Sen. Clinton's visit to Iraq provides a platform to examine and perhaps alter her views on a war that she once voted to authorize but now criticizes.

From The New York Times:

Viewed with suspicion by elements of her party because she has not explicitly repudiated her October 2002 vote authorizing military action against Iraq, Mrs. Clinton, who was in Baghdad on Saturday, has been trying to shore up her credentials as a critic of the war without exposing herself to charges of indecisiveness or flip-flopping of the sort that so damaged Senator John Kerry in his unsuccessful race against Mr. Bush in 2004.

Some Democrats suggested that Mrs. Clinton’s trip this weekend was intended to give her an opportunity to move further away from that vote and against the president’s policy.

Mrs. Clinton . . . [has] no doubt learned a lesson from Mr. Kerry’s problems in 2004 when he appeared to switch his position on the war: that inconsistency may well prove to be a bigger political sin than taking a position out of step with the electorate. Mrs. Clinton’s associates have expressed concern that if she tries to switch her views on the war, reflecting what her advisers said was concern, she would appear weak as she campaigned during a time of war to become the nation’s first female president.