Hillary's Iranian Deterrence Policy - Great!

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Hillary Clinton's muscular talk on Iran puts her well to the right of her Democratic challenger Barack Obama in their heated White House rivalry, but could also presage a new US policy of containment.
Clinton on Monday standing by her threat made last month to "obliterate" the Islamic republic should it use nuclear weapons on Israel, whose US backers form one important constituency in the Democratic nominating race.

Obama accused the New York senator of taking a page out of President George W. Bush's assertive foreign policy, but Clinton herself insists she is not being bellicose, but rather trying to deter Iran from taking a step too far.
Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American academic and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, said there was an element of campaign posturing in Clinton's threat -- but he also saw the outlines of a new US approach to Iran.
"Its broader significance is that it shifts from the current debate of how to stop Iran from going nuclear, if Bush's current policies are not working," he told AFP. "She already has outlined a sort of deterrence doctrine."
Clinton's campaign chief strategist Geoff Garin said the debate was about how to stop Iran acquiring nuclear arms in the first place, and that her policy of engagement with Tehran was in marked contrast to Bush's.
Iran's leadership must have no doubt that under a Clinton presidency, their country would face "massive retaliation on our part," Garin said on a media conference call.
"She believes that is the best way to deter an attack," he said.
"More broadly in terms of Iran, Senator Clinton has talked about the need to move to a different kind of more constructive level of diplomatic engagement," Garin added.
"She has a much more nuanced policy that includes a much greater use of diplomatic engagement of Iran than has occurred under President Bush."

Obama too wants to bring Iran in from the cold, but goes much further than Clinton in advocating direct talks at a leaders' level.
The Illinois senator denied his own position left any doubt about whether the United States would come to Israel's aid in the event of an Iranian attack.
"An attack on Israel, one of our most important allies in the world, would be considered as an attack on the United States," he said on CNN Monday.
"Using the word obliterate, however, is the kind of language that we've seen George Bush use over the last seven years," he said, accusing Clinton of "stirring up international incidents ... right before an election."

The foreign policy exchanges have sharpened as the two Democrats prepare to renew battle in their epic nominating contest on Tuesday, with primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.
In an April 22 interview with ABC, Clinton was asked what she would do as president if Iran were to launch a nuclear strike on Israel.
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," she replied.
"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them," she added.
On Sunday, Clinton said she had no regrets about the remark, which triggered an Iranian complaint at the United Nations and a comment by junior British foreign minister Lord Mark Malloch-Brown that her position was "not prudent."
"I sure want to make it abundantly clear to them that they would face a tremendous cost if they did such a thing," the former first lady said.

But Steve Clemons, executive vice president of the left-leaning New America Foundation, said Clinton's tone on Iran was worrying even if it does form part of her campaign narrative against Obama.
"You can pretend it is theater, but this is real-world stuff," he said, recalling Republican contender John McCain's jokey rendition of "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to a Beach Boys tune last year.
Underlining that Iran takes such commentary deadly seriously, Clemons warned the White House runners against saying anything that could be "deeply, deeply destructive to American interests."

The Cintons Can't Stop Lying

WASHINGTON - Former President Clinton has added to the falsehoods surrounding his wife's tale of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago.

In Indiana on Thursday, Bill Clinton defended his wife's mistake in claiming that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia, accusing the media of treating her like "she'd robbed a bank" for confusing the facts.
The New York senator had repeatedly described a harrowing scene in Tuzla, Bosnia, in which she and her daughter, Chelsea, had to run for cover as soon as they landed for a visit in 1996. Video footage of the day instead showed a peaceful reception in which an 8-year-old girl greeted the first lady.
Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that she got the facts wrong in retelling the tale. Bill Clinton's inaccuracies don't involve long-ago memories, but misstatements about how his wife has handled the story.

THE SPIN:
"A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me," Bill Clinton said in Boonville, Ind. "But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995.
"Did y'all see all that? Oh, they blew it up," the former president continued. "Let me just tell you. The president of Bosnia and Gen. Wesley Clark — who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way — both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flak jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony.
"Now I say that because what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops," he said. "And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you would of thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they all carried on about this. And some of them when they're 60 they'll forget something when they're tired at 11 o'clock at night, too."

