A retired U.S. Army general visiting the state to campaign for Hillary Clinton said yesterday she does not oppose the Iraq war -- and she said she's never heard Clinton oppose it, either.

Retired Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy, the Army's first woman to reach the three-star rank, said she supports Clinton's promise to withdraw the majority of U.S. troops from Iraq if she is elected President. But Kennedy said she does not consider her position to be opposing the war as it is currently being conducted.

Kennedy, 60, retired in 2000 after serving in the Army since 1969.

Asked if she opposes the war as it is currently being conducted, Kennedy said in a telephone interview: "As of the last couple of years, I do think that we should be on a different track. I wouldn't put it that way because, as retired military, it might come across as being -- you know what I mean -- I wouldn't say it in a completely stark way.

"I'm very proud of the army," Kennedy said. "I'm proud of the Army leadership. They've done the very best they can given the circumstances. They get a shifting sense of mission and it comes from their civilian leadership. They haven't gotten the support they needed."

Kennedy said she agreed with Clinton's position to withdraw, as Clinton has said, "the vast majority" of U.S. troops from Iraq while leaving behind a relatively small counter-terrorism force.

"Senator Clinton has it exactly right," said Kennedy. "If she is elected, her plan is to bring together the chairman of the joint chiefs, the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council and get them to create a plan that will have the withdrawal begin within 60 days."

Kennedy said she does not consider such a position opposition to the war.

"I'm from the Vietnam era, and in the Vietnam era, we were very cut-and-dried," Kennedy said. "You were for the war or against the war, and being against the war was, 'Hell, no, I won't go.' I don't buy into that one single bit.

"The reality is, here we are now," she said. "We have got to be responsible in the way we transition from war to just being in support of the Iraqis in some less prominent way; some way that gets us out of the neighborhood and being in between opposing internal forces. It's not our job to sort out their civil conflict. They are the only ones with the authority to fix it. You can go in any time you want to as a third country, but it will never get fixed by you. People in their own country have got to do it."

Kennedy said, "I don't oppose the war. I think it's being very badly led by the civilian leadership." And, she added, "I have not ever heard (Clinton) say, 'I oppose the war.' I've heard her say that we need to begin withdrawal under a plan led by the military and defense secretary. I've heard her say we need to create a regional stabilizing group by allies, by leaders in the world and by all of the states that are bordering Iraq. That is a very important idea and the point of that group is to create incentive and assurances that will keep the neighboring countries from becoming involved and entering Iraq. That's a much more sophisticated thing than saying, 'I oppose the war.'"

Kennedy said she does not believe that her position and Clinton's is damaging to troop morale.

"I'll tell you this," Kennedy said. "It's terrible for morale for soldiers to think they are fighting a war when they themselves don't know why they are there. They can be given all kinds of really good leadership and good leaders can hold them together at the immediate level. But long-term, it's a betrayal of our soldiers to send them to war with reasons that keep shifting on the basis of apparently pretty deceptive reasoning and lying to the public by the Republican administration. That is not good for morale at all.

"It doesn't make me less patriotic if I don't think George Bush is on track," Kennedy said. "I would think that is the worst thing for morale, and it has nothing to do with what Claudia Kennedy, retired general, thinks. Morale for soldiers has nothing to do with the internal domestic politics of this country. When they're in Iraq, they're trying to complete their mission successfully and they're trying to stay alive, and make sure their buddies are alive. What a retired general in the U.S. says, first of all, is probably unknown to them and it's not of interest."

They think that no matter who's talking over here in the U.S., we're out of touch with their reality."