When I was studying to become a nurse in the late 1960s, I learned that the most important value in patient care, for both nurses and doctors, was safety. Not curing, which is often impossible, and not even empathy, although a high priority. That is because the patient who falls out of bed, or is given the wrong dose of medicine, or whose grievance is ignored, may pay with nothing less than his or her life.

As a mother of three, I already knew this – that all the love and support and education in the world meant nothing in comparison to keeping my young children safe: away from unprotected outlets, sharp table corners, a hot stove, automobile traffic, people with contagious diseases, and of course bad values.

I never forgot this lesson: safety first, a value that applies as well – first and foremost and above all others – to our country.

Does Hillary Put Safety First?

No. The New York Democrat Senator and presidential contender has consistently demonstrated – in word and deed – that she is unfit to conduct the foreign policy of our country. No matter where in the world our heroic troops are defending our country and our policies, Hillary is on the wrong side of every issue.

Especially in the perilous times we live, her constant flip-flopping on the urgent matters of national security and her tendency to fold in the face of even minor adversity on the campaign trail make her uniquely unqualified be the leader of the free world.

Hillary’s Consistent Flip-Flops On Iraq

Does the date October 10, 2002, ring a bell? That was the date of the Iraq War Resolution, which Hillary voted for – without uttering a single syllable of reservation. In fact, in voting for President Bush’s initiative, she cited her husband’s invasion of Iraq and the "known and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites" of Saddam Hussein as well as his "aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members." The over-400 cruise missiles the former president dropped on suspected WMD sites in Iraq must have been fresh in her memory.

But today, as she veers far left, the smartest woman in the world claims, disingenuously, to have been "mislead." She does this to please – read, pander to – the anti-American branch of her party that is funded by George Soros and features such national embarrassments as Code Pink, Senate Majority leader Harry "the war is lost" Reid, House Majority leader Nancy "Iraq is not the war on terror" Pelosi, Sen. Dick Durbin (who compared our troops to Nazis), and the rest of this sorry lot.

Does the date January 26, 2007, ring a bell? That is the date that Hillary voted to confirm General David Petraeus to lead the surge in Iraq, again without even a token expression of doubt. Apparently this date is lost on Hillary’s conveniently sieve-like memory.

But when (1) polls told her that public sentiment for the war was waning, (2) the antiwar left was picking up steam and publicity, and (3) she was preparing for her run for the presidency and knew she’d need this voluble faction to get the nomination, she did what Clintons always do when focus groups and polls tell them what to think and believe – she changed her mind! She stated loudly and often that she regretted voting for the war and that monetary support should be withheld from the Iraqi government in a war we’re now winning – the same strategy leftists like her did to end the war we were winning in Vietnam!

Hillary Smears U.S. Troops And Their Leader

Does the date September 10, 2007, ring a bell? That is when The New York Times ran an ad, paid for by MoveOn.org and headlined "Gen. Petraeus or Gen. Betray Us" which was published for a generously half-priced rate – in case anyone on earth thought the Times was unbiased.

To this day, Hillary has steadfastly refused to condemn the ad that slurred the five-star general, the commander of our 170,000-person Multi-National Force – Iraq, a 35-year veteran, a Princeton graduate with a Ph.D. in International Relations, and a man who has spent his entire existence putting his life on the line for our country.

Does September 11, 2007, ring a bell? That is when Hillary, showing her lifelong contempt for our military, told General Petraeus that his report to Congress, which cited empirical evidence that the surge was working – that America was winning!– required "the willing suspension of disbelief." Translated: General Petraeus, you’re a liar!

Yes, Hillary Clinton considers General David Petraeus a liar – while she continues to defend the man who lied to our entire country for almost a year, was disbarred because of his egregious behavior, and was impeached as President of the United States.

Yet she wants us to believe she is fit to be Commander in Chief!

According to journalist Rick Moran, the experts at StrategyPage.com now report that the violence in Iraq has decreased in most areas of the country by up to two-thirds what it was earlier in the year:

In fact, progress in Iraq can be attributed to another great generation of American soldiers who are "creative, innovative, resourceful, free thinking and brave," said Jay Carafano, a senior research fellow specializing in defense and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation.

