by Big Dog 

        According to a principle player, Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, Hillary's claim is a "wee bit silly" and that; ....

    .... "I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around."  

Hillary Clinton has claimed international experience and often cites her assistance in brokering a peace deal in Ireland during her husband's administration.

"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland."
"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." "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/08/wuspols108.xml"

According to a principle player, Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, Hillary's claim is a "wee bit silly" and that; "I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around."

The Telegraph also reports that there is no record of a meeting that Hillary "pulled together" but there was a meeting at the same time.  The meeting was full of cameramen and secret service agents.  Hillary admired a teapot which was given to her. 

These first hand accounts support my contention that Hillary did nothing more than any First Lady and that her claim of experience because of that position is embellished.  She did the same things that many First Ladies have done and, in the case of Ireland, it is a bit much to claim responsibility for the success.  Hillary must believe that the people in Ireland who were an integral part of the process would remain silent with regard to her obvious inflated claims.

Hillary could clear a lot of this up by persuading her husband to release her records from the time.  He has been the one holding them up regardless of what the Clintons have publicly expressed.  If those records can back her claims then why have they not been released?  Perhaps it is because while there are volumes of records, support for her claims is paper thin.

Big Dog 

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