Her Way, Her War (The Nation)

[marmar]

BLOG | Posted 05/30/2007 @ 11:43am
Her Way, Her War

Ari Berman

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign would like voters to forget that she supported the war in Iraq. "Senator Clinton ? believes things are not going well , wants to begin phased withdrawal, wants to end the war," her spokesman Howard Wolfson told MSNBC on Friday.

It wasn't always that way. A new book by two New York Times investigative reporters, excerpted in the NYT Magazine this coming Sunday, painstakingly details that not only did Hillary support the war, but did so in a way that echoed many of the Bush Administration's most dubious talking points and undercut antiwar opponents.

"On the sensitive issue of collaboration between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Senator Clinton found herself adopting the same argument that was being aggressively pushed by the administration," reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta write. "The Democratic senator who came closest to echoing Clinton's remarks about Hussein's supposed assistance to Al Qaeda was Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut." In fact, on this point the reporters document that Clinton was to the right of Lieberman when she argued that Saddam gave "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members."

For the better part of three years, Clinton stuck to her support for the war. As public opinion began to change, so did her position, albeit slowly. "I don't support a fixed date for getting out, and I don't support an open-ended commitment," she said in the summer of '06, trying to have it both ways. Yet after she was booed at the Campaign for America's Future, as Arianna Huffington notes, Hillary surprisingly signed on as a cosponsor of legislation to begin redeploying troops from Iraq.

Yet she resisted setting a timetable for withdrawal or using the Congressional power of the purse to bring the war to a close. "I face the base all the time," she told fellow Senators in '06. "I think we need wiggle room." .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15

[seafan]

1. Here is another related thread.

Hillary's War

[rinsd]

2. Is Berman turning into Ariana Huffington? Why this obessession with Clinton?

To the point where he relies on hit piece author Gerth?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200705250001

"Indeed, Gerth's investigative reporting on a number of subjects -- including the Clintons -- has been the subject of harsh criticism. If Gerth's new book is as flawed as his previous reporting on the Clintons and others, Media Matters will no doubt analyze the book and his previous work in greater detail."