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| Nobel Winner: Hillary Clinton's 'Silly' Irish Peace Claims |
| 2008-03-08 |
| Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province. "I donÂ’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I donÂ’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player." Mrs Clinton has made Northern Ireland key to her claims of having extensive foreign policy experience, which helped her defeat Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday after she presented herself as being ready to tackle foreign policy crises at 3am. "I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland," she told CNN on Wednesday. But negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that her role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years. Lord Trimble shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, in 1998. Conall McDevitt, an SDLP negotiator and aide to Mr Hume during the talks, said: "There would have been no contact with her either in person or on the phone. I was with Hume regularly during calls in the months leading up to the Good Friday Agreement when he was taking calls from the White House and they were invariably coming from the president." and this "So in a classic woman politicky sort of way I think she was active...She was certainly investing some time, no doubt about it. Whether she was involved on the issue side I think probably not." Some of the people Mrs Clinton met went on to help found the WomenÂ’s Coalition, which took part in the Good Friday talks. Lord Trimble said: "The WomenÂ’s Coalition will think they were important. Other people beg to differ." Steven King, a negotiator with Lord TrimbleÂ’s Ulster Unionist Party, argued that Mrs Clinton might even have helped delay the chances of peace. "She was invited along to some pre-arranged meetings but I donÂ’t think she exactly brought anybody together that hadnÂ’t been brought together already," he said. Mrs Clinton was "a cheerleader for the Irish republican side of the argument", he added. "She really lost all credibility when on Bill ClintonÂ’s last visit to Northern Ireland [in December 2000] when she hugged and kissed [Sinn Fein leaders] Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness." |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #7 Hillary Clinton - the woman who slept her way (once anyway) to the top. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-03-08 23:00 |
| #6 Geee what else you got Hillarity? |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2008-03-08 22:37 |
| #5 Ye ate me lucky charms! |
| Posted by: newc 2008-03-08 20:09 |
| #4 O'Bama wins the Wyoming caucuses (he does well in causes, generally) - next up? Mississippi, where Mizz Hillary has already stepped in it: Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to backpedal Friday from comments she made in October suggesting Mississippi was a backward place for women's progress. Speaking to radio station WJZD-FM in Gulfport, Miss., the former first lady said the comments she made about the state in the run up to the Iowa caucuses "were not exactly what I said," even though they came directly from an interview she gave to the Des Moines Register in October. Clinton was on a campaign swing through Mississippi before Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary. The newspaper quoted the New York senator discussing Iowa and Mississippi being the only states that have never elected a woman governor or sent a woman to Congress. "How can Iowa be ranked with Mississippi? That's not what I see. That's not the quality. That's not the communitarianism; that's not the openness I see in Iowa," Hillary Clinton told the newspaper then - a remark that prompted immediate criticism from Mississippi Republicans. Rival Barack Obama has been running radio ads in Mississippi calling Clinton's comments insulting to the state. Man, that elitist attitude (bet she HATED Arkansas) will show when the mask slips, huh? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-03-08 18:31 |
| #3 I'll bet she's a lifelong Notre Dame fan too... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-03-08 18:21 |
| #2 Exaggerating? Lying is another word for it. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2008-03-08 16:10 |
| #1 experienced? |
| Posted by: Sninert B. Hayes6269 2008-03-08 14:35 |