Gary Hart Raps Pro-war Hillary Clinton

Former Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart is hinting that he won't support Hillary Clinton when she runs for president in 2008, saying he's in "total disagreement" with her support for the Iraq war.

"The Democrats have failed to come up with a party position on Iraq," Hart complained to the New York Times on Sunday, in quotes excerpted by the web site JustHillary.com.

"Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have to get these people into line," he continued, before adding: "You can't do that with Senator Clinton saying increase troop levels,"

Asked point-blank if he thought Mrs. Clinton was the Democratic Party's best hope to retake the White House," the Colorado Democrat declared: "I'm in total disagreement with her position on Iraq."

Like Clinton, Hart was the Democratic Party's frontrunner in 1988 - until he invited reporters to check out rumors that he was cheating on his wife. He was - as compromising photos that turned up on the front pages of the nation's tabloid soon confirmed.

Since then the former senator has fashioned himself into a national security expert. Hart has claimed, for instance, that just days before the 9/11 attacks he met with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to warn that a terrorist attack was imminent.

The former presidential candidate told the Times that Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war in a bid to avoid being painted as "weak on defense," a political strategy that he calls "all wrong."

"We are a republic. We are not an empire," Hart told the Times. "And this is an imperial policy."