Interviewed on "60 MInutes," Hillary Clinton gave the nation a glimpse of her win-at-all-costs mentality. Confronted over whether or not she believed Barack Obama was actually a Muslim, she couldn't give a simple, firm answer and let it stand at that.
Croft: You don't believe that Senator Obama is a Muslim?
Clinton: Of course not. I mean that's, you know, there is no basis for that. You know I take him on the basis of what he said. There isn't any reason to doubt that.
Croft sensed a bit of hedging in the answer, and reshaped the question.
Croft: You said you take Senator Obama at his word that he's not a Muslim, you don't believe that he's a Muslim... or implying...
Clinton: No, no. Why would I? No, there's nothing to base that on... as far as I know.
I realize that this is something of a political Rorschach test. If you're a Clinton fan, you hear a stern denial. If you're everybody else, you hear her planting a seed of doubt. Watch the exchange for yourself.
To my mind there are two places she has deliberately left the door open a crack.First, as Croft noted, there's a difference between believing something to be true or false, and believing something based on what another person says is true. Consider the different implications in the following sentences:
"I believe it is raining outside."
and
"On the basis of what Jack said, I believe it is raining outside."
The distinction is simple. In the second sentence, if it's not actually raining, blame Jack for the fact that I gave you the wrong information. And that's precisely why Croft followed up. Hillary started off much better the second time around, but quickly took a detour back into the territory of doubt.
"No, there's nothing to base that on... as far as I know."
Once again, it's as if she's suggesting there may still be some information out there that might overturn her thoughts on the matter. Perhaps after we "peel the bark off" Senator Obama, we'll discover some other truth.
Hillary supporters will think me part of the VRWC, but it troubles me that she couldn't just come out and say: No, he's not a Muslim. He's a Christian.
THE PRESS ON BEEN AGAINST HER SINCE DAY ONE-WHILE THEY HAVE KISSED OBAMA'S ASS SINCE DAY ONE. THE PRESS HAS NEVER EVER BEEN SO KIND-JUST HOW MUCH IS OPRAH THREATNING ANYWAY AND PAYING.. THIS IS UNSPEAKABLE- IT JUST SHOWS YOU THE TRUE WAY ITS ABOUT COLOR- THIS IS HAPPENING TO HILLARY- NO ONE SAYS A DAM WORD- IF THE PRESS WERE DOING THIS TO OBAMA ---THEY WOULD BE PLAYING THE RACE CARD TO THE HILT. SHARPTON-JACKSON WILL BE ALL OVER THIS. FUNNY IT DOESNT MATTER IF IT HAPPENS TO A WHITE CANDIDATE BUT IT WOULD IF IT HAPPENED TO A BLACK CANDIDATE-= NOW YOU FIGURE IT OUT. THIS ELECTION SUCKS. AND OHAMA IS ALREADY PICKING HIS CABINET= BEFORE TEXAS AND OHIO EVER VOTE HOW BLACK OF HIM....THATS BALLS !!!!!!!!!!!
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estaban
8:00AM Mar 3rd 2008
-I love to see this go on in a country that stands on and believes in its constitution. A constitution that cleary states that the american president must a white christian.
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Patty
8:16AM Mar 3rd 2008
AOL you are the most sexist, biased news and media organization...you have the worst headlines and horrific coverage of Hillary. I for one am ashamed you haven't been more neutral...and I have questioned my subscription with your company, it is in doubt whether or not I will continue with your service...VOTE HILLARY THE ONLY PROVEN CANDIDATE!
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estaban
8:01AM Mar 3rd 2008
you guys are so funny!
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cllbarbour
8:17AM Mar 3rd 2008
Well, Good Grief! How many times does a question have to be asked and answered? Hillary made it clear she she didn't believe that Obama is Muslim. This, plus Tim Russert's treatment of Hillary during the last debate, underscores the statistic broadcast yesterday: 6% of Americans would never vote for an African American BUT 12% of Americans say they would never vote for a woman. It's still a man's world, even when you are as intelligent, prepared, hardworking, and astute as Hillary. How do you like that statistic, Ladies? VOTE FOR HILLARY and show America we can unite!
Barack Obama argues that he deserves the Democratic nomination and Hillary Clinton doesn't because he possesses superior "judgment," as he calls it, on the key issues we face as a nation. As definitive proof he offers one speech he made in 2002 during a reelection campaign for an Illinois senate seat in the most liberal district in the state, so liberal that no other position would have been viable. When he made that speech, Obama was not privy to the briefings by, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in support of the Authorization of Use of Military Force as a diplomatic tool to push the international community to impose intrusive inspections on Saddam Hussein.
