Joe Wilson "In the run up to the war and thereafter, I was in frequent discussions with senior Democrats in Washington, including Senator Clinton, and I was keenly aware of her demand for the full exercise of international diplomacy and allowing the weapons inspectors to complete their mission. Many of the most prominent early opponents of the war, including former General Wes Clark and former ambassador to the United National Richard Holbrooke support Senator Clinton for President, as do I. We do so because we know that she has the experience and the judgment that comes from having been in the arena for her entire adult life--and from close personal participation with her in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. And we have trust in her to end the war in Iraq in the most responsible way, consistent with our national security interests.

We know that she has won and lost but always fought for her beliefs, which are widely shared within the Democratic Party. The battles she had been in have been fierce--and the battles in the future will be no less intense--and she has proven her steadfastness and is still standing. She does not have a cowardly record of voting "present" when confronted with difficult issues. She does not claim "intuition" as the basis of the most dangerous and serious decision-making. What she has is deep and vital experience, more important than ever in restoring our country's place in the world."

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Hillary Clinton predicted Saturday that just electing her President will cut the price of oil.

When the world hears her commitment at her inauguration about ending American dependence on foreign fuel, Clinton says, oil-pumping countries will lower prices to stifle America's incentive to develop alternative energy."I predict to you, the oil-producing countries will drop the price of oil," Clinton said, speaking at the Manchester YWCA. "They will once again assume, once the cost pressure is off, Americans and our political process will recede."

Clinton argued that former President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s actually started moving in the right direction toward energy independence, but his successor, Ronald Reagan, "dismantled" that work.Because costs were low, people didn't care, didn't complain," she said.

The problem with Jo Wilson's endorsement is that this is endorsing BILL not Hillary. In many ways her REAL experience is not that different than Obama's .. maybe not as good. She functioned for most of her professional liefe as Bill's wife. She used that position to make a living for them while he collected the meagre pay of an Arknasas governor. In that role she also pursued her own interests working with Margaret Wright Edelman's Children's Defence Fund. Fine enough but not all that much more impressive that Obama's career as a civil rights lawyer, community organizer and legislator. Do people really want to re-elect Bill or elect Hill?

Then we have this bizarre claim about energy. Sure, it is about time SOME d\Democrat point out that Reagan fucked our chance to use the magic of time to develop some response to the oil crisis. Bringing back Jimmy is a good thing .. at least in my book, BUT, what is all hell is she going to tell the Saudis et al? Is this the Clinton equivalent of Reagan's Star Wars promise? At least for now, the only effect of some American effort NOT to use oil would be to hurt our economy. In effect she would need to propose an energy tax .. not likely.

The other possibility, that frightens me, is that she believes in what she has said. This hypothesis has occurred to me before. It could be why she messed up health care. I hope, for her sake, that Xmas distractions will keep this bon mot off the sound bite circuit.

Anyhow .. I Ran into this Anecdote by Nathan Gardell's at Huff Post

Finally, a small footnote about Bill Clinton's remark that choosing Obama is "a roll of the dice." That is certainly what I thought of Bill Clinton when I first met the future president, then governor of Arkansas, at a small dinner at Stanley Sheinbaum's home in Los Angeles in honor of Flora Lewis, the legendary foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. Hillary was also there. Both of the Clinton's sparkled with intelligence and energy, and most important, a sense that the time for change was right and they were the right people to lead it.

But, seemingly intimidated by Flora's vast foreign policy experience, I recall that both Clinton's talked mostly about education, only listening intently on foreign policy subjects. In fact, Bill Clinton was so quiet that someone said afterwards, "Boy, Hillary is really smart. Was that other guy
her bodyguard?"

Could this governor from a marginal state who undoubtedly intuited what the American public wanted at that moment really competently replace George H. W. Bush, the man who was ending the Cold War with a whimper instead of a bang, who ran the CIA and was the envoy to China, not to speak of Vice-President? "

So this is the dilemma. If Hillary is running as Bill II, then I am not sure I WANT to re-e;ect Bill Clinton. Actually the likely confusion of authority scares me.

If she is running as herself, then we have the need to know what she stands for. So far, however, that seems to me to be very vague. I WANT to believe that she is super smart and super competent but the evidence is that she is a very effective bureaucrat, NOT a policy maker. It seems to me the nations needs a leader, is she a leader?

The answer to Hillary's experience level, may have come in an International Herald Tribune article.:

Hillary Clinton puts her experience first

As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jawboned the president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that she threw up afterward.

But during those two terms in the White House, Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president's daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti or Rwanda. And during one of President Bill Clinton's major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal dragged on.

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her "eight years with a front-row seat on history."

....................

Clinton's role in her most high-profile assignment as first lady, the failed health care initiative of the early 1990s, has been well documented. Yet little has been made public about her involvement in foreign policy and national security as first lady. Documents about her work remain classified at the National Archives. Clinton has declined to divulge the private advice she gave her husband.

An interview with Hillary Clinton, conversations with 35 Clinton administration officials and a review of books about her White House years suggest that she was more of a sounding board than a policy maker, who learned through osmosis rather than decision-making, and who grew gradually more comfortable with the use of military power.