THE FACTS:
Bill Clinton has many of the facts wrong.
His wife didn't make the sniper fire claim "one time late at night when she was exhausted." She actually told the story several times, including during prepared remarks on foreign policy delivered the morning of March 17.
It's also not true that she "immediately apologized for it." Clinton has never apologized for the comments and only acknowledged that she "misspoke" a week after the March 17 speech when video of her peaceful tarmac reception emerged.
It's also not true that she was the "first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone" — a claim that Hillary Clinton has also made when talking about the trip. Pat Nixon traveled to Saigon during the Vietnam war and Barbara Bush went to Saudi Arabia two months before the launching of Desert Storm.
The trip also was not in 1995, but 1996.
Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer responded to the former president's remarks Friday by saying, "Senator Clinton appreciates her husband standing up for her, but this was her mistake and she takes responsibility for it."
She's also told her husband to quit talking about it.
"Hillary called me and said 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am,'" Bill Clinton, who was in Indiana campaigning for his wife Friday, told reporters.
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By Nedra Pickler

More Hillary Lies

Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.
The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.
“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.

Hillary Wrestles Bin Laden

From humorist Andy Borowitz,
a twisted take on the news of
the day:

Hillary 'Misspoke' on Wrestling Bin Laden
She Was Greeting Students Instead, Clinton Acknowledges
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has been accused of padding her foreign-policy resume while first lady, acknowledged today that she might have exaggerated an encounter she said she had with al-Qaeda terror mastermind Osama bin Laden in 1998.
In an appearance Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Sen. Clinton told host Tim Russert, "I wrestled bin Laden in his cave in 1998 and had him pinned to the ground before the bastard got away."
But a review of Clinton's official White House schedule revealed that the then-first lady was nowhere in the vicinity of bin Laden that day but was instead greeting a group of honor-roll students at Disney World near Orlando, Fla.
"I may have misspoken about what went on that particular day," Clinton said today. "But it was a very busy time for me, what with having that knife fight with Kim Jong Il and all."
Reporters peppered Clinton's new spokesman with questions about another exploit -- in which the senator claimed that she and a ragtag team of blue-collar drillers deflected an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth.
"Everything Hillary Clinton says is true," said her new spokesman, author James Frey.
Elsewhere, in his first comment on the Eliot Spitzer scandal, Vice President Dick Cheney said he has never hired a prostitute because "I've been screwing the country the past seven years."

The Hillary Clinton Chronicles Of Lies - Part 2

Saturday, Clinton campaign officials acknowledged that an anecdote Clinton has made a staple of her stump speech in recent weeks may not have been true and wasn't thoroughly checked for accuracy before she began repeating it on the campaign trail.
Since competing in Ohio's March 4 primary, Clinton has shared the story of an Ohio woman who worked in a pizza parlor and died after giving birth to a stillborn child. The woman was uninsured, Clinton said, and twice denied medical care at a local hospital because she couldn't pay a $100 fee.
Clinton said she learned of the story from a deputy sheriff whose home she visited while campaigning in Ohio. She told the story as recently as late Friday, at a rally in Grand Forks, N.D.
Officials with O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio, have disputed the story, saying the woman, Trina Bachtel, was insured and did receive care through an obstetric practice affiliated with the hospital, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Hospital officials did not immediately return phone calls Saturday from The Associated Press.
Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee acknowledged that the campaign had tried but hadn't been able to "fully vet" the story before she began repeating it on the campaign trail.
"She tells the story as it was told to her by the deputy sheriff. She had no reason to doubt his word," Elleithee said. "If the hospital claims it didn't happen that way, we certainly respect that and she won't repeat the story. She never mentions the hospital by name and isn't trying to cast blame."

