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Hillary Clinton: Iraq War Vote a Mistake
For the first time since she voted to authorize the Iraq war three years ago, 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is now saying that vote was a mistake - in an apparent move to pacify growing dissatisfaction with her position among the Democratic Party's left-wing base. "If Congress had been asked [to authorize the war], based on what we know now, we never would have agreed," Clinton said, in an email sent to her supporters on Tuesday. While saying she took full responsibility for her error, Clinton repeatedly insisted that she had been misled by "false" intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction presented by the Bush administration. Citing "assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections," Clinton lamented: "Their assurances turned out to be empty ones."
Story Continues Below In fact, "the Administration refused repeated requests from the U.N. inspectors to finish their work," she complained. The former first lady charged that "the Bush Administration short-circuited the U.N. inspectors - the last line of defense against the possibility that our intelligence was false." By describing the White House's WMD evidence as not merely wrong, but false, Mrs. Clinton stopped just short of saying she was lied to. At times, however, the top Democrat tried to have it both ways - trumpeting her criticism of the war while insisting she backed the troops. "I have continually raised doubts about the President's claims, lack of planning and execution of the war," Clinton said, before adding - "while standing firmly in support of our troops." She also insisted that by constantly criticizing of the Commander-in-Chief in a time of war, she wasn't emboldening America's enemies, explaining: "Criticism of this Administration's policies should not in any way be confused with softness against terrorists, inadequate support for democracy or lack of patriotism." Editor's note:
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