Did Hillary Flip-Flop?

The Democrats in second and third place for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, united to call the frontrunner, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, a flip-flopper Friday. The subject, as is increasingly the case in the intense contest among the Democratic candidates, was foreign policy, specifically whether or not a U.S. President should agree to meet with the leader of Iran with no preconditions. After criticizing Obama for such a stance in July, Clinton this week said, "here’s what I would do as president: I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions.” "I’m not sure if any of us knows exactly where she stands on this," Obama said today in Des Moines, Iowa, assailing Clinton by name. "The American people deserve a president who will tell them the truth and offer straight answers, not flip-flops and political double-speak," offered a spokesman for Edwards. This debate began in July (LINK) during the Youtube debate when a Youtuber asked whether candidates would "be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” Obama’s response: "I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous." Clinton’s response (LINK) “Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are.  I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don’t want to make a situation even worse." In an interview with the Quad City Times of Iowa, called Obama’s answer "irresponsible and frankly naive." But yesterday in an AP story she seemed to say the same thing, as quoted above. So Obama today said, "a couple of months ago, Senator Clinton called me ‘naïve and irresponsible’ for taking this position, and said that we could lose propaganda battles if we met with leaders we didn’t like. Just yesterday, though, she called for diplomacy with Iran without preconditions. So I’m not sure if any of us knows exactly where she stands on this. But I can tell you this: when I am President of the United States, the American people and the world will always know where I stand." Obama also went on to criticize Clinton for supporting that Lieberman resolution on Iraq that he wasn’t around to vote for, but says he opposes (More on that HERE and HERE) And piling on is Edwards spox Chris Kofinis, saying: “Senator Clinton needs to be honest with the American people about her plans – but on everything from Iran to Iraq to Social Security, it seems she’s trying to have it both ways. In July, she criticized those who said they would meet with the leaders of Iran for negotiations without preconditions, calling them ‘irresponsible’ and ‘naïve.’ But yesterday, she told New Hampshire voters she’d do just that – negotiate with Iran ‘with no conditions.’ Now, her spokesman suggests that’s not what she meant. But you can’t have it both ways – on this or any other issue. “It is very disappointing that Senator Clinton seems determined to hedge her responses on the issues that matter most to the American people. After six years of the Bush Administration’s disastrous foreign policy, the stakes in this election are too high. The American people deserve a president who will tell them the truth and offer straight answers, not flip-flops and political double-speak.” BUT WAIT! The Clinton campaign says the AP story was wrong! That the line they excerpted "mischarcterized" her remarks. "Senator Clinton did not say that the U.S. President should pre-commit to meetings with the leaders of Iran or other rogue states during the first year of her presidency," says Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson."Rather, Senator Clinton was clearly referring to diplomacy between nations as she has repeatedly and consistently done for months. When Senator Clinton used the term ‘no conditions,’ she was referring to meetings between the United States government and Iran, not personal meetings with the President." The Clinton campaign provides the whole transcript here (LINK) Asked if it’s acceptable for Iran to get the bomb, the junior senator from New York says "there is no doubt that we have got a difficult relationship with Iran. But here is what I would do as president. 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 it is misleading. We spent a couple of weeks paying all this attention to Ahmadinejad. He is a figurehead. He does not have the real power. The real power is held in the supreme leadership and the clerical leadership. They actually control the Iranian revolutionary guard. So I think we should engage in negotiations. And I want to have some leverage when we go into the negotiations. "The Bush administration outsourced negotiations with Iran to the British, the French, and Germans, and nothing happened because everybody knew the United States was on the sidelines. I think we can gather information that is useful. That’s what we did all through the Cold War. We never stopped talking to the Soviet Union. They had missiles pointed at us, they had leaders who said they would bury us, they ran wars against people. But we kept talking to them and gradually we acquired valuable information that assisted us in bringing about the end of the Soviet Union. …I would negotiate with them. No conditions, but with some sticks that we could use to try to get leverage to move them in the direction we want." Read the whole thing and tell me what you think. Is Clinton flip-flopping? — jpt  NOTE: This entry was edited after I obtained the whole transcript of Clinton’s remarks.