But clearly, Hillary doesn’t agree. To her, American military success has no meaning. To this day, she has not apologized to Gen. Petraeus for her unforgivably intemperate slur on his integrity? She has not acknowledged the success of the general’s surge. And she has never once repudiated or even distanced herself from the Times’ character-assassination ad or from its sponsor, MoveOn.org.

No wonder Republican Congressman Peter King, who returned from Iraq shortly after Hillary’s slur, told a radio host how closely the troops were following politics in the U.S., and how angry they were about the MoveOn.org ad. "They specifically mentioned Hillary Clinton…for not denouncing MoveOn.org. It went beyond a political anger – it was a rage."

Even The Washington Post’s liberal columnist Richard Cohen weighed in ("After Petraeus Is Slimed, Spineless Silence"), calling Hillary’s swipe at Gen. Petraeus "the politics of personal expediency."

Questioning whether Hillary has "the spine" or "character" to be president, Cohen adds that this "was a moment for her to say that an Army general, under orders and attempting to fulfill a mission, should not be so casually trashed…That moment is gone – maybe because for Hillary Clinton it never arrived in the first place."

Michael Goodwin of the NY Daily News put it this way: "With her refusal to denounce the far-left MoveOn.org for its smear of our top commander in Iraq, Clinton has taken another big step away from the center of American politics. On the most important issue of our times – Iraq and the fight against Islamic terrorism – the Democratic presidential front-runner has thrown her lot in with the radicals, kooks and nuts…and she has turned her back on our soldiers and their leaders during wartime."

Just as damning, in a Congressional resolution to salute Gen. Petraeus and denounce MoveOn for calling him "General Betray Us," Hillary Clinton voted no! That made her only one of 25 senators to vote no, with 72 senators voting yes.

Goodwin calls this "a litmus test. By supporting one and opposing the other, Clinton put her ties to the radicals ahead of her ties to the military. Either you are viscerally comfortable with the people and the power necessary to defend our nation, or you are not. And with these two key votes, Clinton is showing not just discomfort, but hostility."

And don’t be fooled by Hillary’s vote on November 16 against the enforcement of large-scale troop withdrawals in exchange for $50 billion in war funding – yet another effort by Democrats to lose the war in Iraq by stalling President Bush’s request for additional war funding until next year.

After screeching anti-war rants around the country, smearing General Petraeus, and bowing and scraping before the far-left factions of her Party, Hillary’s vote was yet another attempt to have it both ways and engage in the kind of flip-flops that have become her hallmark.

Writer Raymond Kraft warns that: "No soldier, no army, can be inspired by a leader who disdains it, and we have heard the disdain of Hillary Clinton for America's soldiers, and for their mission. A Commander in Chief who embraces defeat cannot lead an army to victory. What soldier will fight for a Commander in Chief who believes that soldier's mission is wrong, and that he or she should surrender and withdraw?"

Hillary’s Vintage Finger-Pointing

Hillary continues to stump on the premise that "this is George Bush’s war!" says writer Bill Murchison. This "tells us everything we need to know…Bush is `the one this thing is all about – not Saddam, not the weapons of mass destruction nearly everyone believed him to have; not the `bumper-sticker war’ on the homicidal maniacs who took down the Twin Towers, and whose imitators are multiplying.’"

"Campaigning for American defeat," Murchison adds, "proves that those who do so had no shame to begin with."

Nicholas Wapshott, in the NY Sun, writes that, "When [our troops] face the prospect of death or maiming each day, they do not deserve to be sniped at from the folks back home. Wars are also something the whole country shares. The Iraq War is no more "Bush's War" than World War Two was "Roosevelt’s War."

Wapshott reminds us that, "In World War Two, those who objected to the aims of the war, or refused to play their part, were considered traitors to America and treacherous to their friends and neighbors. It was possible to hold private reservations about the war or the way in which it was being directed, but it would have been unconscionable to have undermined the war effort or threatened the withdrawal of funds for our fighting forces."

