Clinton parries Iraq questions in N.H.
CONCORD, N.H. - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton faced questions Saturday from New Hampshire voters skeptical about her stand on the Iraq war, including one who demanded that she repudiate her 2002 Senate vote to send U.S. troops into battle.
In her first presidential campaign visit to the early voting state, Clinton focused on her plans to revive struggling small-town economies, provide universal health care and make college more affordable. But at a town hall meeting in rural Berlin and at a boisterous gathering of some 3,000 people in the state capital, Concord, Clinton was peppered with questions about Iraq.
Most of the questions were cordial, and Clinton was loudly cheered when she repeated her pledge to end the war if she is elected president next year. But several attendees challenged the New York senator to explain how she could reconcile her sharp criticism of the war with her vote to authorize the original invasion.
“Aren’t you trying to have it both ways?” asked a man in Concord.
Clinton acknowledged “a great deal of frustration and anger and outrage” over the war, and said she was working hard in the Senate to pass legislation capping troop levels in Iraq. She also vowed to try to bring to a vote a resolution disapproving of President Bush’s planned troop increase.
