Hillary Rodham Clinton's Changing War Strategy

By Stanford Matthews
Blog @ MoreWhat.com


On March 8, 2007 Hillary Rodham Clinton published a press release on her website called ' Hillary Clinton: Supporting Our Troops.' The PR contain an opening statement 'calling for immediate steps to better train and equip our troops and get them the care they need when they return home.' It is followed by four of her concerns about the troops. She was concerned about improving mental health care, the disability system, orphans and a GI Bill of Rights. That's all fine but no where does she mention opposition to the war which is all she has talked about since it became popular for Democrats as their central theme for the 2008 campaigns.

She claims she voted for the authorization for military force in Iraq based on intelligence that has since been designated as faulty. Few in Congress even bothered to read the intel much less try to determine its accuracy. It is convenient to use the excuses Hillary Rodham Clinton wants you to believe are valid. She also claims she voted for a measure that would limit the President's authority for war in Iraq to one year. Setting time limits while authorizing troops into battle? That is not very Presidential and neither is omitting due diligence on the very intelligence reports on which her choice was made in the first place. That was March 2007 and before. Here is May 2007

Clinton Proposes Vote to Reverse Authorizing War
By CARL HULSE and PATRICK HEALY
Published: May 4, 2007
WASHINGTON, May 3 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed Thursday that Congress repeal the authority it gave President Bush in 2002 to invade Iraq, injecting presidential politics into the Congressional debate over financing the war.

Mrs. Clinton’s proposal brings her full circle on Iraq — she supported the war measure five years ago — and it sharpens her own political positioning at a time when Democrats are vying to confront the White House.

While on ABC's Democratic debate on August 19, 2007, Mrs. Clinton of course was on board with ideas initially brought forward by others including one of her rivals, Senator Joe Biden. That is surrendering carefully. Now she says it could take a year to withdraw safely while in the NYT report above in May of this year she proposed voting to end Presidential authority as early as last October 11th with no careful withdrawal as part of the surrender.

According to the NYT, 'Her stance emerged just as Congressional leaders and the White House opened delicate negotiations over a new war-financing measure to replace the one that Mr. Bush vetoed Tuesday.'

The Times goes on to say, 'Now, her advisers say, a vote to withdraw authorization would make plain to antiwar and liberal Democrats that she was repudiating her 2002 vote. The hope among her aides was that demands by antiwar voters for her to apologize for her vote would be rendered moot.' What gives this report ample weight is the fact that you don't see the NYT criticizing a liberal every day. It would not be a surprise if they did because the evidence is so compelling they could not ignore it. Tough to defend a liberal position in the first place, doing it in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is just plain silly even for the NYT. Another example that try as she will, Hillary Rodham Clinton is not Presidential.

As Karl Rove indicated, no candidate in the history of the Gallup Polls has ever won with unfavorables as high as those of Hillary Rodham Clinton. On the war in Iraq the Democrats have another candidate in the Kerry mold who was in favor of the war before being against it. So how did that strategy work out for John Kerry? So much for the quote by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that surrender in Iraq is 'the will of the American people.'