Obama draws contrast with Clinton over Iraq war

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

AMES, Iowa (Reuters) - Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama drew a contrast with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton over the Iraq war on Sunday and said he was "not clear" how she planned to end the conflict.

On the day after he formally launched his 2008 White House bid, Obama said on a campaign swing through Iowa that even before the war began it was possible to see the dangerous consequences of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"Even at the time, it was possible to make judgments that this would not work out well," the Illinois senator told reporters, indirectly contrasting his stance with presidential rivals Clinton and John Edwards, who both voted to authorize the war in 2002.

Clinton, now a war critic who has promised to end the conflict if she wins the White House, has been criticized by some Democrats for her 2002 Senate vote to authorize the war and for not renouncing the vote.

Edwards, the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee and a former senator from North Carolina, has called his vote in 2002 a mistake.

Obama was not in the Senate at the time of the vote but said he opposed the war from the start. Now proposing a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to be completed by the end of March 2008, Obama told reporters he was uncertain how Clinton intended to end the conflict.

"I am not clear to how she would proceed at this point to wind down the war in a specific way," Obama said when asked to evaluate Clinton's Iraq stance.

"I have tried to consistently present a responsible course of action that recognizes our national security interests in the region but would allow us to start redeploying our troops."

Clinton came under pressure again on Saturday during a campaign trip through New Hampshire to explain her 2002 Senate vote.

"Knowing what we know now, I would never have voted for it," she said. "I gave him (President George W. Bush) the authority to send inspectors back in to determine the truth. I said this is not a vote to authorize preemptive

war."

Asked later if she was trying to "have it both ways" by calling for the war's end after voting to authorize it, she said, "I do not believe that most of us who voted to give the president authority thought he would so misuse the authority we gave him."

Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, has quickly jumped into the top tier of a crowded Democratic presidential field along with Clinton and Edwards.

His early opposition to the increasingly unpopular war is a centerpiece of his stump speech, drawing big cheers on a two-day swing through the state that traditionally kicks off the presidential nominating fight.

He told Iowa crowds over weekend they should demand a clear plan on how to end the war from all the Democratic candidates.