Yet, in her drumbeat, Hillary has thunderously "undermined the war effort."

Columnist Debra J. Saunders reminds us that Hillary admitted to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that she hadn’t even read the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate before she voted for the war resolution, although she firmly believed that Iraq had WMD.

"Of course, she did," said Saunders, "when [Bill Clinton] was president."

In her new book, "For Love of Politics," Sally Bedell Smith provides a perfect example of Hillary’s craven opportunism, which I maintain reinforces her unique unfitness to be president.

"In 1993 she talked her husband out of getting involved in the war in Bosnia because she thought it would be like Vietnam and would harm the chances for her health care plan. Two years later, after being secretly tutored by a State Department official, she became an advocate for the use of force in Bosnia because she feared Bill's inaction was harming him politically."

Hillary would also like the public to forget that last May, when Congress voted to fund the Iraq war without timetables or withdrawal dates, she was only one of 14 senators to vote no! This prompted the Wall St. Journal to editorialize that the vote (her vote) "won…praise from the likes of MoveOn.org, which threatened not to support anyone who voted for the bill."

Yet another reminder that Hillary’s first allegiance is not to our troops, nor to America’s victory in Iraq, but rather to George Soros’s money and to polls reflecting hard-left sentiment that also find it easy to bribe her to betray our troops.

The Journal’s editorial went on to say that Hillary (and her rivals for the presidential nomination) are "bidding to be Commander in Chief, and they vote to undermine U.S. troops in the middle of a difficult mission…which means that they were for the war when it was popular but are against it now that public opinion has changed."

As the "antiwar furies have built in her party, [Hillary] has bent with them and now says and does whatever it takes…This will complicate her Presidency if she ever does make it to the Oval Office. The Iranians, among others, will have seen that she can be turned when the going gets tough." (Emphasis added).

Is this the woman who anyone on earth believes would defend our country – with the full force of its military might and the full backing of our military leaders – as we continue to fight the jihad that openly threatens to annihilate us every minute of every day?

Hillary Boosts Enemy Propaganda

That indictment is directly from the Pentagon, when last May Hillary insisted that the powers-that-be in that agency "start planning now for the withdrawal of U.S. troops."

To this preposterous suggestion, Eric Edelman, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense, wrote back to Hillary: "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia."

If Hillary had her way, we would retreat from Iraq as her husband did, ignominiously, from Somalia. She is no more up to being Commander in Chief than any of the capitulators, appeasers and scared rabbits in her Party.

Which is why no sane American should even contemplate supporting the candidacy of a woman who believes that accommodating tyrants (think of her marriage), selling her soul for money (think of George Soros and any dozen fund-raising scandals), and smearing Five-star General David Petraeus is worthy of leading America in a time of such great peril.

Hillary and Tyrants – A Mutual Attraction

This past September, when the anti-American, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, expressed a desire to visit Ground Zero, widespread protests took place. According to law professor, radio host, and writer Hugh Hewitt, New Yorkers were "unwilling to forgive and forget the bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983, the bombing of the Jewish center in Argentina in 1994, the supply to Hezbollah of the rockets and missiles used in last summer's indiscriminate attacks on civilians, or the killing and wounding of American soldiers and Marines in Iraq through the use of Iranian-manufactured explosives and Iranian trained and directed terrorists."

While Republican presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney immediately blasted Ahmadinejad’s plan, there was one (carpet-bagging) New Yorker who had nothing to say about it – Hillary Clinton.

According to Martin Kramer, Olin Institute senior fellow at Harvard University, Hillary’s foreign-policy agenda, which was published in Foreign Affairs magazine, involves resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by considering "that both sides are equally at fault for the violence," and that Palestinians need only make promises to earn statehood.

"This is exactly what the U.S. did during the Clinton years," Kramer says, "when Yasser Arafat visited the White House 11 times, and met with President Clinton 24 times. Not only did this `consistent involvement’ at the highest level not produce any progress…it eventually blew up in Washington's face…"

Hillary "witnessed the debacle from up close…[but] ignores precisely the lesson inflicted upon us by the failed policy of the Clinton administration…[she] adopts a position of studied neutrality…These are not formulas used by Israel's friends."

