Clinton slams Bush, McCain on Iraq war

"They both want to keep us tied to another country's civil war, a war we cannot win," Hillary Clinton said of President Bush and John McCain in a speech at George Washington University. (Charles Dharapak/Associated Press)

WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton, marking the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, yesterday assailed both her presidential rivals, saying that Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain would gladly take the baton from President Bush on a failed policy and that Democrat Barack Obama did not follow up his antiwar words with action.

"They both want to keep us tied to another country's civil war, a war we cannot win," she said of Bush and McCain.

In what her campaign billed as a major speech at George Washington University, Clinton also hit McCain for his much-cited comment that US troops could be in Iraq for another 100 years. "Senator McCain and President Bush claim withdrawal is defeat," she said. "Well, let's be clear, withdrawal is not defeat. Defeat is keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years. Defeat is straining our alliances and losing our standing in the world. Defeat is draining our resources and diverting attention from our key interests."

McCain, who was on a fact-finding trip to Iraq, said that Clinton's proposal to begin withdrawing one or two brigades a month within 60 days of taking office shows that she doesn't understand the improving situation on the ground and the message that withdrawal would send the world.

"The surge is working," McCain told CNN. "So I just think what that means is Al Qaeda wins."

His campaign accused Clinton of mischaracterizing McCain's 100-year statement to score political points, saying that he was suggesting that Americans could support maintaining a US presence in Iraq - like the one in Germany after World War II and Korea since the Korean War - as long as troops were not in combat and taking casualties.

"The differences between Senator McCain's position, that we must win this war, and Senator Clinton's position, withdrawal and de facto surrender on day one, are important enough to have an honest debate over," the McCain campaign statement said.

Clinton also had harsh words for her Democratic rival, saying that Obama, after making a much-cited antiwar speech in October 2002, did little after arriving in the US Senate, after the war was well underway.

Clinton also mentioned a former Obama foreign policy adviser telling a British interviewer recently that Obama's plan to withdraw combat troops in 16 months after taking office was a "best-case scenario."

Obama responded to Clinton by questioning her judgment and highlighting her 2002 Senate vote to authorize the war.

"The truth is, the judgment of Hillary Clinton and John McCain gave President Bush a blank check for war," he told reporters while campaigning yesterday in Pennsylvania. "So I'm not about to allow Senator Clinton to get away with saying this is just about speeches. Because of that vote, we have fought a war that has cost us thousands of lives and will cost us a trillion dollars."

Clinton has not directly apologized for her vote, but has repeatedly said she regrets it, saying that President Bush took the authorization and mishandled it.

But in a new book, former Rhode Island senator Lincoln Chafee, the lone Republican senator to vote against the Iraq war, calls Clinton one of the "Democratic Bush enablers" who put their political ambitions first and failed to stand up to the president.

"Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill," writes Chafee, who is backing Obama. "They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership."