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Exclusive: The Democrats sound self-satisfied that there is so little internal opposition to Hillary Clinton for President, but this rush to a coronation is ignoring questions about her judgment as a New York Senator and Secretary of State and whether she is prone to war, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

As President Barack Obama tries to pick his way through a minefield of complex foreign policy issues from Irans nuclear program to the Syrian civil war to Israeli-Palestinian peace to unrest in Ukraine he is beset by incessant criticism from much of Official Washington which still retains the neocon influences of the last two decades.

Indeed, the failure to impose any meaningful accountability on Republicans, Democrats, senior editors and think-tank analysts who cheered on the Iraq War disaster makes it hard to envision how President Obama can navigate this maze of difficult negotiations and trade-offs needed to resolve conflicts in the worlds hot spots.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Successful negotiations require both an objective assessment of ground truth, i.e. a cold-eyed view of the actual power relationships between the disputing parties, and flexibility, i.e. the readiness to make concessions that accommodate the realistic needs of the two sides.

Yet, Official Washington has become a place of tough-guy/gal bluster where the only purpose of negotiations is for the anti-U.S. side to come in and surrender. That is why the likes of Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt is always calling for the U.S. to issue military ultimatums to disfavored foreign leaders, giving them the choice of doing what theyre told or facing U.S. attack.

We saw the same attitude before President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003: Bushs escalating demands that Saddam Hussein surrender his stockpiles of WMD, American outrage when the Iraqigovernment insisted that the WMD no longer existed, and then the need to respond to Iraqs arrogance and intransigence by going to war to protect U.S. credibility.

The fact thatIraq was telling the truth about its lack of WMD did not lead to mass firings of Official Washingtons opinion leaders, nor seriousconsequences for politicians who collaborated in this war crime. Bush won reelection; most of the war hawks kept their seats in Congress; and Hiatt and the other neocon media personalities remained employed.

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Hillary Clintons Unlearned Lessons