David Axelrod smack-tweets Hillary Clinton

David Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, hit back Tuesday against Hillary Clinton's recent criticism of Obama's foreign policy.

David Axelrod Tweeted   Just to clarify: "Don't do stupid stuff" means stuff like occupying Iraq in the first place, which was a tragically bad decision.

7:00 AM - 12 Aug 2014

In an interview with “The Atlantic” published over the weekend, Clinton argued the decision not to arm Syrian rebels early on had led to Islamic militants taking over swaths of territory in the region.

The former secretary of state also took a swipe at an oft-repeated phrase Obama uses to sum up his foreign policy choices - “Don’t do stupid stuff.”

"Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle," Clinton said.

In his tweet, Axelrod appears to be knocking Clinton's 2002 vote as U.S. senator in favor of the Iraq War. (Of course, his tweet can also be aimed at Republican hawks who support a harsher response to the current situation in Iraq.)

The PAC for the progressive group MoveOn also tweaked Clinton.

“Secretary Clinton, and any other person thinking about seeking the Democratic nomination in 2016, should think long and hard before embracing the same policies advocated by right-wing war hawks that got America into Iraq in the first place and helped set the stage for Iraq’s troubles today,” Ilya Sheyman, the PAC’s executive director, said in a statement Tuesday.

Clinton later said she regretted supporting the authorization of the Iraq war.

"I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had," Clinton writes in her new book. "And I wasn't alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong. Plain and simple."

The recent tension between Clinton and Obama's team invokes memories of their 2008 battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, when the two candidates butted heads over foreign policy.

A White House official said Monday that the White House is not getting amped up over Clinton's interview. They don't see this as her break-away moment, according to the source, though they anticipate she will move away from Obama over time.

The President and his former chief diplomat will have a chance to talk things out Wednesday night; the two are expected to attend the same event in Martha's Vineyard.

Clinton is also getting hit by the Republican National Committee, which accuses Clinton of playing politics on the issue.

"You can't distance yourself from this administration’s foreign policy when your job for four years was to lead its foreign policy," RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said.

CNN's Ashley Killough, David Chalian, Dan Merica, Jim Acosta, and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

Clinton Says Cheney Criticism of Obama on Iraq Was 'Unseemly'

Forrmer President Bill Clinton told NBC News on Tuesday that former Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent remarks on Iraq amounted to “attacking the administration for not doing an adequate job of cleaning up the mess that he made.”

Cheney, in an Op-Ed and a YouTube video last week, said that President Barack Obama had emboldened jihadists by mishandling the crisis in Iraq, where Sunni insurgents have rampaged across northern cities.

Clinton responded in an interview from Denver, where he is hosting a conference of the Clinton Global Initiative, his post-presidency foundation.

“I believe if they hadn’t gone to war in Iraq, none of this would be happening,” the former president told David Gregory in the interview, which will air Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

He continued: “Mr. Cheney has been incredibly adroit for the last six years or so attacking the administration for not doing an adequate job of cleaning up the mess that he made. I think it’s unseemly.”

“And I give President Bush, by the way, a lot of credit for trying to stay out of this debate and letting other people work through it.”

In an Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal, written with his daughter Liz, Cheney wrote that Obama “abandoned” Iraq by withdrawing American troops in 2011 without leaving some forces behind.

“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” the former vice president wrote. He concluded that Obama was securing a legacy “as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.”

In 2007, during his wife’s presidential campaign, Clinton said that he “opposed Iraq from the beginning.” His aides told reporters that Clinton had supported giving weapons inspectors more time.

In May 2003, two months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Clinton said that he supported President George W. Bush’s authority “to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” according to The Associated Press. He was also quoted praising Bush’s early handling of the conflict, the AP reported.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, as a senator in 2002, voted for the authorization of force against Iraq. She wrote in her recently released memoir, “Hard Choices,” that she “got it wrong. Plain and simple.”

The interview with Bill Clinton on Tuesday covered a range of topics. Among the highlights:

On his wife’s potential presidential campaign in 2016, Clinton said: “I’m a foot soldier in an army. I will do what I am instructed to do.” He said that whether to run “has to be her decision.”

Clinton said that his wife was not out of touch, despite political criticism she drew for saying that the Clintons were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001. “It is factually true that we were several million dollars in debt,” Bill Clinton said. “Everybody is now assuming that what happened in the intervening years was automatic.”

“She’s not out of touch,” he said. “She advocated and worked as a senator for things that were good for ordinary people. And before that, all her life.”On Benghazi, the former president said that Republicans in Congress were employing a double standard in expressing outrage. When diplomatic personnel were killed during the Bush administration, he said, “How many outraged Republican members of Congress were there? Zero.”

 On Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana, Clinton made a joke — “Rocky Mountain high?” — and then said that it was a matter best left to the states, including on developing quality controls. “There’s pot and there’s pot,” he said. “What’s in it? What's going to happen? There are all these questions.”

The White House says the answer is "no," despite all the chatter in Washington today.

"The president thinks Secretary Clinton is doing an excellent job as secretary of state and wants her to remain in that position," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

The comments come after Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, created a stir earlier today when he told NBC's "Today" show that he believed Clinton was among the possible candidates to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

"I even heard the name Hillary Clinton today," Hatch said. "That would be an interesting person in the mix."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs further tamped down on the idea, saying this afternoon, "The president is going to keep her [Clinton] as his secretary of state."

Gibbs added that while the White House appreciated Hatch's addition to its list, he preferred to highlight something else the Utah Senator said this morning.