Hillary Clinton "Nuances" Her Position on Iraq

From the NYTimes:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced but significant military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.

In a half-hour interview on Tuesday in her Senate office, Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain in Iraq after taking office would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence — even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.

In outlining how she would handle Iraq as commander in chief, Mrs. Clinton articulated a more-nuanced position than the one she has provided at her campaign events, where she has backed the goal of “bringing the troops home.”

She said in the interview that there were “remaining vital national security interests in Iraq” that would require a continuing deployment of American troops.

The United States’ security would be undermined if parts of Iraq turned into a failed state “that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda,” she said. “It is right in the heart of the oil region. It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel’s interests.”

“So I think it will be up to me to try to figure out how to protect those national security interests and continue to take our troops out of this urban warfare, which I think is a loser,” Mrs. Clinton added. She declined to estimate the number of American troops she would keep in Iraq, saying she would draw on the advice of the military officers who would have to carry out the strategy.

So, let me get this straight.  She wants to keep troops in Iraq to carry out the same goals as President Bush, but she wants less of them. This, depsite the fact that Democrats (and probably she among them) have been jumping up and down and screaming that the Bush method of operations was stupid, based upon lies and deception, and was doomed to fail because of poor planning and not enough boots on the ground.

HRClinton wants to more effectively accomplish the same based-upon-lies-and-deception goals with fewer troops.

Or exactly what George Bush was doing which earned him tons of flak from the opposition who claimed he was mishandling Iraq prior to the troop surge, which though it is working, has earned him even more flak.

And by the way, the hell with the Iraqis, it's all about us. Ethnic cleansing?  Who gives a rat's behind?

Okey-dokey.

Comments

[AndyJ]

With Mrs. Clinton EVERYTHING is nuanced. It is also situational, contingent and reflective. She does not make declarative statements that can be relied upon at some point in the future.

Her position would require the US forces to stand-by while Iraqis are slaughtered by the thousands. Every bombing would have to be determined to be terrorist or sectarian before we could act. Only a lawyer could find the conscience to allow so many deaths inside the weasel words of legalisms.

At least when we ran away and left the SEAsians to slaughter we were a few hundred miles away. This plan would leave us sitting inside our forts watching on CNN...

[Mark]

Aw, come on, Gail, you just made that all up!

You lying Neocons are all alike.

That ethnic cleansing thing is a real corker, innit?