"I think the pundits have it wrong. I think the American people have had enough of politicians who go out of their way to look tough, who say one thing in a caucus and another in a general election. When I am the nominee of our party, the choice will be clear. My Republican opponent won't be able to say that we both supported this war in Iraq. He won't be able to say that we really agree about using the war in Iraq to justify military action against Iran, or about the diplomacy of not talking and saber-rattling. He won't be able to say that I haven't been open and straight with the American people, or that I've changed my positions. And you know what? The American people want that choice. Because I believe that's what we need in our next President.

"We've had enough of a misguided war in Iraq that never should have been fought - a war that needs to end."

Raimondo asserts,

We are told that the ideological differences between Obama and the Clintons aren't all that great, that in fact they barely exist, which I think is a highly dubious proposition, but, in any case, on this issue - the vital question of war and peace - the gulf between them could not be wider, or deeper.

She, after all, voted for the war, and she's been saber-rattling over Iran - much to AIPAC's delight. Obama, on the other hand, has taken a clear and consistent antiwar position on the Iraq war, as angular as one could hope for in a mainstream politician, while her insincere pandering to the antiwar instincts of the Democratic base has been absolutely shameless.

Roughly a year earlier, Raimondo called Hillary Clinton a War Goddess. We should not forget that in spite of her backtracking, at that time Hillary wanted permanent bases in Iraq and was threatening war with Iran

As the war in Iraq metastasizes into what General William E. Odom calls "the greatest strategic disaster in United States history," and the cost in lives and treasure continues to escalate, we are already being set up for Act II of the neocons' Middle East war scenario - with the Democrats taking up where the Republicans left off.

The Bush administration, for all its bellicose rhetoric, has shown little stomach for directly confronting Tehran, and this has prompted Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton to take on the Bushies for supposedly ignoring the alleged threat from Iran. Speaking at Princeton University on the occasion of the Wilson School's 75th anniversary celebration, Clinton aligned herself with such Republican hawks as Sen. John McCain and the editorial board of the Weekly Standard, calling for sanctions and implicitly threatening war:

"I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations. I don't believe you face threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines. But let's be clear about the threat we face now: A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond. The regime's pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only underscores the urgency of the threat it poses. U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot and should not - must not - permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations. And we cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran - that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons."

So is it any wonder that Hillary would now endorse McCain over Obama as a qualified commander in chief, as she did recently in a Texas interview?

In the end it all comes back to what "judgment" is made at 3 am in the morning not the fact that the call might come. And as far as anyone can tell, Hillary and McCain are in lock step on the matter of future wars. If either of them gain the presidency, the principle of Neocon preemption will still be with us.