Hillary: Arab Media Story Is Bogus

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton's office is denying that she blasted President Bush in an interview with an Arab reporter on Monday.

Sen. Clinton's office said Wednesday that she never spoke to the London-based newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

The paper offered quotes and paraphrases of her comments, which were immediately picked up by news sources throughout the Muslim world, on dozens of English language Middle Eastern Web sites and even by the usually reliable wire service Agence France-Presse.

NewsMax.com's report on Tuesday recapitulated those foreign news accounts of Sen. Clinton's alleged comments.

The story on NewsMax and several other news outlets here in the U.S. prompted a firestorm of outrage from her critics, with some saying the remarks gave aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war.

On Wednesday morning, Sen. Clinton's office contacted several U.S. news outlets and informed them that the interview had been made up out of whole cloth.

The bogus Arab media report cited the senator as saying President Bush was "insolent, arrogant and stubborn" when it came to making war policy in Iraq.

Al-Awsat translated her as saying that Bush's "grave mistakes" have "endangered the lives of both the Iraqi people and the U.S. servicemen alike."

According to AFP's version of the interview, she warned that "the United States is in trouble because it could not abandon Iraq, nor provide enough manpower to run the country, nor gather world allies willing to provide the necessary assistance for the gigantic task."

Why AFP did not contact Sen. Clinton's office for comment is not clear.

The comments attributed to Sen. Clinton, first cited by the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper and picked up by major foreign media, is at sharp variance with Sen. Clinton's public positions regarding the president and the Iraq war.

In the Senate, Clinton has voted for the Iraq war and supported President Bush's $87 billion in reconstruction aid, a measure opposed by many leading Democrats, including Sen. John Kerry.

Mrs. Clinton has generally been supportive of President Bush's war on terror, including his Iraq policy. Recently, she did offer criticism, now shared by many Republicans and Democrats in Congress, that the Bush administration had not adequately prepared for a post-Saddam Iraq.

"Of all the things is the hardest for me to understand," Sen. Clinton told CNN's Larry King, "How could [the Bush administration] have been so poorly prepared for the aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein?"

Editor's note: