"Hillary has now apologized for her Iraq War vote. But even her apology feels more like political calculation than genuine contrition. A meaningful apology would be directed to the Iraq war vets and Iraqi civilians who lost life or limb, to the American taxpayer for wasting over a trillion dollars, and to the rest of the world for making it less safe.
Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in large part because of her Iraq vote so she must now try to immunize herself with her weak apology in the hopes that 8 years later, Democratic caucus and primary voters have short memories.
Moreover, none of her apologies give any indication of what she learned from her supposedly mistaken vote. Has she learned that using American military power to instigate regime change in the Middle East leads more often than not to chaos, anarchy, increased terrorist threats, refugee crises, and even the destabilization of Europe?"
"Hillary Clinton distanced herself from Barack Obama’s strategy for defeating Islamic State extremists on Thursday in a sweeping foreign policy speech that called for greater use of American ground troops and an intensified air campaign.
Though ruling out deploying the tens of thousands of US troops seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, the former of secretary of state made clear she would take a notably more hawkish approach than the current administration if she is elected president."
"This is the story of how a woman whose Senate vote for the Iraq war may have doomed her first presidential campaign nonetheless doubled down and pushed for military action in another Muslim country. As she once again seeks the White House, campaigning in part on her experience as the nation's chief diplomat, an examination of the intervention she championed shows her at what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary state."
"Libya's descent into chaos began with a rushed decision to go to war, made in what one top official called a "shadow of uncertainty" as to Colonel Qaddafi's intentions. The mission inexorably evolved even as Mrs. Clinton foresaw some of the hazards of toppling another Middle Eastern strongman. She pressed for a secret American program that supplied arms to rebel militias, an effort never before confirmed."
Saudi Arabia [y'know, the people who made ISIS's brand of Islam]
“It’s tough to call her comments anything except ‘the pot calling the kettle black,’” John Miranda said in an interview with Press TV.
The Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have enjoyed “numerous donations from Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia’s various corporations and princes that have dealings with the United States,” he noted.
“For her to say that we need to talk to them [Saudis] about this; she honestly could care less,” he added.
Miranda said that Saudi Arabia is committing the same crimes that the American people associate with the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group rather than a long-time US ally in the Middle East.
“Everything that’s happening with the unrest in northern Iraq and Syria, they are doing the same exact things that happen in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
“Saudi Arabia is also one of the countries that is funding the terrorists in Syria and northern Iraq, so obviously they are practicing the same type of things,” the analyst added.
“Hillary Clinton is a complete hypocrite. That is the only way I can describe her,” Miranda stressed.
Though it’s less sexy than Benghazi, the crisis following a coup in Honduras in 2009 has Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints all over it, and her alleged cooperation with oligarchic elites during the affair does much to expose Clinton’s newfound, campaign-season progressive rhetoric as hollow. Moreover, the Honduran coup is something of a radioactive issue with fallout that touches many on Team Clinton, including husband Bill, once put into a full context.
"One of the 2011 emails from Clinton to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Clinton aide Robert Hormats has a subject line “Sandy Levin” — a reference to the Democratic congressman who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees U.S. trade policy. In the email detailing her call with Levin, she said the Michigan lawmaker “appreciates the changes that have been made, the national security arguments and Santos's reforms” -- the latter presumably a reference to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. She concludes the message about the call with Levin by saying, “I told him that at the rate we were going, Columbian [sic] workers were going to end up w the same or better rights than workers in Wisconsin and Indiana and, maybe even, Michigan.”
Froman — a former Citigroup executive who as trade representative was lobbying for passage of the deal — responded by thanking Clinton for her "help and support.” Hormats, a former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs who subsequently was hired by Clinton at the State Department, later chimed in, telling her “terrific job” and “GREAT line on Columbian [sic] workers!!!!!”
Isn't politics just great? Politicians aren't exactly known for their honesty on things, often saying things to voters just to get elected. But Hillary Clinton's views on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement have received quite a lot of scrutiny. After all, while she was at the State Department, she was a strong supporter of the TPP, and so it was a bit of a surprise last October when she came out against it. Of course, the fact that the deal is fairly unpopular with the Democratic Party base probably contributed quite a lot to that decision -- and Clinton's weak attempt at revisionist history to pretend she never really supported it.
But, of course, when you do a pandering flip flop like that just to get votes, you have to remember that plenty of people will see right through it, and some of those people might reveal the strategy. Like, for instance, the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, the world's largest lobbying organization, who is leading the charge in support of the TPP. Its top lobbyist, Tom Donohue, flat out admitted recently that he knows that if she actually got elected, she'll revert back to supporting the TPP, because of course she will:
The Chamber president said he expected Hillary Clinton would ultimately support the TPP if she becomes the Democratic nominee for president and is elected. He argued that she has publicly opposed the deal chiefly because her main challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has also done so. "If she were to get nominated, if she were to be elected, I have a hunch that what runs in the family is you get a little practical if you ever get the job," he said.
What Hillary Clinton is condemning here is exactly that which not only the administration in which she serves, but also she herself, has done in one of the most important Internet freedom cases of the last decade: WikiLeaks. And beyond that case, both Clinton specifically and the Obama administration generally have waged a multi-front war on Internet freedom.
First, let us recall that many of WikiLeaks’ disclosures over the last 18 months have directly involved improprieties, bad acts and even illegalities on the part of Clinton’s own State Department. As part of WikiLeaks’ disclosures, she was caught ordering her diplomats at the U.N. to engage in extensive espionage on other diplomats and U.N. officials; in a classified memo, she demanded “forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications” as well as “credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers” for a whole slew of diplomats, actions previously condemned by the U.S. as illegal. WikiLeaks also revealed that the State Department — very early on in the Obama administration — oversaw a joint effort between its diplomats and GOP officials to pressure and coerce Spain to block independent judicial investigations into the torture policies of Bush officials: a direct violation of then-candidate Obama’s pledge to allow investigations to proceed as well being at odds with the White House’s dismissal of questions about the Spanish investigation as merely “hypothetical.” WikiLeaks disclosures also revealed that public denials from Clinton’s State Department about the U.S. role in Yemen were at best deeply misleading. And, of course, those disclosures revealed a litany of other truly bad acts by the U.S. Government generally.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called for a "Manhattan-like project" to help law enforcement break into encrypted communications. This is in reference to the Manhattan Project, the top-secret concentrated research effort which resulted in the US developing nuclear weapons during World War II.
At Saturday's Democratic debate (transcript here), moderator Martha Raddatz asked Clinton about Apple CEO Tim Cook's statements that any effort to break encryption would harm law-abiding citizens.
Clinton voted in support of HR 3162 - USA Patriot Act of 2001. The bill passed on October 25, 2001, by a vote of 98-1. The bill allowed law enforcement more authority in searching homes, tapping phone lines and tracking internet information while searching for suspected terrorists
Clinton voted in support of HR 6061 - Secure Fence Act of 2006. The bill passed on September 29, 2006, by a vote of 80-19. The bill authorized the construction of 700 miles of additional fencing along the United States-Mexico border. The Democratic Party split on the vote.
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This is the "experience" they'd have us "fall in line" for.
