My comment: If Hillary refuses to admit that her Iraq vote was a mistake and instead chooses to beat around the bush like her husband di on Monica, then her candidacy maybe finished. Her refusal to do so would reinforce her arrongant image in the minds of the people.
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Clinton gets third degree over Iraq
February 12, 2007
BERLIN, New Hampshire: Campaigning in New Hampshire for the first time as a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton refused to admit that her vote in 2002 for military action in Iraq was a mistake - one of several times the senator came under scrutiny about the war.
During the town hall meeting in this economically struggling city on Saturday, the Democrat contender said President George Bush and his advisers came into power in 2001 with an obsession to oust Saddam Hussein and resolve the "unfinished business" of the first Gulf War.
"I'm not a psychiatrist," Senator Clinton said. "I don't know all of the reasons behind their concern, some might say their obsession."
However, she had difficulty in explaining her evolution from being a strong supporter of the war in 2003 to becoming a staunch critic today.
A member of the 300-strong audience asked her to say plainly and "without nuance" that her Senate vote to use force in Iraq in 2002 was a mistake. "Until we hear you say that, we're not going to hear all these other great things you've said," the questioner said.
Clinton has not been willing to go as far as some of her Democratic rivals and say that her 2002 vote was a mistake.
On Saturday she repeated her standard response, saying she would never have cast the vote if she had had the intelligence information in 2002 that she had now.
"I've taken responsibility for my vote," Clinton said.
"The mistakes were made by this president."
Her comments came the day after a Pentagon watchdog agency released a report into the prewar intelligence, containing new charges that the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence to make its case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.
Clinton received her most enthusiastic standing ovation when she promised to end the war.
"If I had been president in 2003, I never would have started this war, and if it is not ended when I'm president in 2009, I will end it."
smh.com.au |
