Dr. Noah Feldman, law professor at NYU and Harvard, provides a sobering perspective on the Clinton contradictions. In an April 8th article in the New York Times Magazine, he notes that Democrats in both the House and the Senate overwhelmingly supported maintaining enough “forces in Iraq for the purpose of fighting terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” – directly echoing Senator Clinton’s line.

But Feldman, who helped the Iraqis draft the constitution that provided the basis for the current government, observes that “the ‘fight al Qaeda’ policy cannot work the way it is being promoted. It is not easy to attack Al Qaeda without taking on the larger Sunni insurgency….To be accomplished successfully and without unnecessarily endangering soldiers in the line of fire, the policy would require roughly as many troops in Iraq as we have now. The result would probably look a lot like the Bush policy. And it could take years to show success.”

Of course, the mainstream press prefers not to focus on the surprisingly close resemblance between the unpopular Bush approach and the vague alternatives occasionally suggested by campaigning Democrats. Senator Barack Obama has also declared that if elected president he “might” keep a “small number of troops” (whatever that means) in strategic positions in Iraq.

In the case of Senator Clinton, there’s such an obvious contradiction between her “bring the troops home” rhetoric and her simultaneous promises to keep substantial forces in-country as “an essential stabilizing element,” that the general failure to hold her to account represents a stunning demonstration of journalistic malfeasance.

Her apologists might claim that when she says “bring the troops home” she actually means “some troops,” not “all troops.” But this bears a close enough echo of long-ago debates about “what the meaning of the word is, is” to make the public, or any Clinton, feel queasy.

The simple truth remains inescapable:

One Hillary says she’ll “end the war” and “bring the troops home.”

The other Hillary says she’ll keep a powerful, potent presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

And one of these two women is, without question, shamelessly lying.