Wash. Times again falsely claimed Clinton said "the surge is clearly 'working' "

Summary: The Washington Times falsely claimed that "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton [D-NY] ... told the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars] conference on Monday that the surge is clearly 'working.' " In fact, Clinton never said that President Bush's troop "surge" policy in Iraq "is clearly 'working.' " Instead, she linked the improvements in Iraq's Al Anbar Province to new "tactics," not Bush's troop escalation.

An August 23 Washington Times article falsely claimed that "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton [D-NY] ... told the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars] conference on Monday that the surge is clearly 'working.' " In fact, as Media Matters for America previously noted, Clinton never said that President Bush's troop "surge" policy in Iraq "is clearly 'working.' " Instead, in a speech she gave on August 20, Clinton linked the improvements in Iraq's Al Anbar Province to new "tactics," not Bush's troop escalation. Reporter Joseph Curl contrasted what he falsely claimed she said at the VFW conference with her reported August 22 statement that "[i]t is abundantly clear that there is no military solution to the sectarian fighting in Iraq. ... We need to stop refereeing the war, and start getting out now."

According to an August 21 New York Times article, Clinton stated to the VFW: "We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it's working. ... We're just years too late changing our tactics. We can't ever let that happen again." The New York Times also reported that "[a]ides to Mrs. Clinton said her remarks that military tactics in Iraq are 'working' referred specifically to reports of increased cooperation from Sunnis leading to greater success against insurgents in Al Anbar Province." And according to an April 29 New York Times article on improvements in Al Anbar, the progress there "began last September" -- months before Bush announced his plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq.

Media Matters noted that in an August 21 article, The Washington Times similarly reported that Clinton's quote that "it's working" was about the Bush administration's so-called "surge" policy.

Moreover, Clinton's statement to the VFW that the changed "tactics in Iraq ... particularly in Al Anbar Province" show "it's working," is not new. The New York Daily News reported on August 23 that she made similar comments about Al Anbar province in March: "Camp Clinton insisted she was talking only about a limited improvement in Anbar, linked to better relations with tribal leaders -- a claim she made to the Daily News in March." Clinton was also quoted in a May 7 New York Observer article saying, "We are making some progress it turns out, in what is called Al Anbar province against al Qaeda." From the New York Observer:

"The war is 360 degrees, there is no battlefield," she said. "So I want to get our combat troops out of a sectarian, civil war. And I have also said, and I somewhat do differ with some of my other colleagues, I think you have to take a hard look at the situation we are in. We are making some progress it turns out, in what is called Al Anbar province against al Qaeda, and the reason we are is that our military leaders have learned a lot in the last several years there and they have made common cause with some of the tribal leaders, who don't like Al Qaeda any more than we do because Al Qaeda is also going after them."

From the August 23 Washington Times article:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- who told the VFW conference on Monday that the surge is clearly "working" -- said yesterday that it has failed.

"It is abundantly clear that there is no military solution to the sectarian fighting in Iraq," the New York Democrat said. "We need to stop refereeing the war, and start getting out now."

—R.D.