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From James Taranto, opinionjournal.com:

'Truth Speaking to Power'

This morning brought an e-mail bearing the name of Gary Hart, the Democratic former senator from Colorado who might have become president had he not been an adulterer before adultery was cool. The message actually came from the "campaign" of John Kerry*, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who might have become president--nah, let's face it, he was never going to become president.

Anyway, here is what Hart had to say about Kerry:

When I first read John Kerry's October speech on Iraq, I knew it was a turning point. He spoke with the same unwavering voice--truth speaking to power--as he did when I first heard him speak out about the war in Vietnam in 1971.

In other words, by the Kerry campaign's own admission, the current effort to undermine the U.S. position in Iraq is of a piece with Kerry's 1971 slanders against Vietnam veterans and disparagement of Vietnamese aspirations for democracy.

The Dems' 2008 front-runner is trying to play both sides, the Associated Press reports:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday defended her vote to authorize war in Iraq amid growing unease among liberal Democrats who could determine the potential 2008 presidential candidate's future.

"I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the president and his administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war," the New York senator said in a lengthy letter to thousands of people who have written her about the war.

At the same time, she said the United States must "finish what it started" in Iraq.

Blogger John Hinderaker makes an excellent point:

No doubt Clinton's approach, which recalls her husband's policy of triangulation, will be hailed as another shrewd move by the mistress of calculation. But I wonder. There is a certain sourness in the position Clinton has staked out: the war was a mistake which I voted to authorize only because I didn't know the facts; ever since, it has been bungled horribly; nevertheless, we have no choice but to see the mistake through to the bitter end. It smacks, somehow, of the purse-lipped, take-your-medicine feminist First Lady of the early days of Bill Clinton's presidency.

It strikes me that Hillary's cod-liver-oil approach to Iraq could well lose to a more emotionally satisfying, back to the '60s antiwar campaign in the Democratic primaries, or, in the general election, to a proponent of President Bush's idealistic vision of the Iraq war as a key element in the nation's long-term strategy for defeating Islamic terrorism.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports from Paris that "French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, one of the sharpest critics of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, warned Washington on Tuesday against pulling out troops without regard to regional security":

Villepin, interviewed in Paris by CNN, said a badly planned withdrawal could cause chaos in Iraq, "which of course would be disastrous for the whole region."

So the cut-and-run crowd is calling for unilateral American surrender!

* To be precise, the e-mail's return address was info@johnkerry.com and the bottom of the message contained the snail-mail address "Friends of John Kerry, Inc., 511 C St. NE, Washington DC, 20002, U.S.A."
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"Millions For Defense, Not One Cent For Tribute" - Thomas Jefferson on paying ransom to Muslim corsairs (pirates).