It's going to be a long spring.

That was my first thought this morning when I saw this headline at Reuters.com.

Hillary Clinton, taking shots at John McCain and Barack Obama over the war in Iraq! No way.

“Why is it so surprising to me?” you may ask

“After all,” you may say, “Clinton has to put the war in Iraq out front at some point. Why not now?”

True enough. Addressing the war is one thing, but attacking her opponents on her weakest issue simply baffles me. It was Hillary Clinton, may I remind you, who voted in favor of heading to war in Iraq in 2002, saying:

This is probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make -- any vote that may lead to war should be hard -- but I cast it with conviction …I come to this decision from the perspective of a Senator from New York who has seen all too closely the consequences of last year's terrible attacks on our nation. In balancing the risks of action versus inaction, I think New Yorkers who have gone through the fires of hell may be more attuned to the risk of not acting. I know that I am.

Five years later, when US troops were firmly entrenched in Iraq and on the verge of capturing the longed-for “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people, Hillary Clinton had this to say to CNN:

I don't believe we should continue to vote for funding that has an open-ended commitment, that has no pressure on the Iraqi government to make the tough political decisions they have to make, or which really gives any urgency to the Bush administration's diplomatic efforts.

I can't understand why Hillary would use the war of all things to call out her opponents. McCain's comments about a permanent US military base in Iraq is simply realistic. After all, Clinton isn't pushing to bring the troops home from Germany, and it's been decades since the end of the Second World War.

As far as Obama is concerned, he and McCain are as far apart on Iraq as can be imagined, but at least he, like McCain, has maintained the same position on it over the years.

I'm guessing that Hillary’s motivation for this was to address the most vulnerable aspect of her campaign at a time when the next primary is still more than a month away. Or maybe she brought it up to deflect attention from McCain's actual visit to Iraq. Whatever the reason, if this is what we can expect until June 3, it’s going to be a long spring, indeed.