Her Way: A New Book Explores Hillary's Iraq Problem and Why It's Not Going Away

That little game of political chicken Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton played during the Senate vote on the Iraq spending bill Thursday night would not have surprised you if you had read Her Way, the new book by New York Times investigative reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, Jr. which I've just finished.

Neither Clinton nor Obama were on the Senate floor when the voting began. Sources tell me that Obama was holding off to see if Hillary would go first. When it was clear she wouldn't, and time was running out on the vote, he headed into the chamber and voted no. Less than a minute later, Clinton barreled in and did the same.

It was yet another example of her instinct for "followership." Anyone willing to bet that if Obama had voted yes, Hillary would still have voted no?

The idea that Clinton is all tactics and calculation -- and would rather stick her finger in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing than actually take the lead on something -- is painstakingly documented in Her Way. Forget the stuff about Monica, Gennifer Flowers, Vince Foster, Hillary's record as a lawyer, or the Clintons' 20-year plan for both of them to become president. The money chapters are the ones on Iraq. When it comes to Hillary's shape-shifting stances, explanations, and votes on the war, Gerth and Van Natta offer a definitive and chilling portrait of a politician solely driven by political expedience -- even when it comes to life and death matters such as Iraq.

It's a portrait that will likely prove to be an anvil around her neck throughout the 2008 campaign, unless she can somehow transform herself from political weather vane to political leader.

Reading Her Way doesn't leave one optimistic that this will happen any time soon. Clinton's serial manipulations, prevarications, rationalizations, and calculations on the war are laid out chapter and verse. Literally. Starting with her vote authorizing President Bush to use military force against Iraq.

On the campaign trail, Clinton has said again and again that she cast her vote based on the best available intelligence. But Gerth and Van Natta show that, according to all evidence, Hillary did not actually read the "best available intelligence" on the war before the invasion -- the full, 90-page classified version of the National Intelligence Estimate -- even though Sen. Bob Graham, then chairman of the Intelligence Committee, had, according to the book, "implored his colleagues to do so before casting such a monumental vote." (After reading the full report, Graham voted against the war.)

What's more, "Hillary still had no one on her staff with the security clearances needed to read the NIE." So what, exactly did she base her decision on -- briefings provided by the administration? Gerth and Van Natta sum it up this way: "If she did not bother to read the complete intelligence reports, then she did not do enough homework on the decision that she has called the most important of her life." This is particularly shocking given Hillary's obsession -- well-documented in the book -- with being "always well-prepared." Her Way quotes a senate advisor saying, "In her downtime she inhales information and enjoys it."

Perhaps if she had read the NIE she might not have been so fast to buy into the Bush/Cheney talking point linking Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. But buy into it she did, taking to the Senate floor before the war authorization vote to accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members." Gerth and Van Natta note that when it came to making the Iraq-9/11 connection, Hillary even out-hawked Joe Lieberman, who "tempered his words on the Senate floor about the connection by noting that the 'relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime is a subject of intense debate within the intelligence community.'"