Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted her decision to oppose the 2007 Iraq troop surge was at least somewhat “political” in nature, according to a new memoir by former Defense Secretary Bob Gates obtained by the Washington Post.
Gates describes the admission, which Clinton made to Obama in a meeting, as “remarkable”:
Gates offers a catalogue of various meetings, based in part on notes that he and his aides made at the time, including an exchange between Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that he calls “remarkable.”
He writes: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . . The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”