The Hillary Clinton Chronicles Of Lies - Part 1

During an April 1995 visit to Tibet, Hillary Clinton met New Zealand’s Sir Edmund Hillary, co-first-climber of Mount Everest. Clinton remarked that her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham, had told her that she was named after the famous climber. “It had two L’s, which is how she thought she was supposed to spell Hillary,” Clinton said at the Tibet meeting. “So when I was born, she called me Hillary, and she always told me it’s because of Sir Edmund Hillary.”
However, the Everest climb did not take place until 1953, more than five years after Clinton was born. Clinton opponents have used the discrepancy as evidence towards the charge that she is prone to fabrications. Clinton said that her mother read about beekeeper-turned-mountaineer Edmund Hillary in a publication while pregnant in 1947 and liked the name and thus used the two L’s form. Some searches of prominent U.S. publications show no publicity given to Edmund Hillary before the Everest climb, so it is unlikely that Dorothy Rodham (who has not publicly spoken about the issue) would have heard of him. Furthermore, Hillary with two L’s was not that unusual a spelling at the time. Snopes.com concluded that Hillary Clinton probably made up the naming story as “a little white lie concocted for a special occasion.” Finally, in October 2006, a spokeswoman for Senator Clinton’s re-election campaign explained that she was not in fact named after the mountain climber, stating rather that “It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.”

Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

The Washington Post has awarded Hilliary Clinton with four Pinocchios for her lastest whopper — Bogus in Bosnia.

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” –Hillary Clinton, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008.

Hillary Clinton has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, President Clinton, could not go because they were “too dangerous.” When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about “landing under sniper fire” and running for safety with “our heads down.”

There are numerous problems with Clinton’s version of events.

Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

From the Nation -

What is the proper word for the claim by Hillary Clinton and the more factually disinclined supporters of her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination -- made in speeches, briefings and interviews (including one by this reporter with the candidate) -- that she has always been a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement?
Now that we know from the 11,000 pages of Clinton White House documents released this week that former First Lady was an ardent advocate for NAFTA; now that we know she held at least five meetings to strategize about how to win congressional approval of the deal; now that we know she was in the thick of the manuevering to block the efforts of labor, farm, environmental and human rights groups to get a better agreement. Now that we know all of this, how should we assess the claim that Hillary's heart has always beaten to a fair-trade rhythm?
Now that we know from official records of her time as First Lady that Clinton was the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120 women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional representatives to approve NAFTA; now that we know from ABC News reporting on the session that "her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA" and that "there was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time;" now that we have these details confirmed, what should we make of Clinton's campaign claim that she was never comfortable with the militant free-trade agenda that has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of union jobs, that has idled entire industries, that has saddled this country with record trade deficits, undermined the security of working families in the US and abroad, and has forced Mexican farmers off their land into an economic refugee status that ultimately forces them to cross the Rio Grande River in search of work?
As she campaigns now, Clinton says, "I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning."
But the White House records confirm that this is not true.
Her statement is, to be precise, a lie.
When it comes to the essential test of the trade debate, Clinton has been identified as a liar -- a put-in-boldface-type "L-I-A-R" liar.
Those of us who covered the 1993 NAFTA debate have frequently expressed doubts about the former First Lady's recent statements. We never heard anything at the time about her dissenting from the Clinton Administration line on trade policy. And we knew that she had defended NAFTA in the years following its enactment. But fairness required that we at least entertain that notion--promoted by the lamentable David Gergen, himself a champion of free-trade policies while working in the Clinton White House--that Hillary Clinton had been a behind-the-scenes critic. We had to at least consider the possibility that, at the very least, Clinton had been worried that advancing NAFTA would trip up her advocacy for health care reform, that she had made her concerns known and that she had absented herself from pro-NAFTA lobbying.
This was certainly the impression that Clinton and her supporters sought to create as she campaigned in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana--states where worried workers want to know exactly where the candidates have stood and currently stand with regard to trade issues.
But that impression was a deliberate deception.
And we must all now recognize that when Hillary Clinton speaks about trade policy, she begins with a lie so blatant--that she's been "a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning"--that everything else she says must be viewed as suspect.