Senator Clinton is a very shrewd politician. She’s trying to pull off the nearly impossible: be tough on national security while not alienating too many Democratic primary voters. Her latest two-step is on the terror detainee bill. She opposed the bill and drew wild applause from the Left with this speech she delivered on the Senate floor:
Now, after the bill is off the front pages and the media focus back on Iraq, Clinton says that she’s ok with torture if there’s “an imminent threat to millions of Americans.” She adds: “That very, very narrow exception within very, very limited circumstances is better than blasting a big hole in our entire law.” But why didn’t she offer such an amendment – one that gave “a blank check to torture” only under “ticking time bomb” scenarios — when the bill was on the Senate floor and the Democratic grass roots fully engaged? I checked. She didn’t. In fact, had her argument won the day our interrogation program, which has yielded solid intelligence, would have been shut down. Senator Clinton is trying to have it both ways and, judging from the press coverage of her latest torture remarks, she’s succeeding.
