They Always Hurt the Ones They Love

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq, last night brought her campaign to end the war to New York, where she accused Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of not doing enough to challenge the Bush administration's Iraq policies.

Speaking in front of more than 500 supporters in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Ms. Sheehan, speaking of Senator Clinton, said, "She knows that the war is a lie but she is waiting for the right time to say it."

Then, as the crowd cheered, she issued a challenge to Senator Clinton, saying, "You say it or you are losing your job."

A spokesman for Senator Clinton, while not commenting about Ms. Sheehan's remarks, said that the senator, while voting to give President Bush the authority to go to war, has been very critical of the way he has chosen to use that authority...

In a perhaps not unrelated story,

Former US president Bill Clinton sharply criticised George W. Bush for the Iraq War and the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and voiced alarm at the swelling US budget deficit.

Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."

The Iraq war diverted US attention from the war on terrorism "and undermined the support that we might have had," Bush said in an interview with an ABC's "This Week" programme.

Clinton said there had been a "heroic but so far unsuccessful" effort to put together an constitution that would be universally supported in Iraq.

The US strategy of trying to develop the Iraqi military and police so that they can cope without US support "I think is the best strategy. The problem is we may not have, in the short run, enough troops to do that," said Clinton...

Perhaps it is also revealing what they don't say.

Instead of saying "this is a mistake, we never should have gone there, and we should leave immediately" they say "this is a mistake, it has been mismanaged, and we could have done it better".

Instead of saying "this is a war for oil, not freedom, designed to enrich some of the most powerful corporations in the world today" they say "this is a heroic war against terror and Bush has squandered our mighty military alliance".

The Clintons regret the Hegemony That Might Have Been and long for The One That May Be Again. But like Tolkien said in his Preface, in the real world men never destroy their Ring of Power. The Clintons long for the Precious, and it tortures them to see it on the hand of the Enemy they allowed to form again.