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Hillary’s War
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By JEFF GERTH and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: May 29, 2007
On a Thursday afternoon in early May, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton rose before a nearly empty Senate chamber and proposed that Congress undo one of the most significant acts in its recent history: the authorization of the Iraq war. In remarks lasting just two minutes, she spoke bluntly: The “authorization to use force has run its course, and it is time to reverse the failed policies of President Bush and to end this war as soon as possible.” She added, “If the president will not bring himself to accept reality, it is time for Congress to bring reality to him.”

This was Clinton’s latest and boldest attempt to distance herself from her own vote for the Iraq war in October 2002 — a vote she has described as “probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make.” At the time she cast that vote, she was among the Senate’s most outspoken Democrats warning of Saddam Hussein’s dangerous arsenal. Unlike nearly all of her fellow Democrats, she even went so far as to argue that Saddam Hussein gave assistance to Al Qaeda members. Now she speaks with equal fervor about the need to bring the war to an end. In addition to calling for the deauthorization of the war, she has also voiced support for cutting off financing to many combat troops in Iraq by March 2008.

And yet even as she has backed away from her original vote to allow the war, she has also resisted pressure from within her party to apologize for it. Instead, she has presented voters with a version of her record that places more emphasis on her reservations about going to war than on her support for the president. Along the way, important aspects of that record — like how much of the available intelligence she reviewed before her vote — have escaped scrutiny.

Clinton declined to discuss her views on Iraq for this article, despite repeated requests for an interview. This article draws on her public statements; her private discussions; Congressional documents; and dozens of interviews with advisers to Clinton and with past and present senators and their aides. Many of those who spoke with us demanded anonymity because of concerns about Senate norms of confidentiality.

Senator Clinton’s aides and strategists say they have worried for months that as the party’s base has overwhelmingly turned against the war, questions about her vote, and her views on Iraq more broadly, could derail her bid to become the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. The answers to many of the most persistent questions about her war record are hidden in plain sight. What those answers reveal about her approach to Iraq — her votes, her views, her political maneuvering — may provide as good an insight as we have into what sort of president she would be.