Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton on Sunday said it would be irresponsible if President George W. Bush left US troops in Iraq when his term expires in two years.
"The president has said that this is going to be left to his successor," she told a crowd in an Iowa auditorium.
"I think it's the height of irresponsibility and I resent it," she said.
Clinton, wife of the former president Bill Clinton, spent two days in the bellwether state of Iowa as she kicks off her bid to be the first female US president.
The New York senator stopped short of calling the war a mistake and said she has "taken responsibility" for her vote in 2002 to approve the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Clinton, 59, said at Democratic Party offices on Saturday that Congress would not have voted for war if it had known then what it knows now and blamed Bush for misusing his authority.
The war issue is crucial to party liberals -- who play an influential role in the nomination process -- and some may see her vote as a betrayal, analysts said.
"I said this was not a vote for preemptive war. The president took my vote, and others' votes, and basically misused the authority we gave him," Clinton said in Des Moines, Iowa.
She had managed to dodge the Iraq question on Saturday in her only public event, at a Des Moines school gymnasium filled with 1,400 people.
Audience members posed questions to the candidate as if in a town meeting, a format her husband used to great effect.
However, she was pressed for answers in the smaller meetings typical of this largely rural state, which by next year will offer the first test in the selection of the Democratic Party's candidate for the 2008 presidential contest.
Bush said in a press conference last year: "We're not leaving so long as I'm the president. That would be a huge mistake."
Clinton said she was planning on introducing legislation calling for a cap on troop levels in Iraq and wanted to cut off funding for the Iraqi army but could not support cutting funding for US troops.
She dismissed criticism that a bipartisan resolution opposing the war currently making its way through Congress had "no teeth" and said it was the only way to get the administration's attention.
Clinton also drew laughter from her audience when she was reportedly asked how she would deal with "evil" male leaders from foreign governments.
"What in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?" Clinton said before a long pause, prompting laughter in the crowd.
She went on to give a serious answer but faced questions later by journalists who asked who she was thinking of when she paused, with one mentioning her husband.
"I thought I was funny. You guys keep telling me to lighten up. I get a little funny and now I'm being psychoanalyzed," she said, according to the New York Times and other US media.
Clinton, who announced last week that she was stepping into the campaign "to win," is leading among Democratic hopefuls in early national polls but faces a tough and crowded field for the Democratic nomination as the only woman.
"I don't think there's a woman here who thinks that sometimes you just have to try harder," she said.
RSS