Clinton Sticking to Iraq Plan, No Matter What

March 17, 2008 — -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is sticking to her plan to withdraw troops from Iraq, no matter what.

In a testy exchange with a reporter on a conference call Monday, after Clinton delivered a speech about Iraq, top Clinton advisors went to pains to make plain that there would be no room for adjustment in Clinton's Iraq plans, no matter what happens on the ground.

At one point her communications director boiled it down to a one-word answer. Would she stand by her plan? Yes.

"Senator Clinton has been very, very clear about what her plan is and one of her points in giving the speech is that you can count on her to implement this plan," Clinton foreign policy adviser Lee Feinstein said.

"In the world there are contingencies, but it is a very different matter when you enter office, not intending to implement the plan you have put out on the campaign trail," he said.

"You've now just used this term 'contingencies'," replied Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs. "I mean that is, you're basically telling us that the plan might change? Is that not correct?"

"No, we're not saying that. What we're saying is that Hillary is committed to her plan. She has laid out her plan in detail. She was the first candidate in this race, in this primary, to lay out her detailed plans of what she would do as president to start bringing our troops home. She's committed to those plans," Clinton policy director Neera Tanden replied.

The Post reporter pressed again on whether it would be fair to assume that Clinton might need the opportunity to adjust her plan, in the way that former Obama adviser Samantha Power suggested Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., might adjust his plan for a 16-month withdrawal.

In an interview with the BBC earlier this month, Power said: "You can't make a commitment in whatever month we're in now, in March of 2008 about what circumstances are gonna be like in January 2009. We can't even tell what Bush is up to in terms of troop pauses and so forth. He will of course not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US senator. He will rely upon a plan, an operational plan that he pulls together, in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn't have daily access now as a result of not being the president."