Russert draws staunch defense of Clinton's Iraq record 
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton defended her record on the Iraq war to Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet The Press" this Sunday and insisted that she will begin to pull out troops within 60 days of taking office.
"From my perspective, part of the reason that the Iraqis are doing anything is because time is running out," she said. "They see this election happening, and they know that they dont have much time, that the blank check George Bush gave them is about to be torn up."
Tension escalated between Clinton and Russert when the two discussed Clinton's 2002 vote for the Iraq war. Russert asked Clinton repeatedly whether Barack Obama had made a better decision six years ago; Clinton reasserted throughout the interview that it was "unfair" to say her vote was a vote for war.
"Judgement is not a single snapshot," she said. "We can have this Jesuitical argument about what exactly was meant. But when Chuck Hagel, who helped to draft the resolution said, 'It was not a vote for war,' what I was told directly by the White House in response to my question, 'If you are given this authority, will you put the inspectors in and permit them to finish their job,' I was told that's exactly what we intended to do. "
Clinton emphatically emphasized that although Obama made an anti-Iraq intervention speech in 2002, it was down from his Web site in 2003 and by 2004 he “was saying he really didn’t disagree with how George Bush was conducting the war."
When Russert reminded Clinton that she voted similarily, Clinton said she differed from Obama in that she was not pretending to be something she was not.
"I’m not premising my campaign on something different. I’m not here saying anything different from that," she said. "We can sit here and argue about 2002, or we can say what has happened since and what needs to happen going forward in the future."
This video is from NBC's Meet the Press, broadcast January 13, 2008.
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