Bush Prepares to Pass Baton to Hillary

The Washington Post this weekend reported an off-the-record meeting that President Bush had at the White House with various pundits, where he predicted that Hillary Clinton will be the next President. Bush is shaping his legacy, said the Post, and is planning to make it feasible for his successor to keep us in Iraq. It’s a sharp contrast with Hillary’s support among Democratic voters, who think she’s more likely to get us out of Iraq and are more likely to view her as “liberal” than John Edwards or Barack Obama. But if you parse Hillary’s statements, she has left enough wiggle room for a Clinton Administration to stay in Iraq for a while. It is easy to dismiss Bush’s talk as delusional, but in recent years Hillary’s husband has developed a close personal friendship with the elder President George Bush as if 1992 never happened – suggesting a stronger tie between the two political families than one might imagine.

But take a closer look at what Hillary says, and it is not certain what her plans would be about getting us out. Like the other candidates, she is crystal clear about saying she would begin withdrawal – but is vague about when all of our troops would come home. She promised on yesterday’s “Meet the Press” to “end our involvement” in Iraq, but qualified it “at the level that we’ve seen.” Clinton would have fewer troops than what we have right now, but her words imply keeping a residual force for an undetermined period of time.

...Stephanopoulos recounted the analogy yesterday when he had Hillary Clinton on his TV show. Rather than deny it, Hillary replied that she would “likely continue a presence in Iraq” to fight Al-Qaeda, protect civilian employees and the U.S. embassy, train the Iraqi army, and protect the Kurds. When Stephanopoulos asked her to pledge that all U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of her first term, Clinton refused.

Source, and full article: Beyond Chron, September 24, 2007