Hillary's Exit Strategy: Very Existential

Why can’t Democratic leaders talk straight about Iraq? Didn’t they learn anything from John Kerry’s self-immolating “I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it”?

Clearly not, judging from Hillary Clinton’s appearance on “Inside Politics”.

Judy Woodruff asked a very specific question: “Record numbers of Americans continue to die in Iraq. No end to the violence in sight that most people can see. When should the United States begin significant troop withdrawals?”

Hillary reacted like a vampire being shown a cross or an ABC executive seeing the ratings for their Trump TV movie… then offered up the following head scratcher:

You know, I am not one who feels comfortable setting exit strategies. We don't know what we're exiting from. We don't know what the situation is moving toward…. How do we know where we're headed, when we don't know where we are?

Wow. Very existential. Very Zen koan. If a foreign policy disintegrates in the desert and no one hears it fail, what does this mean for our country and for our safety?

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of one Greek gagging. Senator Clinton, if you are not “comfortable setting exit strategies”, can you direct us to someone who is? Because our soldiers are dying every day waiting for someone who is comfortable setting an exit strategy.

I’ve just decided that I do have a litmus test for the 2008 Democratic nominee: someone who can utter, in plain English, an unambiguous, unequivocal sentence about Iraq.