In Iowa for another day of town hall meetings, Hillary Clinton was smoozing the left with another shift on her Iraq stance. Joe Biden took a bit of shift Sunday too, with his talk about Iraq. It’s too be expected at this pointed, as I noted here earlier. The field of Democratic candidates will have to listen to the public consensus in Iraq, and each day that goes by, I expect the disapproval to continue to grow.

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that President Bush should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq before he leaves office, asserting it would be “the height of irresponsibility” to pass the war along to the next commander in chief.

“This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy,” the Democratic senator from New York said her in initial presidential campaign swing through Iowa.

“We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office” in January 2009, the former first lady said.

After giving a brief speech at a town hall forum “attended by about 300 activists,” Hillary took questions for about an hour.

Pressed to defend her vote to authorize force in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, Clinton responded by stepping up her criticism of Bush.

“I am going to level with you, the president has said this is going to be left to his successor,” Clinton said. “I think it is the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it.”

Hillary’s changing attitude reminds me of another Democrat in the Senate who’s made similar statements on Iraq and Bush’s plan to leave it the next president. She’s do well to consider supporting his Set A Deadline proposal when it comes up for a vote in the Senate. If Hillary is serious about calling on Bush to “extricate” the U.S. from Iraq, she needs to be willing to Set A Deadline. And the same goes for the other Democratic candidates, as well. Enough is enough. It’s time to bring our troops home and end this war based on lies.

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