Clinton, Giuliani give rivals reason to hope

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic and Republican front-runners Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani have given their rivals some reason to hope this week with Bill Clinton's statements on Iraq and questions about Giuliani's personal life.

Political experts say both stories provide unnecessary distractions for the Clinton and Giuliani campaigns with five weeks to go before Iowa on January 3 holds the first of the state-by-state contests to determine which Republican and Democrat will face off in the November 2008 election.

The Clinton campaign prides itself on having the former president as a prime campaigner for his wife and has been using him extensively in Iowa, where Hillary Clinton is locked in a three-way duel with Barack Obama and John Edwards.

This week, the ex-president said he had opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning -- a statement that raised eyebrows because he did not seem to take a strong public stance against the war when it started in 2003.

"If he did, I don't think most of us heard about it," Obama told reporters this week.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Clinton had been briefed by top White House officials privately about war planning in 2003 and he told them he supported the invasion.

For some experts, Clinton's insistence he was always against the war reminds voters of some of the negatives associated with the Clintons' time in the White House and puts the spotlight on Hillary Clinton's own position on the war.

The New York senator voted in favor of a 2002 Senate resolution to authorize the use of force against Iraq and has refused to apologize for it, but is now against the unpopular conflict.