Does Hillary support Bush's Iraq policy?

Let's review: Virtually every member of the Democrat 'leadership'--cheered on by the entire lamestream media--lambasted the Bush administration for "not giving negotiations a chance" in Iraq, and later for "acting unilaterally" in deciding to take military action--with the excellent support of the British, Australians, Poles, Spanish and 50-some other nations.

Bush, said the Dems, was a dangerous cowboy who was bent on war from the outset. If we had a Democrat in the White House, you'd never never never see the U.S. acting like that. Really.

But of course, that was for Iraq--a country with a harmless, warm-fuzzy leader who had absolutely no animosity toward us and had never used, oh, poison gas on civilians. Uh, wait...

So now, three years after the U.S. deposed Saddam Hussein and company, the country on Iraq's eastern border--Iran--has started refining ("enriching") uranium. Iran's leader say they want to do this to fuel nuclear-electric powerplants, but of course enriched uranium is also the stuff of atomic bombs, so a number of western analysts are skeptical.

For example, one U.S. senator apparently views Iran as a serious threat:

I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations. I don't believe you face threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines.

This senator is quite clear on what doesn't work: you don't "face threats like Iran or North Korea by
outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines."

Sounds like someone who would have been a strong supporter of Bush's out-front approach to the problem of Iraq, right?

Actually the speaker was Hillary Clinton, according to a transcript of the speech published by The Daily Princetonian.

Has Ms. Clinton suddenly seen the light and now believes that a) if a nation's leadership thinks it's crucial to achieve a certain diplomatic outcome, it's naive in the extreme to hope the EU will somehow achieve it for you; and b) with some heads of state, carefully crafted agreements are a waste of time, because they have no qualms at all about breaking agreements?

Of course, this would put her squarely in agreement with most conservatives--as well as with President Bush. So presumably this is not what she has in mind.

Or perhaps Iran--presumably unlike Iraq--is a real threat to the U.S. Perhaps Ms. Clinton is concerned that Iran might soon develop nuclear weapons--"WMDs." But again, this is precisely the concern that prompted Bush to order the invasion of Iraq to depose Hussein. So again...unlikely.

But if Senator Clinton doesn't believe what she said at Princeton, this would mean she was...um, a liar and a rank opportunist; a political whore, if you will, who would say anything--even the opposite of what she's advocated just days before--if she believed it would win her the presidency.

Perhaps one of our vaunted members of the lamestream press will ask Ms. Clinton to explain her apparent epiphany.

We won't hold our breath.