Hillary finally met her match

Hillary Advocates 'Third Way' on Iraq Troop Withdrawal


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The former first lady said an immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a "big mistake."

"It will matter to us if Iraq totally collapses into civil war, if it becomes a failed state the way Afghanistan was, where terrorists are free to basically set up camp and launch attacks against us," she said.

She suggested, however, that Iraq may not be stabilized until the United States signals its intention to leave.

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Clinton's efforts to fashion a "third way" on Iraq were reminiscent of the political approach her husband made famous when he announced his presidential campaign in 1991. "The change we must make isn't liberal or conservative," Bill Clinton said then. "It's both, and it's different."

"My approach is different," the former first lady and current senator said Monday. "My approach is we tell them we expect you to meet these certain benchmarks and that means getting troops and police officers trained, equipped and ready to defend their people."

"I don't think realistically we know how prepared they are until we get a government on Dec. 15," she added.

After meeting with anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan in September, Clinton held firm to her support for the Iraq war, telling The Village Voice, "My bottom line is that I don't want their sons to die in vain."

At the time, Clinton demurred when asked about withdrawing troops. "I don't believe it's smart to set a date for withdrawal. I don't think you should ever telegraph your intentions to the enemy so they can await you."


Clinton continues to oppose setting a specific target date for withdrawal -- a point of contention with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a potential rival for the 2008 nomination, who has called for a flexible "target date" of Dec. 31, 2006, for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq. ~snip~

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QUESTION: Excuse me. The estimates I've seen of those missions, even those limited missions, you're still talking about anywhere from 40,000 to 75,000 troops for many years.

CLINTON: Well, I don't think that's accurate. I'm not going to be speculating about troop strength. I've said that the day I'm elected president, I will be asking my secretary of defense, my national security advisors, the joint chiefs to brief me about what actually the state of planning is, because we're having some difficulties really understanding what they're doing over in the Pentagon, under the White House's direction.

And then we will begin to withdraw our troops, but it has to be done, as I said, in a responsible, careful manner. We don't know what we're going to inherit. None of us do. We don't know what's going to be done in the last 15 months of the Bush-Cheney administration.

Obviously, as president, I will have to take all of that into account and try to make the very best decisions I have. But there is no doubt, in my mind, we're going to be withdrawing from Iraq, because the Iraqi government has not fulfilled its part of the bargain, which was to make the tough political decisions.

And, frankly, the Bush administration hasn't fulfilled its diplomatic responsibilities either. So all of this has to be pulled together. I hope it happens in the next 15 months, but if it doesn't, it will happen immediately upon my becoming president.

QUESTION: Can you pledge that all U.S. troops will be home over the course of your first term as president?

CLINTON: You know, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals and make pledges, because I don't know what I'm going to inherit, George.

I don't know and neither do any of us know what will be the situation in the region. How much more aggressive will Iran have become? What will be happening in the Middle East? How much more of an influence will the chaos in Iraq have in terms of what's going on in the greater region? Will we have pushed Al Qaida in Iraq out of their stronghold with our new partnership with some of the tribal sheikhs or will they have regrouped and retrenched?

I don't know and I think it's not appropriate to be speculating. I can tell you my general principals and my goal. I want to end the war in Iraq. I want to do so carefully, responsibly, with the withdrawal of our troops, also, with the withdrawal of a lot of our civilian employees, the contractors who are there, and the Iraqis who have sided with us.

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Barack Obama's Plan
Judgment You Can Trust
As a candidate for the United States Senate in 2002, Obama put his political career on the line to oppose going to war in Iraq, and warned of “an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.” Obama has been a consistent, principled and vocal opponent of the war in Iraq.

In 2003 and 2004, he spoke out against the war on the campaign trail;
In 2005, he called for a phased withdrawal of our troops;
In 2006, he called for a timetable to remove our troops, a political solution within Iraq, and aggressive diplomacy with all of Iraq’s neighbors;
In January 2007, he introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all of our combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.
In September 2007, he laid out a detailed plan for how he will end the war as president.
Bringing Our Troops Home
Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

(AP) Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq, with the pullout being completed by the end of next year.

"Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was," Obama said in excerpts of the speech provided to The Associated Press.

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He introduced legislation last January calling for withdrawal to start on May 1 and for all combat brigades to be pulled out by March 31, 2008. Anti-war Democrats and some Republicans want to bring all combat troops home in a matter of months.

Obama's push for withdrawal drew a sharp rebuke from Republican rival Mitt Romney.

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... He called for withdrawing U.S. troops from the Iraq war, and said that if elected his first course of business will be to call for a meeting of the joint chiefs of staff to order them to remove Americans from the Middle East ...