Clinton booed by liberals for Iraq stance

WASHINGTON – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., drew boos and hisses from an audience of liberal activists Tuesday as she defended her opposition to a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, and later received an implicit rebuke from Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Clinton’s and Kerry’s appearances at the Take Back America conference put on vivid display the Democratic Party’s divisions over the foreign policy issue that dominates this year’s midterm elections.

Clinton and Kerry supported the 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the Iraq war. Kerry recently renounced that vote, but Clinton has never done so and she finds herself in opposition to a majority of Democratic activists, and is the target of passionate criticism from some of them.

Clinton won repeated applause through most of her speech, which dealt at length with domestic issues but also sharply criticized President Bush’s handling of the war. But the audience turned against her when, in what she called a difficult conversation, she restated her longstanding position about timetables for withdrawing U.S forces.

“I have to just say it,” she began. “I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government, nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country.”

Later, after Clinton’s departure, Kerry delivered a fiery denunciation of the war that was continually interrupted with cheers and applause, and repeated his call for “a hard and fast deadline” for withdrawing troops. At one point, Kerry appeared to be directing his comments at Clinton, who leads early national Democratic polls for 2008.

“Let me say it plainly,” Kerry said. “It’s not enough to argue with the logistics or to argue about the details or the manner of the conflict’s execution or the failures of competence, as great as they are. It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake, to say the simple words that contain more truth than pride. We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true. It was wrong and I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi resolution.”