Hilary Clinton emails - Explain please

[hollyisalovelyname]

I have no idea what the Hilary Clinton emails 'scandal' is all about.
Could wiser Mumsnetters please explain it to me.
Thank you.

Yes, math, I should have added at the time and made it clear that I meant a good idea for the US to depose Assad.
In general, it's a good idea to depose him, but it shouldn't be the US leading it or doing it alone. They can give aid to insurgents or protect them, unless Assad was a direct threat to the US.

And you should pay close attention to the presence and capabilities of other interested parties to any possible conflict.

I do. That's my point!

Math is harsh but there is truth is her/his posts.

Someone either incredibly stupid or incredibly carried away by her own hubris was running the State Department for a few years.

However, the tragic thing is that it would be possible to agree with that statement completely and still recognise that there is a worse option. In Donald Trump America has found the worse option.

You just mentioned Libya in passing but her destabilisation of Libya contributed vastly to the migrant crisis.

I don't see how you can acknowledge the mistakes that Clinton has made and say that trump is worse. She was a disaster.

It's 'her'

I don't see how you can acknowledge the mistakes that Clinton has made and say that trump is worse

A potato would be a better president than Donald Trump. A potato can't tweet.

The only thing that Donald Trump has in his favour is that, having never held political office, he hasn't had the chance to make mistakes. However, again I say elect president potato.

The US is currently bombing Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The bombing in Afghanistan and Pakistan is accomplished by drones. No war has been authorised by Congress.

Many of those were inherited from W, who kicked out intervention and regime change in the Middle East with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Obama accomplished reducing troops on the ground.
Most of the rest is History developing. The US can stay out and risk whatever happens in unstable countries. Or it can help shape a transition to democratic systems. Not easy and there's no manual.
The question is what could have been done different and what would the outcome have been?
Would anyone have done better choices in the same circumstances with the available knowledge at the time?

It's easy to judge. Like it's easy to say now that Germany should have been stopped as soon as they first crossed their borders.
Hindsight is great.
More to the point, I don't see Trump presenting a satisfactory alternative or way out.
"Getting along with Putin" is either wishful thinking or just letting him have free rein.

Would anyone have done better choices in the same circumstances with the available knowledge at the time?

President Potato.

It is not a good idea to depose anyone. It is illegal.

No state can set this precedent and hope to get away with it.

Having said that, if the US is hell bent on doing it, it had better do it right. Not like this:
They can give aid to insurgents or protect them, unless Assad was a direct threat to the US.
That is a recipe for disaster, as we have seen, with ISIS waiting in the wings.

The only thing that Donald Trump has in his favour is that, having never held political office, he hasn't had the chance to make mistakes.

I feel I should rephrase that - Donald Trump has made plenty of mistakes, just not while in government.

They're not even 'fall off your horse and get straight back on mistakes'. They are more 'hitch up the wagon and drive onto the next town before the locals turn nasty' mistakes.

She is not you or me. We should judge. She was incompetent and inflammatory and dangerous. She should never hold office again.

I don't think math is sanctioning regime change. At all.

Intelligence is always available. The US has a massive amount of intelligence available.

The intelligence to make decisions based on that is sadly lacking.

'The rest' is not all 'history developing'. Libya, drones, Ukrainian 'regime change', Yemen and its associated humanitarian crisis, Somalia - all HRC and Obama.

Hillary Rodham Clinton was not involved in a single major negotiation during her tenure as Secretary of State. There has been a singularly heavy handed reliance on the flipping of the bird to the rest of the world.

'Getting along with Putin' would have been a lot easier if the US wasn't in such a hurry to run roughshod over guarantees made to Moscow while Gorbachev was president, push NATO into Ukraine, use neo-Nazis who are the direct political descendants of the Banderite Nazi allies during WW2 to depose a duly elected president and force policy and regime change in Ukraine, ignore the concerns of Russia over the circumstances of 'non-citizens' many of whom are ethnic Russians, in the Baltic states. All of this was accomplished by the State Dept under HRC.

Troop reduction is not necessarily a plus.
No troops = no control.
Local combatants = local chaos.
Women and children always suffer.
Criminality thrives because it takes money to buy weapons = e.g. opium trade flourishes, corruption of officials = local warlords emerge = fledgling democracy takes a direct hit.
Constant chaos means there is always the possibility of some force completely hostile to US aims and western values springing up and sweeping all before it.
It also means there will be a humanitarian crisis.

She should never hold office again.

Wouldn't it be nice if the Republican Party had found somebody competent to stand against her?

However, they haven't.

Indeed, Winchester, I am not sanctioning regime change.
Especially regime change done on the cheap using local amateur proxies in a region that is already primed to explode, while there are well-organised, well-trained and well-armed fanatical warriors waiting to exploit instability.

HRC has a record on which she should be judged. It is her claim to experience.

Merrymouse, John Boehner has a lot to answer for.

math, I think there has been a hitch it the space time continuum. Leicester City and the Chicago Cubs?

Simething to do wth David Bowie.

Oops, 'something'. I blame that typo on a glitch in the matrix.

Assad created ISIS.

If you don't know this, then you know nothing about Syria.

Also, someone gassing their own people, as Assad has done, is our business, because it violates international law.

The uprising against Assad was not started by outsiders, go and look up Deraa 2011.

That people are on here defending the mass slaughter of civilians by Russia and the Syrian regime is disturbing, but sadly not surprising.

There's a few "experts" on the Middle East in here who have never been there and garner all their knowledge from Russia Today.

It also violates international war to invade a country on a false pretense, but that didn't stop the US and UK from doing it.

Also, Assad didn't single-handedly create ISIS. If you truly think the West has had no hand in it, you know nothing about Syria.

Hillary and her people themselves said that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children was "worth it". It's equally sad and disturbing that people gloss over that fact.

Hillary and her people themselves said that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children was "worth it"

The reason people "gloss over" this fact is that it is not a fact. That comment was made by Madeleine Albright in 1996 while she was US Ambassador to the UN. She was responding to a report of deaths due to sanctions. The figure has now been thoroughly debunked but this does not in any way justify Albright's comments which were callous. Note that Hillary Clinton was not Albright's boss. She was First Lady and was active on a number of issues around children's health care, adoption, family safety and foster care. She was not involved in foreign policy.

This was therefore not said by Hillary or "her people", nor has she endorsed Albright's view, unless you insist that Hillary must have agreed with everything Bill did and all the comments made by people he appointed to public office.

Assad created ISIS.

If you don't know this, then you know nothing about Syria.

Also, someone gassing their own people, as Assad has done, is our business, because it violates international law.

The uprising against Assad was not started by outsiders, go and look up Deraa 2011.

That people are on here defending the mass slaughter of civilians by Russia and the Syrian regime is disturbing, but sadly not surprising.

There's a few "experts" on the Middle East in here who have never been there and garner all their knowledge from Russia Today.