Archives » Friday, May 25, 2007
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Richard Wolffe
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May 25, 2007 04:38 PM
Yes, the two new books on Hillary Clinton go into lurid detail about
her marriage to Bill and the Arkansas years. Yes, they portray her as
less-than-human, veering from ambitious to paranoid and back again. But
the real bombshell in the battle of the books is about Iraq. According
to Don Van Natta of The New York Times and his coauthor Jeff Gerth, a
former Times reporter, Clinton failed to read the all-important
National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before casting her fateful vote
on the war in 2002.
Clinton's
aides spent Friday arguing three things. First: the books are not
newsworthy. Second: the senator was extensively briefed on the NIE
before casting her vote. And third: lots of other senators didn't read
it, either.
Maybe so. But until now the senator has brushed
off Democratic criticism of her vote--and her refusal to call it a
mistake--by saying that she takes responsibility for her vote, while
President Bush is responsible for the conduct of the war. How
responsible is she for her vote if she didn't read the key document
that justified it?
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