Would Obama have acted differently had he been in Washington or had he had the benefit of the arguments and the intelligence that the administration was offering to the Congress debating that resolution? During the 2002-2003 timeframe, he was a minor local official uninvolved in the national debate on the war so we can only judge from his own statements prior to the 2008 campaign. Obama repeated these points in a whole host of interviews prior to announcing his candidacy. On July 27, 2004, he told the Chicago Tribune on Iraq: "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." In his book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, he wrote, "...on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried." And, in 2006, he clearly said, "I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of US intelligence. And for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices."
I was involved in that debate in every step of the effort to prevent this senseless war and I profoundly resent Obama's distortion of George Bush's folly into Hillary Clinton's responsibility. I was in the middle of the debate in Washington. Obama wasn't there. I remember what was said and done. In fact, the administration lied in order to secure support for its war of choice, including cooking the intelligence and misleading Congress about the intent of the authorization. Senator Clinton's position, stated in her floor speech, was in favor of allowing the United Nations weapons inspectors to complete their mission and to build a broad international coalition. Bush rejected her path. It was his war of choice.
There is no credible reason to conclude that Obama would have acted any differently in voting for the authorization had he been in the Senate at that time. Indeed, he has said as much. The supposed intuitive judgment he exercised in his 2002 speech was nothing more than the pander of a local election campaign, just as his current assertions of superior judgment and scurrilous attacks on Hillary Clinton are a pander to those who now retroactively think the war was a mistake without bothering to acknowledge Senator Clinton's actual position at the time and instead fantasizing that she was nothing but a Bush clone. Obama willfully encourages and plays off this falsehood.
What should we make of Obama's other judgments in foreign affairs? Take Afghanistan, for example. It has been evident for some time that our efforts there are going badly and that cooperation and support from our NATO allies would be helpful. As chairman of the subcommittee on Senate Foreign Relations responsible for NATO and Europe, Obama could have used his lofty position actually to engage the issue and pressure the administration to take some action to improve our chance of success in that conflict against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Of course, that would have involved holding hearings, questioning administration witnesses, and taking a position and offering alternatives. That is what we expect that from senators in a democracy. It is called oversight.
But, instead, Obama, by his own admission, offers the excuse that he has been too busy running for president to do anything substantive, such as direct his staff to organize a single hearing. "Well, first of all," Obama was forced to confess in the Democratic debate in Ohio on February 26, "I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan." To date, his subcommittee has held no policy hearings at all -- none. At the same time that Obama claimed he was too busy campaigning to do anything substantive, racking up one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, Senator Clinton chaired extensive hearings of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health and attended many others as a member of the Armed Service Committee.
As a consequence of Obama's dereliction of duty on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a feckless administration has had absolutely no oversight as it careens from disaster to disaster in Afghanistan, including the central governments loss of control over 70 percent of the country and yet another bumper crop of opium to fuel the efforts of the Taliban and their terrorist allies. Of course, if you don't hold hearings, conduct oversight, make recommendations or sponsor legislation, then you have no record to explain or defend and you are free to take whatever position is convenient when attacking those who actually did address issues. Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Obama holds forth on Afghanistan, chiding the administration and our allies as though he's a profile in courage and not someone who has abandoned his post in establishing accountability.
On Iran and the question of designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, the junior senator from Illinois was not quite so clever at avoiding taking a position. He first co-sponsored the "Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007," which contained explicit language identifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. He subsequently claimed to oppose the Kyl-Lieberman sense of the Senate resolution proposing the same thing. Obama's accountability problem here is that he didn't show up for the vote on that resolution -- a vote that would have put him on record. Then he declined to sign on to a letter put forward by Senator Clinton making explicit that the resolution could not be used as authority to take military action. All we have is Obama's rhetoric juxtaposed with his co-sponsorship of a piece of legislation that proposed what he says he opposed.
Obama's gyrations on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are not the actions of one imbued with superior intuitive judgment, but rather the machinations of a political opportunist looking to avoid having his fingerprints on any issue that might be controversial, and require real judgment, while preserving his freedom to bludgeon his adversary for actually taking positions as elected office demands. It is hard to discern whether Senator Obama is a man of principle, but it is clear that he is not a man of substance. And that judgment, based on his hollow record, is inescapable.
