Arianna Huffington: Hillary and Kerry bring me to tears on Iraq

This post first appeared at Huffington Post and is reprinted here with permission.

I arrived in Washington to speak at the Take Back America Conference fast on the heels of the wildly different takes on Iraq offered up in speeches by John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, which everyone at the Washington Hilton was still buzzing about.

While getting ready to MC the Conference's gala awards dinner, I watched Kerry's speech on the web and found myself in tearsIf he had given that speech in 2004, he'd be in the White House today. And the world would be a better and safer place.

Then I watched Hillary's speech, which also made me cry -- but for an entirely different reason.

It was déjà vu all over again. Are the consultants who helped steer Kerry over the '04 cliff now advising Hillary? Her language on Iraq was replete with the same kind of equivocation that cost Kerry the last election.

"I do not think," she said, "it is a smart strategy for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government, nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain."

Is that not the second coming of I voted for it before I voted against it?