"Because he's (literally) regurgiating GOP talking points."

Yes Edwards is not only repeating the GOP defense for the Iraq war (it was Clinton's fault) Edwards direct quotes are used by the GOP to attack Hillary Clinton.

There were other credible expert sources at the time saying the intelligence was crap, notably Scott Ritter, who served from 1991 to 1998 as a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq in the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), which was charged with finding and destroying all weapons of mass destruction and WMD-related manufacturing capabilities in Iraq.  He provided the content for a scathing book called War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know in 2002 and said things like:

There's no doubt Iraq hasn't fully complied with its disarmament obligations as set forth by the Security Council in its resolution. But on the other hand, since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed: 90-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capacity has been verifiably eliminated... We have to remember that this missing 5-10% doesn't necessarily constitute a threat... It constitutes bits and pieces of a weapons program which in its totality doesn't amount to much, but which is still prohibited... We can't give Iraq a clean bill of health, therefore we can't close the book on their weapons of mass destruction. But simultaneously, we can't reasonably talk about Iraqi non-compliance as representing a de-facto retention of a prohibited capacity worthy of war.

We eliminated the nuclear program, and for Iraq to have reconstituted it would require undertaking activities that would have been eminently detectable by intelligence services.

If Iraq were producing [chemical] weapons today, we'd have proof, pure and simple.

Wouldn't that have been enough to make you wonder what was going on?  It did me.  And, while not disputing the intelligence Hans Blix' briefing to the UN on 14 February 2003 is worth considering.  Anyone who gave it a close reading would have been forgiven a reasonable doubt about the statements coming out of the White House at the time, although Blix does say that he was not privy to intelligence on WMD's or deny governments might have additional information.  Blix later denounced the administration quite strongly.

Incidentally, Ritter wrote a book last year called Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change which is probably worth a read.  He has done a lot of anti-war work with Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker, who is no lightweight, since the invasion.

I just read the piece, you linked below.  I don't arrive at the same conclusion you do (and I don't think this is because I like Edwards - in fact, I like almost all of our candidates quite a lot.)  I don't see Graham saying "the senators in the Intel Committee knew the evidence the white house presented was BS".  You would have to be much more clear about which "evidence" you are referring to.

What he does say is that NIE he requested contained reservations, particularly about the case for Saddam's nuclear program. Edwards himself has said the case for nukes at that time was questionable, but the case for bio & chem was considered very strong.  I do not see Graham really disputing this in his article.  Graham says he was, at the time, particularly interested in knowing what the intelligence community believed about Saddam's willingness to use WMD; their assessment was he would likely use it only if attacked. Such an assessment, of course - and Graham's inquiry - was based on the presumption that the WMD existed.

(If I recall correctly, Graham himself had a somewhat unique position: while not hawkish toward Iraq, he was quite hawkish toward Hezbollah.  Fortunately Israel was relatively quick - I mean, compared to the U.S. in Iraq - to realize that its invasion of Lebanon to eradicate Hezbollah, on the pretense of getting their soldier returned, was a fiasco.)

Assuming one believed Saddam did have hidden stocks of bio & chem weapons - which was the conventional wisdom at the time, even among those who voted against AUMF - could a principled case be made for voting to give the president the authority to use military force to find and dismantle these weapons?  Post-9/11, is it unreasonable to believe that many in Congress actually thought a principled case could be made for such a policy?  Yes, I think so.

However, I believed at the time, and still do, that "preventive war" is highly immmoral.

I wish Edwards would say that he believes preventive war is a terrible idea.  I don't think he's said that.  Not that I think he or any candidate would actually engage in preventive war. (No one is really likely to follow in the footsteps of this batshit crazy administration.) I'd just like to hear all of our candidates take a formal stand against preventive war.  

between september and the vote in October.

Clearly, graham was the only one who asked the questions.

however, it was not a slam dunk from his statement that there were or were not WMDs.

Their seemed to be a sales job going on for almost a year before the vote to cherry pick the reports and omit pertinent "anti-war" data.

"On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not." - -Grahams final statement wasn't as simple as everyone should have known better, but caveat emptor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat_empt or

meaning he didn't trust the administration enough to believe anything they were saying..  the sales job and cherry picking seems more in-advance than I had known about

"Source on the speeches?"

I provided it in the original message.  "Meet the Press".  The Republicans are already quoting Edwards' line that Iraq was due to bad intelligence by Clinton admin.

I watched that Meet the Press. There is nothing new there. Edwards made the same comment in a recent New Yorker article which interviewed him, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama regarding Iraq.

Edwards was saying that he arrived at the conclusion Saddam had bio & chem stocks not merely from what he heard on the Intel Cmte, but also by consulting with former Clinton Admin officials to get their take.  There's nothing unusual about consulting with the past admin as a reality check; it's a smart idea.  Edwards says no one of these Clinton officials disagreed on this issue. This is not hard to believe, considering that Al Gore himself was convinced, in the fall of 2002, that Saddam had bio & chem. If Gore was convinced, it's quite reasonable to believe whichever Clinton officials Edwards talked to were also convinced.

Of course it's no surprise the GOP would take Edwards's completely innocuous comment and distort it into "Edwards blames Clinton for Iraq War".  

My question is:  why would you?

Members of the Senate Intelligence COmmittee saw more information than the average member of the House or Senate.  That is a fact.

Now, Bob Graham saw the same thing Edwards saw, and it is fair to ask Edwards why yhe reached a different conclusion than Graham did.  My understanding is that Graham's initial position was that the War would be too focused on Iraq and not a wide enough front against terrorism.

Edwards himself has said he resolved his doubt by giving the President the benefit of the doubt, to all of our great regret.

I reached a similar conclusion.  I thought it was probably a bad idea, but if John Edwards and PM Blair said it was a good idea and a necessary thing, then I trusted them.

Turns out that was wrong.  And the guy who got us into this was not John Edwards, it was George Bush.