Eric Edelman, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, has done us all the public service of providing a real-life sample of what a Hillary Clinton presidency would be like (via CS):

Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for president, had asked the Pentagon to detail how it is planning for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq. She first raised the issue in May, pointing out that whenever troops leave, it will be no simple task to transport the people, equipment, and vehicles out of Iraq, possibly through hostile territory.

Eric Edelman, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy, offered a sharply-worded response, saying such discussions boost the enemy.

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,” Edelman wrote. His tough language in a letter obtained Thursday was surprising in part because it came in correspondence with a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has oversight of the Pentagon.

Clinton responded Friday in a letter to Edelman’s boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, asking if he agreed with Edelman’s charge.

She said Edelman had ducked her questions and “instead made spurious arguments to avoid addressing contingency planning.”

“Undersecretary Edelman has his priorities backward,” Clinton wrote, calling his claim “outrageous and dangerous.”

Edelman has “backwards priorities”?  For challenging the lib fantasist orthodoxy that defeat in Iraq is as inevitable as, well, Hillary’s presidency is?  For telling her flat-out that dropping the knee to her Infernal Majesty’s defeat-mongering would be to give aid & comfort to the enemy?  Seems to me Undersecretary Edelman was just doing his job.

Funny that Mrs. Clinton considers that to be “dangerous,” and his lack of obeisance “outrageous.”  Makes you ponder what a President Rodham will do to all of us Edelmans still in the country on and after January 20, 2009.

And whether Secretary Gates will be among them.