IS THIS REALLY THE TIMES?:

Hillary’s War (JEFF GERTH and DON VAN NATTA Jr., 5/29/07, NY Times Magazine)

For Senator Clinton, reaching a decision on an American-led invasion of Iraq during the fall of 2002 involved a knotty set of calculations, some of which seemed preordained. If she voted yes, she would be giving President Bush the authority to launch a pre-emptive war — a concept that must have reminded her of America’s failed war in Vietnam, which she opposed as a student at Wellesley College and Yale Law School. On the other hand, voting against the resolution could relax the pressure on a brutal dictator whose perceived effort to develop weapons of mass destruction was widely seen as a threat to world peace.

Politics too played a role in her deliberations, as they did with many of her colleagues. Since the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Hillary Clinton had labored to establish her national-security credentials. The day after the attacks, she vowed that any country that chose to harbor terrorists and “those who in any way aid or comfort them whatsoever will now face the wrath of our country.” Such tough comments reflected the mood of the country — and also dovetailed with her efforts to win over moderate voters. Clinton knew she could never advance her career — or win the presidency, especially — if she didn’t prove that she was tough enough to be commander in chief. Female candidates, it’s presumed, have often suffered as a result of the stereotype that they could never be as strong as men. Now the defense of the homeland had become such a paramount issue that Americans insisted their president — man or woman — protect them from another terrorist attack. Only a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, the fear of terrorism was so widespread in the United States, it was relatively easy for the Bush administration to fold a confrontation with a tyrannical anti-American dictator into its overall “war on terror.” [...]

As she explained her vote on the Senate floor, Clinton noted, “Perhaps my decision is influenced by my eight years of experience on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in the White House, watching my husband deal with serious challenges to our nation.” It was not a coincidence that Clinton invoked her time in the White House, or her husband’s record. Bill Clinton served as her main counsel on the Iraq war vote, longtime associates of theirs told us. He had much personal experience to offer: while he was president in 1998, the United States, assisted by Britain, launched more than 400 cruise missiles and flew 650 air attacks against suspected weapons-of-mass-destruction sites in Iraq after Saddam Hussein refused to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors. “Mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction,” President Clinton had said at the time. “He will deploy them, and he will use them.”

Note how they have to justify the war itself to let her off the hook for her vote. The vile anti-war case that is the paper's party line is that we should not have removed the "tyrannical anti-American dictator."

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 2, 2007 12:00 AM