Hillary’s Iraq War Vote: The Limits of Spin
 
In retrospect, Hillary Clinton’s recent obligatory swing through the key primary state of New Hampshire will be viewed as the beginning of the end for her cost-free, and duplicitous posturing on the Iraq War.
The crowds, although enthusiastic, weren’t so obsequious and fawning as they had been in Iowa; the hard questions about Iraq could not be suppressed any longer, as even her die-hard supporters were not buying the spoon fed nonsense on Iraq.
Hillary’s carefully choreographed, repeatedly re-calibrated, and utterly insincere position on the Iraq war, exhibits a gall, that even for an electioneering politician, is simply breathtaking.
The original strategic assumptions behind her vacillating Iraq war position seem to be as follows:
  1. 1. Democratic primary voters will vote for me no matter what my prior position on the Iraq war. They are smart enough to realize that any hawkish statements I make on national security issues are merely code words to help get me elected; they realize this is a small price to pay for electing the nation’s first woman President;
  2. 2. For every difficult question from voters about my ever shifting position on Iraq, namely, how I can reconcile the irreconcilable, repeat on cue, the robotic mantra, “If we had known then what we know now...”
  3. 3. I didn’t vote for the Iraq war; I voted merely to give the President “authority” to continue with United Nations inspections; the commencement of hostilities against Sadam Hussein’s regime was an abuse of the authority I gave the President.
With Obama and Edwards nipping at her heels from the left, Hillary’s transparent contradictions on her Iraq war vote are starting to come to the fore. The anti-war crowd is demanding an accounting.
Beacon Street Journal
Monday, February 12, 2007
By Johnny K