Throw the flag against: Barack Obama.
Call: False start.
What happened: Obama ripped Hillary Clinton on Sunday for failing to read the National Intelligence Estimate before voting in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. He said she should've followed the lead of Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., contending that he, as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, did read the report and voted against the war.
"Jay Rockefeller read it, but she didn't read it," Obama told a rally in Westerville, Ohio. "I don't know what all that experience got her, because I have enough experience to know that if you have a National Intelligence Estimate and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says, 'You should read this, this is why I'm voting against the war,' you should read it."
At the same time, an Obama campaign strategist was on ABC lauding Obama's endorsement from Rockefeller, referring to him as "the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who opposed the war in Iraq, who read the intelligence before the war."
Why that's out of bounds:
First, former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., was the chairman of the intelligence committee at the time of the 2002 war vote, not Rockefeller. It was Graham who read the top secret report and voted against the war.
Second, Rockefeller voted FOR the war resolution.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Sunday evening that, "Barack Obama was clearly referring to Senator Graham, not Senator Rockefeller today."
But that's not what Obama or Axelrod said.
Penalty: Five yards for sloppy fact checking.
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