Hillary: "I wouldn't have gone to war"

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

11:57 PM EST, January 6, 2008

NASHUA, N.H. - After falling off the political radar, the Iraq war re-emerged yesterday as a flash point between Hillary Rodham Clinton and the surging Barack Obama in the final days before the New Hampshire primary.

Clinton, in a feisty and combative mood, sharpened her criticism of Obama and John Edwards -- even tossing a barb at Russian leader Vladimir Putin, joking he doesn't have "a soul."

Clinton's newfound aggressiveness came as her staff girded for an increasingly tough battle in New Hampshire against Obama and a growing internal pessimism about the senator's prospects in South Carolina and Nevada later this month.

Already reeling from a third-place finish in Iowa last week, the Clinton camp got more bad news yesterday. A USA Today/Gallup Poll showed her trailing Obama by 13 points, while a CNN/WMUR daily tracking poll showed Obama vaulting to a 10-point lead.

Asked about Iraq during a big rally at Nashua North High School, Clinton said, "After 9/11, I never would have taken us to war in Iraq."

Obama's campaign quickly pointed out that Clinton voted to give Bush authority to invade Iraq in Oct. 2002 and that she rejected withdrawal plans for years afterward. Obama spokesman Bill Burton accused Clinton of trying to "rewrite history" to win over anti-war voters.

"It's hard to believe she didn't know what would happen after she voted for a resolution with the title 'A Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,'" he said.

Later, Clinton told reporters the vote was intended to spur UN inspections of Saddam Hussein's weapons stockpiles and "wasn't a vote for pre-emptive war."

Clinton leveled her own criticism of Obama on Iraq, accusing him of backing off a promise to oppose the war when he was running for the Senate in 2004. Obama, she argued, talked tough about the war but voted to fund all war appropriations bills until last year.

"You gave a speech, and a very good speech, against the war in Iraq and ... then you voted to [fund the war] you were against," she said, addressing the Illinois senator directly.

During a question-and-answer session last night in Hampton, Clinton criticized President George W. Bush for forgoing policy and relying too heavily on personal relationships with world leaders, ridiculing Bush's comment that he had the "sense of his soul" after a 2001 meeting with Putin.

"I could have told he was a KGB agent. By definition he doesn't have a soul," joked Clinton, who has chided the White House for alienating foreign leaders and engaging in "Cowboy Diplomacy."

The former first lady, her back to the wall after Iowa, fought through an Obama-Edwards double-team at Saturday's New Hampshire debate to land a few blows of her own. Even though her opponents portrayed the performance as harsh, Clinton told reporters yesterday the debate was a "turning point."

Obama took issue with Clinton's accusation in the debate that he stoked voters' "false hopes." Speaking at a jam-packed theater in Manchester, he said, "The real gamble in this election is to do the same things, with the same folks, playing the same games over and over and over."

New Hampshire voters need to "elect a doer not a talker," Clinton countered.

Clinton and Edwards also exchanged accusations.

Yesterday, Edwards said the Clinton campaign didn't have "a conscience" after Clinton suggested a would-be liver transplant recipient "may well have died" because Edwards didn't succeed in passing a Patients' Bill of Rights when he was in the Senate. Clinton called the charge "untrue."

Staff writer Melissa Mansfield contributed to this report.