Clinton doesn’t want Iran taking ‘one iota of credit’ for Mideast revolutions
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says when it comes to the pro-democracy movements sweeping through the Middle East give credit where credit is due. And that means not to Iran.
The United States has long been at loggerheads with Iran over its nuclear program — the West suspects Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, Iran says it is trying to provide energy for its people.
Now the United States, which sees Iran as a major threat to the region, is also suspicious that Tehran is trying to capitalize on the Middle East revolutions.
“We see Iran trying to take advantage of what is going on, which is the height of hypocrisy, but that has never stopped the regime before,” Clinton said. “And what they are doing is trying to somehow connect their failed revolution in 1979 with the movements for aspiration and change that are now moving through the region.”
The United States has a lot of friends in the region, she said at the State Department in a conversation with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger moderated by Charlie Rose which will be broadcast later Wednesday on PBS.
“What we are saying both publicly and privately is don’t do anything that gives any ammunition, so to speak, to the Iranians,” Clinton said.
“Because we don’t want the Iranians to be given one iota of credit for what is a non-Iranian phenomenon. It is an Egyptian phenomenon, a Tunisian phenomenon, a Libyan phenomenon.”
Clinton jokes about Yemen stumble
Call it the Trip.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrapping up a high-stakes trip to Yemen to discuss counter-terrorism cooperation on Wednesday, stumbled briefly upon re-entering her airplane. Clinton was unhurt and newswise it was a non-event — except that it was captured by television cameras.
Clinton’s video misstep ended up going out on YouTube and became a minor Internet sensation, prompting snarky headlines from some of the world’s headline writers (“Unexpected trip on Clinton plane!” joked one).
It’s the kind of pointless fingerpointing that public figures (and sometimes journalists) loathe because it distracts from real news, in this case Clinton’s effort to broaden the U.S. relationship with Yemen, which is gaining notoreity as one of the world’s main incubators of al Qaeda.
But Clinton obviously decided to take control of the meme, because she mentioned it herself on Thursday during a meeting at her next stop in the Gulf state of Qatar.
Qatar’s ruler, welcoming Clinton to his palace, spoke about how he had fallen in his home and Clinton responded with her own story. “It happened to me just yesterday actually. I was going up the stairs to the airplane and I was looking over my back and waving and then I turned and there was a bump in the, in the entry into the plane. You know, those things happen,” she added.
They do indeed. But when they happen to Hillary Clinton, they usually end up being news.
Was Bill again upto his old tricks? This came to her mind involuntarily and then O’ops, the lady diplomat forgot the bump?
Rex Minor
Hillary Clinton stops to see Bill’s statue in Kosovo
Hillary Clinton stopped on Bill Clinton Boulevard to view one of Kosovo’s main attractions: the Bill Clinton Statue.
Clinton, on her first visit to Kosovo as secretary of state, on Wednesday received a rapturous welcome from the crowd waving U.S. flags and cheering on the Clinton Brand, which many Kosovars see as key to their country’s independence.
Clinton stopped and looked up at Bill — now 12 feet high and a shimmering gold — and expressed her satisfaction with the likeness.
She then plunged into the crowd, or at least as far as security would allow, pressing the flesh campaign-style and expressing her delight at being back in Kosovo as an independent country.
“I’m so glad to be back after 10 years, it’s wonderful,” Clinton said as reporters and officials scrambled around, the careful choreography of the motorcade thrown topsy-turvy by the unscheduled stop.
Clinton appeared about to leave, but then a local store caught her eye: “Hillary”, a women’s wear boutique about half a block from the statue. The crowd followed Clinton into the small shop where she took a quick look at the wares, smiled and left — no sale.
Clinton’s stop in Kosovo comes at the tail end of a three-day trip through the Balkans that has seen her repeatedly urge the region’s fractious leaders to put their ethnic animosities behind them and start seriously working to catch up to Europe.
Hillary Clinton for Justice?
Would Secretary of State Hillary Clinton trade her globetrotting ways for the distinguished black robe of a Supreme Court Justice?
The Washington parlor game is in full swing over who President Barack Obama will pick to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
In the middle of it all, Clinton’s name was very publicly, and quite intriguingly, thrown into the mix this morning — by a Republican.
Flashback: remember there was talk after she dropped her bid for president in the 2008 election that perhaps she might be considered for the U.S. Supreme Court in an Obama administration.
Senator Orrin Hatch on NBC’s “Today” let out the tantalizing tidbit: “I even heard the name Hillary Clinton today, and that would be an interesting person in the mix.”
When asked about it, the Utah Republican said: “I happen to like Hillary Clinton, I think she’s done a good job for the Democrat secretary of state’s position, and I have a high respect for her and think a good deal of her.”
When seen from Capitol Hill, Jerusalem looks a bit different
What’s the U.S. policy toward Israel? It may depend on which branch of government you ask.
On Capitol Hill, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got a warm reception during his Washington visit this week. Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, says Congress is on “a different page” than the Obama administration over Jewish settlements in Jerusalem and the overall U.S. relationship with Israel.
Netanyahu got a less obviously effusive welcome from the Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met him at a hotel on Monday and his White House meeting with the president on Tuesday took place behind closed doors, without photographers present.
But on Capitol Hill he was warmly, openly and officially received by leading lawmakers. Cameras clicked and rolled as Netanyahu was greeted in ornate reception rooms, first in the House of Representatives, then in the Senate Tuesday. In between, he lunched with lawmakers.
The Israeli prime minister got to hear his own words echo around the hallowed halls of Congress as well. At the morning meeting with Netanyahu, “Many of us said, Jerusalem is not a settlement,” Cantor told Reuters afterwards.
This had been Netanyahu’s line in a speech to the influential pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC on Monday evening, where he struck a defiant note after new criticism from Clinton of Jewish home construction in disputed territory in and around Jerusalem.
