Thursday, March 20, 2008

Doing it for the children

The vaunted foreign policy credentials of Hillary Clinton:
Hillary Clinton's boasts that she gained major foreign policy experience as First Lady have been undermined after 11,046 pages of her White House schedules provided scant evidence to back up her claims.

....her visits to Northern Ireland indicate that she went little beyond the traditional role of a president's wife attending social events, meeting women's groups and greeting children.

Despite Mrs Clinton's claim last week that she was "instrumental" in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, the schedules do not record her attending a single policy meeting in the province.

....In Belfast [in 1998], she gave an address to the Vital Voices women's conference, spent 30 minutes at a reception at the City Hall and visited the PlayBoard children's project.

Her schedule records that she and Cherie Blair, the then Prime Minister's wife, were to "proceed to the children's play area, where children are creating playground models". They were then to "proceed down the path where they are joined by 25 children with balloons" and go "to the top of the hill and release the balloons".

....Her second solo visit came in May 1999.

She attended the dedication of a Playspace project, designed to ensure that children should have the chance to play in a "non-hostile environment". Her schedule noted that she was to invite "12 children to join as she and the programme participants plant two trees".

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