The American Spectator

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Clinton, Iran, and Hypotheticals

By Philip Klein on 4.24.08 @ 3:35PM

The LA Times notes that Hillary Clinton's promise to "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel is ruffling feathers around the world. What was striking to me about Clinton's comments were how she has abandoned the cautious tone that she employed last year when she was considered inevitable. In the AFL-CIO debate held in Chicago last August, then-frontrunner Clinton was asked to respond to Barack Obama's comments about acting on actionable itellegence of Al Qaeda operatives being in Pakistan.

"Well, I do not believe people running for president should engage in hypotheticals," she remaked, and later added, "So you can think big, but remember, you shouldn't always say everything you think if you're running for president, because it has consequences across the world. And we don't need that right now."

There's been a lot of Clinton love among conservatives over the past several weeks, because she has been weakening Obama and attacking him from the right. But we should never lose sight of how adaptable Clinton is, and how she will literally say whatever suits her purposes at a given moment.

topics:
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Israel, Pakistan