AP also examines HRC Foreign Policy "Experience"

As showne in chumley's post, "Chicago Tribune investigates Hillary's "experience"", Obama's home town paper too a look. Now the NYT has printed an AP wire feed that has done the same. It came to the same conclusion as the Trib - her resume is overstated, at a minimum.

The vast majority of supporting quotes come from either former Clinton administration personnel, or current HRC supporters:

''Her experience speaks for itself,'' says former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who is advising Clinton's campaign. She wasn't the one making the final decisions on U.S. policy, he says, but ''no one in the world got a better idea of the countervailing pressures. The most important decision a president can make is to send Americans into harm's way. She knows what that entails.''

HRC claim: NORTHERN IRELAND: "I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland."

Former Democratic Sen. George Mitchell, who brokered the peace accord, said Clinton was "quite helpful."

"She became quite active in encouraging women in Northern Ireland to engage in the political process and in the peace process, and ultimately the role of women was important in moving the process forward," said Mitchell, who is neutral in the presidential race. "She was one of many people who participated in encouraging women to get involved, not the only one."

As a note, Sen. Mitchell Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995. In 1994, President Bill Clinton offered him a seat on the Supreme Court, which he declined because he wanted to work on the HRC health care plan that was then before the Senate. He is an undeclared superdelegate.
Well...she possibly DID "help". But that is hardly a claim to fame...

"The road to peace was carefully documented, and she wasn't on it," says Brian Feeney, an author and former leading Belfast politician

Id she saying that anyone who encouraged a demographic to work for peace in N. Ireland has the same experience as she does? Doubtful!

HRC claim: KOSOVO: "I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo."

"What she did there I don't think can be underestimated in terms of the positive impact that it had," said Verveer, who is active in Clinton's campaign.

A differing view was seen by Robert Gelbard, who was presidential envoy to the Balkans at the time and now serves as an adviser to the Obama campaign.

"I cannot recall any involvement by Senator Clinton in this issue," he said. "The person who was able to get the border opened was Mrs. Sadako Ogata," the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. Gelbard said he had questioned other U.S. officials directly involved and none remembered involvement by Clinton.

There were no public reports at the time of Clinton negotiating to keep the border open.

Overall, said Gelbard, "She had more of a role on some foreign policy issues than a lot of other first ladies, including, for example, the current one. My own firsthand experience, though, is that her role was limited and I've been surprised at the claims that she had a much greater role than certainly I'm aware of on the issues I was working on."

Perhaps Laura bush should be running!!
The Tribartical sited different rebuke:

"It was her coming that helped. But she had absolutely no role in the dirty work of negotiations," said Daalder, an Obama supporter. "This had nothing to do with her competence."

HRC claim: SERBIA: "I urged him to bomb."

Hmmm...doubious claim to fame at best...so much so she does not bring this up now-a-days.

...in a 1999 interview published in Talk magazine, the first lady was quoted as saying that she had urged her husband to recommend a NATO bombing campaign on Serb targets to halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. According to the story, Clinton called the president on March 21, 1999, from her travels in North Africa. "I urged him to bomb," she was quoted as saying. "You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life"' NATO airstrikes began March 24.

CHINA: "I've been standing up to the Chinese government over women's rights."

In her memoir, Clinton writes about the rousing reception her speech received at the conference and adds, "What I didn't know at the time was that my 21-minute speech would become a manifesto for women all over the world. To this day, whenever I travel overseas, women come up to me quoting words from the Beijing speech or clutching copies they want me to autograph."

Rice, the former Clinton administration official now supporting Obama, credits the first lady for delivering an important speech on women's rights, but says that that doesn't translate into presidential crisis management credentials.

She gave a bloody speech, that was all. She did not even mention China by name! And we all now know, thanks to HRC, that speeches are worthless.

I think the Obama campaign's hitting on the press to look at her "Experience" is starting to have am effect. The campaign needs to keep up the pressure and get in front of the progress. I was disappointed that they let the Clinton campaign be the first to offer $$$ for a revote. I know that it is not in their interest to HAVE a re-vote (delegate count wise), but:
1 - It was clear that HRC would make the offer soon
2 - With more money, Obama would have put HRC on the ropes and in a reactive mode

They need to be quicker on their feet or she will keep dictation the narrative to the press and will have the more pervasive argument come the convention.