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glowhappy
8:26AM Mar 3rd 2008
Once again Hillary is attacked for an honest answer. How do you give a 100percent positive answer about someone else's religious position? David Knowles you are a poor journalist. Even your headline shows your slanted reporting. I hope you get fired.
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linda
9:51AM Mar 3rd 2008
So, you're experiencing a little media bias! Now you know how Republicans have felt for the last few decades. Welcome to the REAL world of politics!
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Ohio Voter
8:55AM Mar 3rd 2008
NO Hillary fan, but Barack was a muslim and in their beliefs he will always be a muslim. He could join the Catholic church but it wouldn't make him a catholic in his heart. His wife has a degree and has beaten all odds as the low class that she was because this country gives everyone the opportunity to do so, but she was never proud of this country. Wonder what country she was proud of?
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gomezdale
9:00AM Mar 3rd 2008
thats not for her to say.you folks are so used to believing everything obama says.bunch of followers. media should ask him what he is. she can't do or say anything right with some of you she's out to win she's not going to give up like Al Gore
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Brenda
9:17AM Mar 3rd 2008
It is obvious who the media is pushing for to be the democratic nominee....you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out!! All I can say is that I live in OHIO and I proudly cast my vote last Friday for Hillary!! Unfortunately, Bill Clinton was in my hometown that same day and I did not even to see him because the line was waaaaaaaay too long......so I thought I would do the next best thing and just went to the Board of Elections and voted! GO HILLARY......OHIO LOVES YOU!!!
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Katherine
9:21AM Mar 3rd 2008
RAINING is something you can see AND feel for yourself.
How the heck would I begin to know WHAT RELIGION SOMEONE IS, unless they tell me?
OMG!!!! OMFG!!!!!!!
No one can MIND read.
TELL ME WHAT RELIGION I AM.
Go ahead, tell me.
Tell me what religion I am.
YOU CAN'T.
Because I never told you!!!
MF.
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gomezdale
9:27AM Mar 3rd 2008
whatever her answer obviously would not be the right one.of course leave it up in the air .he could be a wolf in sheeps clothing the public is so mesmerized by his good looks (not) they don't care at this point what is said about him they are still voting for him .THE IDIOTS
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Jebinb
9:24AM Mar 3rd 2008
Finally CNN saying Obama might lose because of talk to Canada. Barack HUSSEIN Obama SEEMS HE HAS BEEN TALKING BEHIND OUR BACKS HE IS UP TO NO GOOD, DECEITFUL, SNEAKY, EVIL.
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Ann
9:33AM Mar 3rd 2008
It has been shockingly obvious that the male media are a gang of male chauvinists. They can't stand the idea of a woman being president.
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J Bailey
1:40PM Mar 3rd 2008
Does anyone even care what Obama Hussein's record is in the senate. When he was elected to the senate and asked if he was going to run for President his answer was no he was not going to run for President because he did not have the knowledge or experience to run for president, he added that he would have to start campaigning right then if he intended to run.
Where did he get this new found knowledge and experience in such a short time. It must have come from Oprah.
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tina m
9:33AM Mar 3rd 2008
Obama, by his own admission, offers the excuse that he has been too busy running for president to do anything substantive, such as direct his staff to organize a single hearing. "Well, first of all," Obama was forced to confess in the Democratic debate in Ohio on February 26, "I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan." To date, his subcommittee has held no policy hearings at all -- none. At the same time that Obama claimed he was too busy campaigning to do anything substantive, racking up one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, Senator Clinton chaired extensive hearings of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health and attended many others as a member of the Armed Service Committee.
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Katherine
9:36AM Mar 3rd 2008
I'm Buddist.
I'm lying. You are wrong, I am not buddist.
_______________________________________________
No one should speak on behalf of someone else's religion, furthermore: David Knowles, you should be angry with Croft for ASKING such an outrageous question to Hillary.
HE is the one bringing UP questions about religion, as you are.
It should be a criminal or civil crime to slander people in the media the way that Hillary has been slandered and misrepresented and smeared by this type of article and almost all others in the media. This is the type of women hating that is prevalent throughout our society. Whether or not one is for Hillary or for Obama, both of these incredible public servants should be treated with equal respect as humans and for all they have contributed for all of us. Please David and all, let us raise ourselves to our higher humanity. We do not have to be against anyone in order to be supportive of another. Hillary and Obama both deserve better. We deserve to be better.