Senator Hillary Clinton sharpened her attack on the Iraq war as she used a blizzard of television interviews on Sunday to cast herself as the Democrats' presidential heir apparent.
In a clean sweep of appearances on all the US networks' political talk shows, former US president Bill Clinton's first lady insisted that she was an agent of change who could heal years of rancor in a divided Washington.
On Iraq, the issue likely to most dominate next year's White House race, the New York senator said she would vote to halt war spending and curtail US President George W. Bush's "failed policy" by starting to bring US troops home.
And as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepared to speak at New York's Columbia University yesterday, a day before addressing the UN General Assembly, Clinton lambasted the "Holocaust denier" and "supporter of terrorism."
She vowed on CNN to build an "international coalition with enforceable sanctions" to curb Iran's nuclear program under Ahmadinejad, who has been rebuffed in a bid to visit New York's Ground Zero this week.
"There is no military solution [in Iraq]," Clinton said on CBS, appearing from a book-lined study in her home in upstate New York, arguing that US troops were stuck in "a sectarian civil war."
"I voted against funding last spring. I will vote against funding again in the absence of any change in policy," she said, defending an evolution in her thinking since she backed Bush's drive for war in a 2002 Senate vote.
The White House is reportedly set to ask Congress this week to approve another massive spending measure for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan totaling nearly US$200 billion.
The Bush administration has cajoled wavering Republicans to close ranks against anti-war Democrats in a series of Senate votes following testimony from the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, this month.
On Petraeus's recommendation, Bush plans to start a limited withdrawal to reduce the US troop presence back to January's pre "surge" level of around 130,000.
Clinton reaffirmed her belief that some US troops will have to remain in Iraq, to fight al-Qaeda extremists and protect US diplomats, but said she could not foresee now what she would "inherit" from Bush.
"And I think we've got to make some decisions here that extricate us from Iraq," she said on ABC. "But if the president doesn't do that before he leaves office, when I'm president, I will."
With the primary election season fast approaching, a Gallup poll last week put Democratic voters' support for Clinton at 47 percent, far ahead of Obama at 25 percent. Edwards was a distant third.
"I think I'm in the best position to lead starting in January 2009," Clinton said.
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