… If you don’t like what you’re seeing, just be patient. His winds will change direction soon enough.

On September 16, 2003, the former Prez spoke in California at a Panetta Institute forum on “The Challenges of Presidential Leadership in the 21st Century.” The Monterey Herald reported the following morning:

On Iraq, Clinton said he understood Bush’s reasoning for invading the country, citing his own years of struggling to keep Saddam Hussein from accumulating weapons of mass destruction. He said he supported last fall’s Senate resolution giving the president the authority to use force against Iraq.

Nine months later, Clinton explained in a TIME magazine feature:

“After 9/11, let’s be fair here, if you had been President, you’d think, Well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you’re sitting there as President, you’re reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I’ve got to do that. That’s why I supported the Iraq thing.”

How, then, to explain today’s New York Times headline: “Bill Clinton Flatly Asserts He Opposed War at Start”? Not a lot of wiggle-room there.

Of course, there’s a big difference between 2003-04 and 2007: Bill’s wife Hillary is now running for President. And the New York Senator is, of course, trying to attract the support of anti-war Democratic voters while simultaneously appearing “Madame President”-ial.

It’s a good thing she voted against that pesky 2002 Senate resolution to approve the Iraq war.

Strike that last part.

Update: ABC’s Jake Tapper dissected Bill Clinton’s apparent flip-flop today on Good Morning America.

Update #2: The Washington Post publishes independent accounts of people in the Bush Administration recalling Bill Clinton’s enthusiastic support for the Iraq invasion.