Hillary, 'Congenital Hawk,' Backed McCain on War -- Just As It Fell Apart

Everyone knows that Hillary Clinton voted for that Iraq war resolution and (as I revealed last week) remained virtually silent in the days leading up to the invasion. But what did she say as hopes for a quick exit fell apart in late-2003? She backed John McCain's call for an escalation -- and suggested that the U.S. delay a transfer of power to the Iraqis.

My latest check through The New York Times archives reveals little Clinton protest against the war as things went south after Saddam fell. But on December 8, William Safire wrote a column for the Times, titled "Hillary Clinton, Congenital Hawk." He wrote: "Senator Hillary Clinton, sweeping through the Sunday morning talk shows after her somewhat upstaged Thanksgiving visit to the war zones, startled her conservative detractors by emerging as a congenital hawk."

She does not go along with the notion that the Iraqi dictator posed no danger to the U.S.: ''I think that Saddam Hussein was certainly a potential threat'' who ''was seeking weapons of mass destruction, whether or not he actually had them.''

When Tim Russert on 'Meet the Press' gave her the opening to say she had been misled when she voted for the Senate resolution authorizing war, Senator Clinton countered with a hard line: ''There was certainly adequate intelligence without it being gilded and exaggerated by the administration to raise questions about chemical and biological programs and a continuing effort to obtain nuclear power.''

Would she support an increase of U.S. troops in Iraq? Senator Clinton associated herself with the views of Republican Senator John McCain, who disagrees with Bush and the generals who say they have adequate strength there. She cited McCain's conviction that ''we need more troops, and we need a different mix of troops.'' And she directed a puissant message to what some of us consider the told-you-so doves who refuse to deal with today's geopolitical reality: ''Whether you agreed or not that we should be in Iraq, failure is not an option.''

Her range of expressed opinions urging us to ''stay the course'' can only be characterized as tough-minded....

Consider the political meaning of all this. Here is a Democrat who has no regrets for voting for the resolution empowering the president to invade Iraq; who insists repeatedly and resolutely that ''failure is not an option''; who is ready to send in a substantially greater U.S. force to avert any such policy failure....

Then, on December 16, a Times news story began: "A day after the Bush administration announced that Saddam Hussein had been captured, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that it should consider delaying its timetable for transferring power from the American occupation authority to a self-ruling Iraqi government by next summer. ''I am worried about the administration's announced plans to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqis by next July,'' said Mrs. Clinton, suggesting that a hasty transfer of power could be disastrous."

Greg Mitchell's new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. It has been hailed by our own Arianna, Bill Moyers, Glenn Greenwald and others and features a preface by Bruce Springsteen and foreword by Joe Galloway. Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher.