DERRY, N.H. – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday was pressed by two New Hampshire voters on her 2004 vote in favor of the Iraq War, something that continues to dog her campaign as she fights Sen. Bernie Sanders for progressive voters.
Former New Hampshire state representative Rebecca Hutchinson questioned what Clinton had learned since her vote, and what assurance the former secretary of state could provide that she would not make “a mistake of that magnitude again.”
Clinton acknowledged she had made a mistake in supporting United States intervention in Iraq, but she largely placed the onus on former President George W. Bush for his approach to what he thought he could accomplish in Iraq. “U.N. Inspector Hans Blix said, give us the time, we will find out. Give us the hammer over their head, namely the vote, and we will be able to find out what they still have in terms of WMD. And the Bush administration didn’t give them the time. And that was a breach of faith, in my view,” Clinton said in response.
Hutchinson told the Washington Examiner that she thought Clinton’s response was lacking. “I was looking for growth in her learning and I don’t think I saw that,” Hutchinson said. “She talked about Bush and why she made the choice she did but she didn’t talk about but how it may have changed … how she looks at tough questions in the future.”
New Hampshire Box Office Owner Michael Thiele also asked Clinton if she could say that she wouldn’t expand U.S. military involvement abroad.
“No, I can’t, Michael,” Clinton responded. “I’d like to be able to say I could, but here’s what I can say. I have learned and have been, you know, really in the crucible of making a lot of hard decisions over the last years.”
Thiele says he did not much care for Clinton’s response because it did not give him confidence that she would not support the same “poor choices” she has made in the past in supporting intervention in Iraq and Libya.
