GETTING BEHIND THE CLINTON EXPERIENCE CON

NY OBSERVER - In a conference call that ended moments ago, the Obama campaign explicitly went after Hillary Clinton for her claims of experience in crisis situations. Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Obama, mocked Clinton for her claim of having made a corkscrew landing into Bosnia under the threat of sniper fire, when, as Rice pointed out, she made the trip with Chelsea, Sheryl Crow and Sinbad.

"In fact, it was a meet-and-greet and concert with the troops," said Rice. "So it's hard to understand exactly what she is referring to when she says she has unparalleled crisis management experience."

Rice also needled Clinton for her claim of having helped open Macedonian borders to refugees of the Kosovo war in 1999. Clinton, as The Washington Post pointed out, arrived a day after the border was reopened, so to the extent that she had a role in reopening the borders at all, it was as a sign of the United States' commitment to the issue and not a result of her negotiating skills.

Rice argued, as she did previously, that "Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and Senator McCain have never had to answer the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call. Only a commander in chief has shouldered that unique burden and you don't get that kind of experience merely by being married to a commander in chief, as Senator Clinton suggested today."

TELEGRAPH, UK - 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 don'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 don't want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.". . .

"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 grueling political talks over the years.

Central to Mrs Clinton's claim of an important Northern Ireland role is a meeting she attended in Belfast in with a group of women from cross-community groups. "I actually went to Northern Ireland more than my husband did," she said in Nashua, New Hampshire on January 6th.

"I remember a meeting that I pulled together in Belfast, in the town hall there, bringing together for the first time Catholics and Protestants from both traditions, having them sitting a room where they had never been before with each other because they don't go to school together, they don't live together and it was only in large measure because I really asked them to come that they were there.

"And I wasn't sure it was going to be very successful and finally a Catholic woman on one side of the table said, 'You know, every time my husband leaves for work in the morning I worry he won't come home at night.

"And then a Protestant woman on the other side said, 'Every time my son tries to go out at night I worry he won't come home again'. And suddenly instead of seeing each other as caricatures and stereotypes they saw each other as human beings and the slow, hard work of peace-making could move forward."

There is no record of a meeting at Belfast City Hall, though Mrs Clinton attended a ceremony there when her husband turned on the Christmas tree lights in November 1995. The former First Lady appears to be referring a 50-minute event the same day, arranged by the US Consulate, the same day at the Lamp Lighter Cafe on the city's Ormeau Road.

The Belfast Telegraph reported the next day that the cafe meeting was crammed with reporters, cameramen and Secret Service agents. Conversation "seemed a little bit stilted, a little prepared at times" and Mrs Clinton admired a stainless steel tea pot, which was duly given to her, for keeping the brew "so nice and hot".