Fact Sheet: Northern Ireland

The Lie:

That Hillary Clinton was instrumental in the negotiations that brought peace to Northern Ireland.

The Quote:

"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland." (from CNN's American Morning, March 5, 2008).

The Vetting:

First - Most importantly, the bottom line is she was not involved in any negotiations, and she was not directly involved in the political process. She was not an integral player, nor did she help to draft, the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. She went to N. Ireland and gave speeches, which, as we all know, is not relevant according to Hillary's own standard.

Second - The main players say she was not involved politically or relevantly (as per her commander-in-chief 3am standard.) Lord Trimble, one of the people who won the Nobel Prize for his role in the peace process called Hillary's claims "silly," adding:

"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around." Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."

Additionally, Conall McDevitt, an SDLP negotiator and aide to Mr Hume during the talks said in the same article:

"There would have been no contact with her either in person or on the phone. I was with Hume regularly during calls in the months leading up to the Good Friday Agreement when he was taking calls from the White House and they were invariably coming from the president."

Lastly, according to an AP report, Brian Feeney, an author and former leading Belfast politician from the same party as John Hume, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, stated, quite clearly:

"The road to peace was carefully documented, and she wasn't on it."

Third - People who defend Hillary, or disagree with the previous statements, have nothing specific to offer. They just claim indignation, acting like it's insulting to even question her experience. Many people say she was very supportive, and very knowledgable, but, then again, so was Bono, and he hasn't claimed he passed the commander-in-chief threshold (though he had a much larger role in the process than Hillary Clinton). Also, since she won't release her records we only have public records to go on, and, according to all those, she didn't formally do anything.

Fourth - Even though she was involved in getting women involved in the peace process (not singlehandedly, and amongst many others), this is not relevant commander in chief experience (and if getting people involved in politics is relevant, Obama has demonstrated more of an ability to that during this election then she ever has).

Sidebar:

The only concrete example Hillary gives regarding her experience is the following anecdote, given in Nashua, NH on January 6th, 2008 (from the Telegraph):

"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."

The Telegraph, however, disagrees with her story in order to discuss those pesky facts:

There is no record of a meeting at Belfast City Hall, though Mrs Clinton attended a ceremony there when her husband turned on the Christmas tree lights in November 1995. The former First Lady appears to be referring a 50-minute event the same day, arranged by the US Consulate. The "Belfast Telegraph" reported the next day that the café meeting was crammed with reporters, cameramen and Secret Service agents. Conversation "seemed a little bit stilted, a little prepared at times" and Mrs Clinton admired a stainless steel tea pot, which was duly given to her, for keeping the brew "so nice and hot".

So, from a groundbreaking, solo trip to N. Ireland where she singlehandedly negotiated peace against generations of hate, to a meeting in a coffeeshop, while on a trip with her husband, where she admired a teapot for less than an hour.