Sorry, no Hil apology on Iraq war vote

BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
NY Daily News
Sep. 08, 2006

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Clinton has been hitting the Bush administration hard over the Iraq war lately, but said yesterday she has no regrets over voting for war.

Clinton's hawkish comments were made on ABC's "Nightline" when she was asked about supporters who want her to say she's sorry for voting to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq.

"I understand that, because certainly the feelings about Iraq are very raw and deep, and I share them," she said, according to a transcript of the broadcast. "But I don't think that's responsible."

She added, "I can only look at what I knew at the time, because I don't think you get do-overs in life. I think you have to take responsibility and hopefully learn from it and go forward."

Clinton had recently tamped down brushfires on her political left sparked by her pro-war stance.

She embraced Connecticut's anti-war candidate Ned Lamont and called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to be fired.

But some anti-war activists did not like her comments yesterday.

"Hillary Clinton's lack of leadership has cost us and Iraq tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars," said longtime peace activist Bill Dobbs. "She wants to have it every which way, saying she supported the war but being critical of it."

The interview ran after Clinton and other Democrats demanded on Capitol Hill yesterday that the U.S. begin leaving Iraq by the end of this year.

In the broadcast, she sounded more cautious than her colleagues, saying - as she did to boos from liberals in June - the country should set no "date certain" to leave.

"I would like us to be gone as soon as we responsibly can," she said. "If there were a failed state now in control of all that oil, that would have consequences for a long time."