In my memory, there has not been such a dizzying array of characters competing for the presidency. However, it seems that only the Obamalites have the highest rate of satisfaction in their candidate.

Hillary still has her high percentage of those who view her as unfavorable. Instead of being an insider to the Democratic Party, she is now the recipient of their aggressive disdain. Just witness the maneuverings of Move.on.org, the Daily Kos, and Arianna Huffington. She made a deal with these devils and now she is paying her dues for the support she had hoped to maintain. Instead, these organizations have betrayed her in favor of the orator, Barack Obama and his ambiguous methods to bring about change.

Now that the records of her White House days are public, we find that she had very little involvement in setting any kind of policy. She had far too many political and social gatherings to avail herself of to have time for creating and sustaining policy. However, far from being disappointed with her, we should be glad that she maintained her public posturings and left decisions to the one we actually elected in the first place, namely, her husband, Bill. And let’s face it, those weren’t bad days. Overall, his presidency was a success, excluding that rumor about an intern in the Oval Office.

Hillary has been working hard to place herself in a favorable light with not only the Democrats but with the independents. Of course, that’s what all candidates do. But Hilary can’t have it both ways. Her attempts to convince voters that she was against the Iraq policy all the time, or her votes or statements have been taken out of context, is preempted by her votes in the Senate regarding that war; also, her comments in the first years of the war also portray her as supporting the war and her reasons for supporting its initiation.

But the winds of change caress everyone’s hair. With an unpopular war and our economy in distress, Hillary has tried to smooth out the conflicts in her campaigning regarding the war. She now qualifies her votes and statements to portend a more liberal approach to the war in Iraq. And maybe she really has changed her position on the war. But I don’t think so. I don’t believe that she will precipitously withdraw our troops from Iraq. I think if we knew what she planned to do with our troops, we would find that she’s a lot closer to George Bush than Barack Obama. That’s not to say she will give an open-ended commitment to the government of Iraq. I don’t think she will do that. I believe she will try to fashion the country of Iraq into a state of quasi-stability by leaving our troops in Iraq for the length of time necessary to train the Iraqi forces into an effective battle force and hopefully, end the threat, or at least further diminish, the role of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

This is really not an untenable position to take on the war. A unilateral withdrawal in Iraq would create a vacuum of power in a state that has served admirably as a counterpoint to Iran. And as much as this is anathema to most Democrats, we need to make sure that Iraq is stable enough to properly produce and supply the world with their great deposits of oil. Without this, the price of oil would be astronomically high.

There are those who say the war was all about oil in the first place. I’m not sure that is correct. I think it was probably one of the reasons to engage Saddam but not the only one. Regardless of denials by Hillary, she did believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction – as a matter of fact, most Democrats agreed with that assumption, as did the true believers, the Republicans.

However, the question is no longer pertinent. It no longer matters why we prosecuted the war. We’re there and we have to finish it, and as quickly as possible. Yes, we have to get Iraq stable and more amenable to cooperation with the various ethnic groups, but the cost of the war has become a huge drain on our resources. We have to stop that and soon.

Our economy and weak dollar will no longer support an open-ended commitment to Iraq. By no means should we publish a withdrawal schedule, we have to vigorously defeat Al Qaeda – but we must be aware that our failing economy is being significantly altered by the cost of the war. In this, Ron Paul was right. We can’t afford this war. But to keep it from being a total disaster we have to finish the job and make no long-term commitment to Iraq.

In the end, Hillary should embrace her votes on the Iraq war because they were founded on what everyone thought were legitimate reasons to disarm Iraq. This will not hurt her in her quest for the independent vote and it would probably not hurt her standings with her supporters right now. I think she would get a vote for being honest.

The failure of our intelligence is regrettable, very regrettable, but we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.