Hillary Pakistan Plan: Vain Hope That Musharaff Reforms Himself, Restores Courts, Free Press! Naive?

Blitzer: Over the years, since 9/11, the United States has provided the Pakistani military with some $10 billion. Will you as a United States Senator continue to vote for funding of these billions of dollars going to the Pakistani military?

Clinton: No, (but then she does vote for it-DWW) and I’m very pleased that finally the Congress began to put some conditions on the aid. I do not think that we should be giving the Musharraf government a blank check and that’s exactly what the Bush Administration has done. Even after Musharraf cracked down on the judiciary and the press and the pro-democracy movement in Pakistan, President Bush was saying he was a reliable ally. Well, I don’t think he’s a reliable ally when he undermines democracy and when he has failed to reign in the Al Qaeda Islamist elements in his own country.

So I think we do need to condition aid. I would do it differently. I would say, look, we want to know very specifically what accountability you’re going to offer to us for the military aid that we believe should be going in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Department of Defense is equally unaccountable with the money that passes through them.

I’d like to see more of our aid shifted toward building civil society. I’ve been calling for this. I have legislation that is bi-partisan, Education for All that is particularly aimed -- I’ve talked to President Musharraf about the necessity for us to raise the literacy rate, to reach out with health care and education that would help the Pakistani people to really concentrate on civil society.

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Blitzer: I interviewed your rival, Barack Obama, for Democratic presidential nomination last night and he had some implied criticism of you saying some of your past decisions do not necessarily warrant your stepping up and becoming the next president of the United States. Listen to this:

Obama: I think it’s important for the American people to look at the judgments they’ve made in the past. The experienced hands in Washington have not made particularly good judgments when it comes to dealing with these problems. That’s part of the reason we are now in this circumstance.

Blitzer: Now I think he was referring to your vote giving the President authority to go to war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and your more recent vote to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. In effect, he says that gave a blank check to the President to go to war against Iran. You want to respond to Senator Obama?

Clinton: First, Wolf, I really regret that anybody would try to politicize this tragedy. I personally knew Benazir Bhutto. She was Prime Minister when I visited Pakistan on behalf of our government. I stayed in touch with her over the years. I don’t think politics should be playing a role in how our country responds, both on the personal level to the tragedy of this assassination.



Blitzer: What about the specific criticism of your foreign policy judgment that we heard from Senator Obama, we heard earlier in the day from his chief strategist, David Axelrod. What about that, that implied criticism that some of your decisions on these national security, foreign policy issues raise questions about whether or not you should be president?

Clinton: I just regret that both of them would be politicizing this tragedy and especially at a time when do we need to figure out a way forward. That’s what I’m focused on. I’m focused on extending my sympathy to Benazir Bhutto’s family. I’m focused on doing everything I can as a Senator, as someone with a platform running for president, to try to be both positive and effective in helping to set a course. We have a year to go with President Bush as our president. A year is a long time. We know the threats that could be posed with a nuclear armed country like Pakistan becoming more and more unstable.

I have found that President Musharraf is someone that needs, in my opinion, to have a very consistent message and then frankly the help that would come with helping him and those who are in leadership positions understanding that this is not just about the United States - obviously, we have a very important national security interest. This is about what happens to Pakistan.

President Musharraf could become as important to the future of Pakistan if he changed course and began to act in a way that would create more confidence to have these free and fair elections, to restore an independent judiciary, to take the shackles off the press, to say that he trusted the Pakistani people. That’s what I’m hoping will happen over the next weeks.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=4942