WASHINGTON — After days of Republican presidential candidates wrestling with questions on the Iraq war, Hillary Clinton weighed in Tuesday, telling reporters that her vote in favor of the war in 2002 was a “mistake,” reported Politico.
“I made it very clear that I made a mistake, plain and simple. And I have written about it in my book, I have talked about it in the past,” Clinton told reporters at an event in Cedar Falls, Iowa, adding that “what we now see is a very different and very dangerous situation.”
During her 2008 campaign, Clinton defended her vote as a way to give President George W. Bush authority to deal with Iraq, which she said he then abused. She frequently followed up this statement by saying that if she had known what Bush would do with the authority she would not have voted the way she had, but declined to call the vote a “mistake.”
Then-Sen. Barack Obama hammered her over the vote during the campaign, citing his opposition to the war while he was serving in Illinois’ state senate. Many experts believe the Iraq war issue was a major reason she ultimately lost in the primaries to Obama.
But since losing that election she wrote in her 2014 book “Hard Choices” that she “got it wrong.”
In her comments Tuesday she made clear that she viewed her past vote as a mistake, with no qualifications.
She then pivoted to talking about Iraq’s current political situation. In the last year much of western Iraq has been overtaken by ISIL, a terrorist group whose successes many analysts attribute to the decade of instability following Saddam Hussein’s ouster.
“The United States is doing what it can but ultimately this has to be a struggle that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people are determined to win for themselves,” said Clinton. “And we can provide support, but they’re going to have to do it.”
Questions over the Iraq war have divided the early Republican field ever since former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said that he would have invaded Iraq had he been put in his brother’s situation in 2003, in response to a question from Fox News’ Megyn Kelly over whether he would have made the decision knowing what he knows now. Bush shifted his answer multiple times during the week before finally saying that, with 20/20 hindsight, he would not have invaded.
Bush has been lambasted for the fumbling, including by Sen. Rand Paul who said in an interview on Meet the Press Sunday that he didn’t view the question as a “hypothetical,” but is rather “a recurring question in the Middle East.” He equated President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq with Hillary Clinton’s support as Secretary of State for a military campaign in Libya in 2011 that led to the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi.
“The same question, to be fair, ought to be asked of Hillary Clinton, if she ever takes questions,” he said. “Was it a good idea to invade Libya? Did that make us less safe? Did it make it more chaotic? Did it allow radical Islam and ISIS to grow stronger?”–Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report
