Jen Rubin:

Should [Hillary Clinton] survive the primaries she will now be in precisely the same position as John Kerry: she was for the War before she was against it and against withdrawal deadlines before she was for them. How quickly they forget.

Maybe. But Kerry managed to go from pro to anti-war within a year, and his sudden opposition just happened to coincide with the surge in Howard Dean’s poll numbers. People smelled craven opportunism, and in 2004, the country was much more closely divided on whether the effort in Iraq was worth continuing. Today, a war supporter can say they’ve given Iraq enough time to succeed. We’re hearing comments like Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama — nobody’s dove — saying, “By September, when General Petraeus is to make a report, I think most of the people in Congress believe, unless something extraordinary occurs, that we should be on a move to draw those surge numbers down.”

And we saw the New York Times report on Saturday that at least some officials in the White House are considering troop reductions in 2008. (The White House quickly and vehemently denied the report.)

By the time the primaries start, the troop drawdown may have already begun.