Obama's Support More from ABC TPMCAFEThe myth has arisen because Obama didn't want to badmouth other Democrats in the middle of the competitive 2004 election cycle. "Reporters asked Mr. Obama about the Democratic presidential ticket throughout the 2004 campaign, because Senators John Kerry and John Edwards had both voted for the Iraq war resolution. In an interview with The New York Times in July 2004, he declined to criticize Mr. Kerry or Mr. Edwards over the Iraq vote, but also said that he would not have voted as they had based on the information he had at the time."But, I'm not privy to the Senate intelligence reports," Mr. Obama said. "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made."The Clinton campaign has lifted part of that comment - "I don't know" - to question whether Mr. Obama would have opposed the war resolution had he been in the Senate at the time. The campaign has also cited other remarks Mr. Obama made in 2004, when he said there was "room for disagreement" on the war resolution vote." Link"Mr. Obama's criticism of the war led him to say, in 2003, that he would have opposed the $87 billion emergency spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. Once elected to the Senate in 2004, however, Mr. Obama voted in favor of spending bills for the Iraq military campaign and the troops there.An Obama spokesman said yesterday that Mr. Obama's only problem with the $87 billion bill was the roughly $20 billion part for reconstruction and no-bid contracts. But the subsequent spending bills Mr. Obama voted for also included similar allocations. Mr. Burton, the Obama spokesman, said those bills were less problematic because the money was better accounted for.Yesterday, on a conference call with reporters, Mr. Obama said his votes for Iraq spending bills did not contradict his opposition to the war."Once we were in, we were going to have some responsibility to try to make it work as best we can," Mr. Obama said, according to The Associated Press. "More importantly, you make sure the troops are supported." (The Iraq war began in the spring of 2003, however, so the troops were already in when the $87 billion bill came up for a vote.)"LinkThe bottom line is that there is indeed, some amount of inconsistency in Obama's position and actions on the Iraq war.