Democratic U.S.
presidential hopeful John Edwards has spent two weeks
questioning Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's judgment in voting
to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist
organization.
On Sunday in New
Hampshire, he questioned her sincerity.
Last month,
Clinton was one of 75 U.S. senators who voted for a
resolution giving President George W. Bush the authority to
call the guards terrorists. She has characterized the
vote as a way to gain leverage for U.S. negotiations
with Iran, but some of her rivals, including Edwards
and Sen. Barack Obama, argue it amounted to giving Bush
another blank check to go to war.
At several stops
Sunday, Edwards referred to a New York Times
column in which unidentified Clinton supporters say she
voted for the resolution in part because she already
has shifted from ''primary mode,'' when she must
appeal to liberals, to ''general election'' mode, when she
must find broader support.
''I may have
missed something -- and you can tell me -- have we already
had the New Hampshire primary? Have we decided who's going
to win the New Hampshire primary yet? I think we're
going to actually have a campaign and an election,''
Edwards said at a town hall meeting in a school
cafeteria.
''Instead of
moving from primary mode to general election mode, why don't
we have tell-the-truth mode, all the time, and not say
something different one time than we say another
time?'' he said.
''We need to be
able to trust both a presidential candidate and a
president of the United States,'' Edwards said.
Clinton
spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said of Edwards: ''Now that his
campaign is stalled he has chosen instead to launch false
attacks against other Democrats instead of presenting
his ideas to New Hampshire voters. Mr. Edwards knows
that Senator Clinton has repeatedly and consistently
called for negotiations between the United States and Iran
aimed at ensuring that Iran does not acquire nuclear
weapons.''
Fellow Democratic
presidential hopefuls Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, both
U.S. senators, voted against the resolution. Obama
missed the vote to campaign in New Hampshire,
prompting Clinton's campaign to argue that if he felt
so strongly that the resolution would lay the groundwork for
war, he should have been there to vote against it. (Holly
Ramer, AP)
