"We pushed very hard. But as I say in my book, I believe that Harry Truman was right, the buck stops with the president,"
The former secretary of state said she, along with the then heads of the Pentagon and CIA tried but failed to persuade Obama to arm the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but that the White House resisted.
Clinton said it was not clear whether arming moderates in Syria would have prevented the rise of the al Qaeda splinter group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has swept toward Baghdad aiming to build a Muslim caliphate across the Iraqi-Syrian border.
"It's very difficult, in retrospect, to say that would have prevented this," she said. She said it is too soon to tell whether American policy in Syria was a failure.
The former secretary of state, senator and first lady has been offering views that differ from Obama's on foreign policy in recent months, including on issues such as Iran's nuclear program and dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Clinton also said German Chancellor Angela Merkel had every right to be upset with disclosures that the National Security Agency had listened in on her cellphone as part of its large-scale surveillance of electronic communications in Germany.
"It was absolutely uncalled for," Clinton said.
"There is work that we need to do with the Germans and inside Germany," she said, recalling that some of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks got part of their training in Hamburg.
But Clinton added: "That has nothing has to do with Angela Merkel's cellphone, and that should be off limits."
Clinton, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, has said she will not decide before November's congressional elections whether to run for president in 2016, but is regarded by many as the Democratic front-runner. Her CNN interview was organized as part of a tour to promote her newly released book, "Hard Choices."
Fox News also asked Clinton about accusations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted the tax status of organizations with names linked to the conservative Tea Party movement and if she agreed with Obama's characterization that it was a "phony scandal." "I think that any time the IRS is involved for many people it's a real scandal," she said. "And I think, though, that there are some challenges that rightly need to be made to what is being said and I assume that the inquiry will continue. "I don't have the details but I think what President Obama means is there was not a lot of evidence that this was deliberate but that's why the investigation needs to continue." REUTERS
[todayonline.com]
18/6/14
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Related:
Hillary Clinton: I wanted to arm Syrian rebels, but Obama refused (“Hard Choices”)
Clinton: arming Syrian rebels was the right move. (“Hard Choices”)
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Obama fights foreign policy critics, pledges aid to Syria groups
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President Barack Obama is not expected to approve imminent airstrikes in Iraq, in part because there are few clear targets that could blunt a fast-moving Sunni insurgency, U.S. officials said Tuesday....
ReplyDeleteOfficials said Obama had made no final decisions and didn't rule out the possibility that airstrikes ultimately could be used, particularly if a strong target becomes available. But officials said the strikes were not the current focus of the administration's ongoing discussions about how to respond to the crumbling security situation in Iraq.
The president planned to brief top congressional leaders on the matter at the White House on Wednesday.
The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing deliberations by name.
Beyond airstrikes, the U.S. also has been weighing the possibility of sending a small contingent of special operations forces to Iraq to help train that country's security forces. Officials also have been looking at ways to boost the intelligence available to Iraqi forces.
More broadly, the Obama administration is also pressing for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to take steps to make his Shiite-dominated government more inclusive. Obama said last week that any short-term U.S. military actions in Iraq would not be successful unless they were accompanied by political changes by the government in Baghdad.
Despite those calls, there were ominous signs Tuesday of open warfare between Shiites and Sunnis, the two main Muslim sects. Nearly four dozen Sunni detainees were gunned down at a jail north of Baghdad, a car bomb struck a Shiite neighborhood of the capital, and four young Sunnis were found slain.
During the United States' eight-year presence in Iraq, American forces acted as a buffer between the two Islamic sects, albeit with limited success. But U.S. forces fully withdrew at the end of 2011 when Washington and Baghdad could not reach an agreement to extend the American military presence there.
But the Obama administration has been forced to rethink its relationship with Iraq after the al-Qaeda inspired group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant quickly took control of key Iraqi cities last week. Obama has already notified Congress that he is sending nearly 300 forces in and around Iraq to secure the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and additional American assets.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/world/2014/06/18/U-S-focus-shifts-away-from-airstrikes-in-Iraq.html
18/6/14