Pentagon Aide Says Hillary Clinton Helps Enemy

The NYTimes reports:

A Pentagon official has told Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that questions she has raised about how the United States would withdraw from Iraq feed enemy propaganda.

The stinging wording of the message, from Under Secretary of Defense Eric S. Edelman, was unusual, particularly because it was directed at a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, tours the Construction Trades Training Center in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, March 14. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Eric A. Hendrix

Mr. Edelman’s July 16 message, in response to questions Mrs. Clinton raised in May, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,” he wrote, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.”

A Clinton spokesman, Philippe Reines, said the senator would respond to Mr. Edelman’s boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Mr. Reines said military leaders should offer a withdrawal plan rather than “a political plan to attack those who question them.”

While Mrs. Clinton has pushed the Pentagon for information about withdrawal plans, so have others lawmakers, including Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.