Video: Hillary Clinton Would Engage In Unconditional Negotiations With Iran
Posted on October 12, 2007
On July 25, 2007 Hillary said:
In an interview with the Quad-City Times, U.S. Sen. Clinton, of New York, labeled as “irresponsible†and “naive†Obama’s statement that he was willing to meet, without precondition, the leaders of five countries hostile to the United States during the first year of his presidency.
The list of five countries included Iran. They were Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don’t really understand how Iran works. We think we do, from the outside, but I think that is misleading.
The Obama campaign is seizing on this flip-flop!
Sen. Barack Obama has seized on that statement, arguing that she has flip-flopped from her previous assertion that she would not negotiate with dictators. At one level, as I will explain in a second, this is a silly fight about pronouns. At another, it’s an incredibly important policy debate. The question of Iran negotiations is an argument about which of the two candidates has a better grasp of the threats that face the country and how to deal with them. Finding the right answer to that question may be the most important thing in the election. Also, which candidate can we trust to tell us the truth, or as close to the truth as a politician will offer? And which candidate will distort the facts to make a point?
It’s also a revealing political squabble. One of Hillary’s exploitable weaknesses is that voters don’t trust her, so accusing her of flip-flopping plays on that vulnerability.
Allahpundit says the flip-flop was only sort-of:
There were two parts to this question when it came up at the YouTube debate: (1) would you, as president, negotiate with Iran personally and (2) would you do so without preconditions? The Messiah, being a light unto all nations, said yes to both. The Glacier, being the weaselly pragmatist Krauthammer pegged her as this morning, said “not in my first year†to the first question and addressed the second by saying she’d use “high-level presidential envoys†to test the waters first. Does that mean preconditions? Hard to say — which is the whole point. Vagueness is your friend when you don’t want to be pinned down too tightly to any position. And lucky thing, because wouldn’t you know it, now she’s decided she wouldn’t demand any preconditions either.
So is she directly contradicting her own response from July?
…or just admitting she’s irresponsible and frankly naive…
Hat tip: Ian Schwarz
» Filed Under News, Politics As Usual, Video, War On Terror
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