FROM BRITAIN, WITHOUT LOVE – AT 11:25 A.M. ET:  Hillary Clinton will soon have another serious charge to contend with.  "What difference does it make?" may not cut it as an answer.  From Fox: 

A former British diplomat has claimed that Hillary Clinton oversaw a "dysfunctional" U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq during her tenure as Secretary of State in a book due to be published next month.

Britain's Daily Telegraph reported late Tuesday that Emma Sky, a former political adviser to U.S. Gen. Ray Odierno, writes that Clinton's choice as the Obama administration's first ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, had "lacked regional experience and was miscast in the role in Baghdad. In fact, he had not wanted the job," but was persuaded to accept it by Clinton. Sky writes that Odierno told her that Clinton had admitted as much when she met the general in Washington in early 2010.

Sky continues that Hill's main focus while ambassador appeared to be monitoring the activities of the U.S. military, as opposed to engaging with Iraqi leaders or his fellow diplomats. In fact, Sky claims that Hill repeatedly "made clear how much he disliked Iraq and Iraqis." She also says that Hill tried to get the fortified embassy to look more like a "normal" U.S. diplomatic mission, a task which apparently required importing rolls of sod "on which the ambassador could play lacrosse".

Sky's book, called "The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq," covers her seven years in Iraq beginning in 2003. Her thesis is that the hasty U.S. withdraw overseen by President Obama thrust then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki into the arms of Iran and exacerbated sectarian tensions that boosted support for what she calls "extreme sectarian actors, including the Islamic State, [who turned] local grievances over poor governance into proxy wars."

COMMENT:  We will await Clinton's answer to these serious charges.  But, of course, she'll have allies.  Book review editors in the mainstream media will do their part for the Clinton cause by assigning hostile reviewers to the book, or ignoring the book altogether.  Believe me, that's done.  I've seen it. 

April 15, 2015