“It represents an escalation … incremental mission creep,” Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern told Politico. “This won’t be the last deployment. It will continue to increase.”

Another Democrat, Sen. Chris Murphy, is urging Congress to constrain Obama’s ability to wage war in Iraq. “I support the president’s mission to try to assist in the training of the Iraqi forces, but I’d be much more comfortable in supporting that mission if I knew what the limits of if were,” Murphy said on MSNBC. “Congress has to vote next week on a prohibition on the large scale deployment of ground troops, so that that creeping number of hundreds-at-a-time doesn’t become a second Iraq war before we have anything to say about it.”

So where does that leave Clinton? Very, very quiet. “Just remember this about Hillary,” says a Democratic strategist not affiliated with any campaign. “She thinks she’d be finishing her second term in the White House if she’d been right about the war the first time. So she’s not going to wander into this eagerly or quickly.”