No mystery here. Hillary has been trying for the last seven years to redeem her husband’s failed Mideast policiy, the better for people to forget his last, sordid months in the White House and to obfuscate them with the elusive legacy they both lust for. But by so doing, she makes it plain that she hasn’t an original, relevant, forward-looking policy of her own.

Is this what our country needs? Hillary as President with a retro, pre-9/11 foreign policy that didn’t work then and surely won’t work now as we approach the end of the first decade in the 21^st century?

Writer Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, warns us that, "Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is gaining fans, even on the West Bank." He lists numerous Palestinian "leaders" who wax poetic at the prospect of the U.S. losing in Iraq under Hillary:

· We see Hillary and other candidates are competing on who will withdraw from Iraq… This is a moment of glory for the revolutionary movements in the Arab world…" Abu Jihad of Al Aqsa’s Nablus unit.

· "All Americans must vote Democrat": Jihad Jaara, an exiled Al Aqsa agent who commanded 2002’s siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

"Why do these hardened butchers have a soft spot for Hillary Clinton?" Murdock asks.

"Perhaps because the New York Democrat is soft on terrorism." He backs up this claim by listing the U.S. policies that Hillary opposes "robustly" – among them: interrogating terrorists even in "ticking time bomb" scenarios, the U.S. Terrorist Surveillance Program, and military tribunals for terror suspects, including al Qaeda detainees.

Hillary’s support from terrorists also includes the following, according to international journalist Aaron Klein, author of "Schmoozing with Terrorists."

Hillary will end President Bush’s "unlimited military and diplomatic support for Israel" and adapt a more "evenhanded" approach…" and she will "follow in the footsteps" of her husband's administration…" Ahmed Yousef, top advisor to the Hamas leader in Gaza. [Note: Hamas is classified by the State Department as a terrorist organization].

"I hope Hillary is elected in order to have the occasion to carry out all the promises she is giving regarding Iraq." Ala Senakreh, West Bank chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group.

Clinton's repeated calls for a withdrawal from Iraq "proves that important leaders are understanding the situation differently and are understanding the price and the consequences of the American policy in Iraq and in the world." Abu Hamed, leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in the northern Gaza Strip. [Note: The Brigades, together with the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, took responsibility for every suicide bombing in Israel the past three years. The Brigades also has carried out hundreds of recent shootings and rocket attacks.]

Abu Ayman, an Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin, said he is "emboldened" by Clinton's calls for an eventual withdrawal from Iraq.

"It is "very good" there are "voices like Hillary and others who are now attacking the Iraq invasion." Nasser Abu Aziz, the West Bank deputy commander of the Al Aqsa Brigades.

"All Americans must vote Democrat." Jihad Jaara, an exiled member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.

In a chilling article entitled "News of the Future: President Hillary Clinton Surrenders America," Douglas MacKinnon, a former White House and Pentagon official, sums up Hillary’s unfitness for the presidency by asking the following rhetorical question:

"Would the Islamists bent on our total destruction prefer that the citizens of the United States elect as president, a person who will use any means to track them, hunt them down where they sleep and hide, wring the truth out of them, show them and their allies absolutely no mercy, and lock down our borders, or…would they prefer a president such as Hillary Clinton, who will keep our borders open, never allow profiling, never listen to their communications with terrorists inside our nation, think it is wrong to detain them outside of the United States or let our allies question them, bend to the will of other liberal or socialist nations, and always treat them as criminals instead of cold blooded killers?"

Hillary's Loves Jihadists’ Money

The Clinton fund-raising machine has always been suspect, going back to the days when shady Chinese and Indonesian moneymen and Middle Eastern terror suspects larded the former president’s coffers with piles of funny money.

According to Investor’s Business Daily, it "looks like Hillary Clinton's vetting of campaign donations still needs work. FEC records show she's taken cash from Islamists so tainted that past Democrat candidates have returned their money." Some of those donors, IBD reports, are under active federal investigation for supporting terrorism, money laundering and tax fraud.