Cantor, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said he and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat, are circulating for lawmakers’ signatures a letter to Clinton expressing concerns about the direction of U.S. policy. ”We are writing to reaffirm our commitment to the unbreakable bond that exists bewteen our country and the State of Israel and to express to you our deep concern over recent tension,” the letter says.
Different enough to tell them to stand on their own two feet? Cut ties and stop policing the world. We cannot afford it any longer
Clinton open to coffee with Palin
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is open to having coffee with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose new book about the 2008 presidential campaign is stirring controversy.
“I absolutely would look forward to having coffee,” Clinton said from Singapore Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Clinton told ABC’s “This Week” that she would look forward to having a chance to actually get to meet Palin.
Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, gives a nod to Clinton in her book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” Clinton lost the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama.
Palin, a popular conservative firebrand who has been communicating mostly via Facebook since quitting as governor, opens a campaign-style book tour on Tuesday that will hit a dozen states.
Is she laying the groundwork for a 2012 presidential campaign, or simply selling her book, which currently sits atop the Amazon.com Top 100 Books list?
“I don’t want a religious nut making hard decisions”
Yeah. Me too. The IslamoMarxist that is currently residing in the White House really makes me angry!
“I would move if ..”
I hear that Hugo Chavez’s country is just lovely this time of year. It sounds, M. Anderson, that he is your kind of leader. Have a nice one-way trip and be sure to take a couple of illegals with you.
The First Draft: Gripes and Goblins
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton griping about Pakistan while in Pakistan.
She says it was “hard to believe” that no one in Pakistan’s government knew where al Qaeda leaders were hiding. She talked about her tough talk in a series of morning television interviews, and said on CNN “trust is a two-way street.”
Top military brass coming over to the White House this afternoon. President Barack Obama meets with the military Joint Chiefs of Staff on Afghanistan and Pakistan this afternoon in the Situation Room (so you know it’s important).
Vice President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are also down to attend the meeting where they are all expected to go over recommendations on troop strength and strategy.
No definitive word yet on when Obama will issue his decision on a new U.S. strategy on Afghanistan, so the waiting continues…
On the economic front, consumer spending fell in September and sentiment turned gloomier, underscoring the fragile nature of the economic recovery, while signs emerged that manufacturing activity may be picking up.
And it’s Halloween weekend so there will be plenty of ghosts and goblins out on the streets, may all your spirits be friendly ones…
Just like in Iraq, the Pakistanis won’t rat out their Muslim brothers and expect to escape the wrath of Allah. Until the Weatern powers understand Islamic thinking they will never win a war in the Middle East if they expect the aid of the locals.
How Hillary got the nod
Hillary Clinton was walking with her husband Bill in a nature preserve near their home in New York when the cellphone in his pocket started ringing.
It was five or six days after the November election that Barack Obama won after defeating her for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Instead of turning the phone off while strolling through nature, Clinton’s husband, the former president, answered it.
(Probably a good thing in hindsight. What would have happened if he hadn’t brought the phone? What if he had decided not to answer it? Who would have been Secretary of State then?)
OK, OK, it probably would not have made a difference (but who knows?)
It was the newly elected Obama calling to discuss some potential candidates for his administration. And then he popped the question, and asked Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State.
Clinton says in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she initially demurred saying others were qualified for that position, and then answered yes.
Boor Ring, read the following:
Dear Hillary, your public life is a 40-year open book for all to see. You have seen much, done much, took much, and gave much. You have earned respect and reputation, the honest way, the hard way. You have the intelligence, the moral compass, the strength, the humanity and yes the occasional human failings. All the best in trying to repair the complete disaster of the Bush neocon gang 8-year plunder of nation and world.
The world is full of people with weak minds, hatred, jealously, and plain old idiotic stupidity. (Read that Boor Ring) These people have little accomplishments an live a miserable life of complaints. Hillary, you ran the presidential election campaign giving hope and inspiration to many such people. And people subject to misfortune and victims of the elites and powerful which caused the current crisis in America.
The challenge is most difficult against such tide. But there are millions who admire you taking on the job.
The First Draft: Hillary Clinton marginalized? If you have to ask…
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent the weekend in Switzerland and Ireland, but landed on the morning talk shows on Monday, fending off questions about whether she has been marginalized in the Obama administration. It’s not considered a good sign when people start asking this question in Washington, because the implication is that the answer is “yes.”
Clinton had no comment when newscaster Ann Curry on NBC’s “Today” program asked whether she should be more visible on such hot-button issues as Iran and Afghanistan. But she responded fully when asked about concerns that the “highest-ranking woman in the United States needs to fight against being marginalized.”
“I find it absurd, I find it beyond any realistic assessment of what I’m doing every day,” Clinton said. “I believe in delegating power. I’m not one of those people who feels like I have to have my face in the front of the newspaper or on the TV every moment of the day. It would be irresponsible and negligent were I to say, ‘Oh no, everything must come to me!’”
She had a theory about why she’s comfortable working this way. “Maybe this is a woman’s thing. Maybe I’m totally secure in that I feel absolutely no need to go running around in order for people to see what I’m doing. It’s just the way I am.”
But aren’t there moments, she was asked, having campaigned so hard for president against Barack Obama, that you just want to make a decision yourself?
No. “I am part of the team that makes the decision.”
On another front, Clinton said flatly she would not run for president again. She said she’s looking forward to retirement “at some point.”
Don’t think for a minute that Hilary doesn’t have a set of Billy balls. She is powerful, crafy and Barrack, Billy and Hilary make quite the troyka. It will show up big time during this adminstration.
Riiiiight. And Russia “invaded” Georgia. Might she be a pathological liar?