Another Clinton attack = another Obama campaign smackdown

Clinton's snide snark (*“I have traveled the world on behalf of our country - first in the White House with my husband and now as a
senator.... I believe I have the right kind of experience to be the next president... Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign
country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face.") quickly elicited
this rapid response from Team Obama:

'“Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld have spent time in the White House and travelled to many countries as well, but along with Hillary
Clinton, they led us into the worst foreign policy disaster in a generation and are now giving George Bush the benefit of the doubt
on Iran. The real choice in this election is between conventional Washington thinking that prizes posture and positioning, or real
change that puts judgment and honesty first.”

On Monday, Mr. Obama cited his personal background and his four years living in Indonesia as a child as contributing to his experience
and knowledge on foreign affairs.

“I spent four years living overseas when I was a child living in Southeast Asia,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “If you don’t
understand these cultures then it’s very hard for you to make good foreign policy decisions. Foreign policy is all about judgment....a lot
of my knowledge about foreign affairs isn’t just what I studied in school — I studied international relations when I was in college — it’s
not just the work I do on the Senate foreign relations committee. It’s actually having the knowledge of how ordinary people in these
other countries live.”' http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/clinton-vs-obama-take-2-in-iowa/

Seymour Hersh thinks that the very background Clinton is so quick to disparage and discount makes Obama the best presidential
candidate.

'Barack Obama represents "the only hope for the US in the Muslim world," according to Pulitzer-prize winning investigative
reporter Seymour Hersh. Because Obama's father was a Muslim, he "could lead a reconciliation between the Muslim countries
and the US." With any of the other candidates as president, Hersh said, "we're facing two or three decades of problems in the
Mideast, with 1.2 billion Muslims."'

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/?pid=252300

Hersh is the reporter that broke both the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib torture stories to the world, so his experienced
perspective on U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis presidential timbre is both meaningful and relevant.

It's time to turn the page and start a new, clean chapter in presidential politics. The same old, same old politics as usual
has bankrupted America morally in the eyes of the world and economically at home.

It's time to move on.

Sadly, I don't think Obama alone could undo the sheer level of devastation Bush has wrought on the Arab world and the damage done to our allies in Europe and elsewhere.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step.

Like Seymour Hersh, I believe that a President Barack Hussein Obama will be that critical first step to a world repaired and an America we can believe in again.