Hillary Clinton has on her liberal mask. She is all smiles and is trying hard to “out Bernie” Bernie Sanders. She is hitting all the populist talking points about helping others: Immigration, campaign finance reform, voting rights, gay marriage, economic equality, and middle class families. But she has accumulated a lot of baggage over her political career of 40 years.Hillaryand the main stream media have forgotten early scandals such as Whitewater, cattle futures trading, and trying to take the White House furniture when she and Bill moved out in 2001.
Hillary also now wants to escape responsibility for Bill Clinton’s presidency, although she embraced it in 2008. She wants us to forgive her when she nostalgically uses Bill’s lingering popularity; after all she is a politician. Just do not bring up slashing welfare, deregulating Wall Street, NAFTA, the Defense of Marriage Act, Don’t Ask Don’t tell, “Slick Willy“, the meaning of “is“, and the blue dress.
Hillary has her own track record now. She was a Senator from New York for eight years (2001-2009). She voted in favor of both the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Hillary said she did not bother to read what the national intelligence estimates (N.I.E.) actually said before voting for an illegal war of aggression against Iraq for non-existent weapons of mass destruction. One questions if she knew then what she should have known then—then would she still have voted for the illegal invasion of Iraq?
Maybe by 2006 Senator Clinton had gotten around to reading the fine print in the NIE, because she opposed “Secretary of War” Robert Gate’s “surge” in Iraq which cost 1,000 American lives and many thousands more Iraqi lives. Or maybe she opposed the “surge” just for political reasons, as Gates has said in his memoir. Hillary was at the time about to announce her 2008 candidacy for president.
From Hillary’s career at the Rose Law Firm to Senator from New York she has escaped from one scandal to another. But as Secretary of State there are more serious matters than her hiding her failures to provide adequate security in Benghazi, and hiding her emails.
Honduras
In 2009 Hillary showed what she really means by “smart power” and backed the military coup in Honduras over the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya was getting too close to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and neocons such as Hillary feared another left-wing government in Latin America.
Military coup leaders seized President Zelaya in the middle of the night and flew him to exile in Costa Rico. First they stopped at a U.S. military base, SOUTHCOM Joint Task Force-Bravo. Hillary said it was a “surprise visit”.