Is different than the one she offered to Walter Shapiro in his interview with her that was published on Salon yesterday. am I misreading that? Or did she actually say yesterday that immediate withdrawal isn't an option, and now she's saying that it is an option.

i'm going to go back and re-read this. But it looks like she's said two different things.

His solution is the best. Get out now. 3500 dead American servicemen and women are more than enough, not even counting the dead amongst the contractors and US civilians serving there. Waiting for an Iraqi "government" without real authority to create proper conditions is an illusion. All they are interested in is stirring up more trouble and sustain the corruption that made a few billion Dollars disappear.

What Hillary told Walter Shapiro:

Our troops and their equipment will be extremely vulnerable. ...long convoys are vulnerable; they are the principal battlefield where our soldiers are wounded and killed by the explosive devices used against them.

...if we are to start tomorrow to begin ordering our troops both out of combat, which we can do, and have them move back to the bases we have established there [it takes preparation]. But if we are going to begin to move them and their equipment out of Iraq, that is something that I will be very concerned about because of the dangers that will accompany that kind of withdrawal.

What Hillary told Chris Matthews:

Well, I have been saying for some time that we need to bring our combat troops home from Iraq, starting right now. I would not wait. I would begin to get them out of the multi-sided, sectarian civil war that they are part of.

In the first interview, she was talking about how. In the second, she was talking about what and when. There is a difference, even if there is considerable overlap between the two statements.

The first step of any military operation is planning. You don't so much as dig a latrine without a plan. So no, the troops would not be getting on trucks and redeploying south at 12:01 on 20 January 2009. You gotta make sure they don't get their asses killed while redeploying. Since the Bush administration has no intention whatsoever of formulating this redeployment plan, it will be up to the Hillary administration to do ALL the work herself.

All five of these idiots need to meet at a Wendy's and scribble their united plan to call a press conference on the steps of the Congressional Bldg. and hold up a signed statement with articles of Impeachment and begin the process of launching this criminal administration. My guess is that a huge percentage of americans would back the maneuver and then bury any possibility of a cross-dressing maniac wedging himself into the W.H. for four more years of the same crap Bush has subjected us to.

As it looks right now shrub is pushing his neo-con pie right into our collective faces with one hand and sucker punching us with the other. Jesus Christ what have we become?

She's consistent. Both interviews resulted in a non answer. In the earlier piece, she said it was hard to say. In this piece she said she would start getting them out of the civil war right away. There's nothing about how many and how fast. I'd like her to differentiate herself from bush in more than one way too. She jabs that she'll talk to people who disagree. That's good. Like bush, however, she can't admit the gravity of her war mongering mistake in helping us get into the war.

Regardless, her answer is a bit better this time. Maybe it's because Matthews isn't the pandering simp that shapiro is.

I actually found Clinton's answer to Shapiro somewhat puzzling, because I thought he was asking her about the political/geostrategic aspect of withdrawing, while she was focusing on the logistical apsects as if the political/geostrategic answer was a done deal.

She is correct, and I was quite impressed that she's already thinking about this, that the logistical aspects of the withdrawal could be quite daunting. A lot of people don't know this, but at the end of WWII it took so long for us to bring our troops home from Europe that the military actually set up college campuses in Europe to give the troops something to do for several months.

At the same time, I am concerned about the political/geostrategic aspects of withdrawing and I do hope that all the Democratic candidates are giving sufficient thought to that. Among other things, I cringe at the thought of what is going to happen to all the Iraqis who have been working for or with the US Government. I think they and all their family members are dead meat the moment we withdraw unless we take them with us. And if we leave those folks hanging out to dry, no one will ever want to work with us again, particularly on things like human intelligence.

Also, can we really afford for an oil-rich nation like Iraq to descend into complete chaos, a la Afghanistan, without some sort of supervision? I know everyone loves that "no blood for oil" mantra, but I don't see the Democrats showing strong leadership right now on seeking alternative sources of fuel or reducing dependence on foreign oil. They're showing *some* leadership (certainly more than Bush, although I'd say he's set the bar about as low as it can go), but this is really the crisis of our generation and I'm not seeing enough of our political leadership treating it as such.

I agree with the letter writers. It's good she's been thinking about this not only in short term, but also in the long term effects.

Not so much the wrong one as an incomplete one.

This isn't just about simple withdrawal now. Because of the situation Bush has put us in, we have an unstable country with a valuble assent (Oil), and this needs to be acounted for. It can be used to build the country, or used against us, or, I suppose, used to line the pockets of the Bush cronies.

At least Hilary is thinking about that - SHe is the only one who mentions oil, and I think that oil is both the divider, and potentially the uniter of these people. All of them give lip service to working with the Iraqi government, and working with others in the region, but what does that really mean? I want to know, because that will be the key.

Re Edwards: Assuming that Iran will somehow "pick up the slack" to avoid a humanitarian crisis is delusional thinking.