"But that hasn't stopped Hillary from pocketing their money," even after she accepted money from fugitive donor Norman Hsu."

Hillary’s connections to fishy donors "are worrisome," the editorial continues, and goes on to name Muslim donors whose homes and offices were raided after 9/11 by federal agents, "as part of a counter-terrorism investigation targeting…a Saudi-backed conglomerate of Muslim businesses and charities." One of the men targeted by the raids was "designated an al Qaeda financier by the U.S. government."

"Why would Wahhabists be putting chips on Hillary Clinton and her unofficial running mate?" IBD asks. "Running down their wish list, you'll find that Hillary checks off on just about everything – from promising to pull out of Iraq and the Middle East to creating a Palestinian state to closing down Gitmo. She also wants to stop interrogations and surveillance of jihadist suspects."

"Hands down, Hillary gets the Islamists' vote. Her sympathies lie with them and they know it. That's why they endorse her and even contribute to her campaign," the editorial states.

In addition, IBD reminds its readers "of the drug addicts and criminals who were given unlimited access to the people's house in the 1990s. It's not the first time Clinton has taken cash from terror supporters."

This includes $1,000 she accepted during her 2000 Senate campaign from Abdurahman Alamoudi, then head of the American Muslim Council. After he expressed his support for Palestinian terrorists, [Hillary] "tried to disguise Alamoudi – whom she had hosted at the White House as first lady – as a curator rather than a terror supporter by listing his group in her FEC donor report as the `American Museum Council.’ But it didn't fool anyone."

Today, IBD explains, Alamoudi is doing time as a terrorist. "In fact, the Treasury Department says he was one of al Qaeda's top fundraisers in the U.S."

And we all know that this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to the jihadists’ money that Hillary loves so much.

Hillary fails miserably in vetting her obviously suspect campaign donors and takes the money of criminals and terrorists with craven indifference to the serious implications this has in terms of U.S. foreign policy.

To my mind, this disqualifies her from being even minimally qualified to be President of the United States!

Hillary’s Bogus Claim of "Experience"

Oh, she tells her gullible audiences that of all the Democrat candidates, she has "the most experience." In fact, Sen. Barack Obama has held elected office longer than Hillary has.
But she is "the most experienced candidate," says James Taranto of the Wall St. Journal, "only if you give her credit for proximity, for the eight years when she lived in the White House while her husband was president."

As Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly reminded voters, Hillary has "never run a city, a state or a business." And as most people know, of the few things she did run during her tenure as First Lady – healthcare reform being the most glaring example – she failed miserably.

In fact, since her 2000 election, she has never even chaired a Senate committee! But as Deroy Murdock points out, "Clinton has presided over something. She commanded the Wellesley College Republicans in 1965, and then became student-government president."

The "experience" question is clearly bothersome to the Clinton campaign, which is why the former president, when interviewed on Bloomberg TV, took great pains to tout his wife’s fitness for office and to cite the differences between himself (who was 46 when he first took the oath of office, a year younger than Obama would be in January 2009) from the Illinois senator.

"Obama has the added difficulty that the international situation is more complicated today, with the threat of terrorism and the war in Iraq, than it was in 1992," Clinton said. "…We didn't have the terror threat…"

Taranto is clearly incredulous! I repeat here how he refuted this completely bogus claim: By the time Clinton was elected, the following acts had already occurred:"

The November 1979 invasion of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the holding of hostages, who were not released until Inauguration Day 1981.

Hezbollah's 1983 bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241.

The holding of American hostages, and murder of some, in Beirut throughout the 1980s.

The 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait.

The 1985 bombing of a Madrid restaurant frequented by American soldiers.

The 1985 Hezbollah hijacking of TWA flight 847 and murder of a U.S. Navy flier on board.

The 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, in which an American passenger was murdered.

The 1986 bombing of TWA flight 840, which killed four Americans.

The 1986 bombing of a disco in Berlin, which prompted a retaliatory strike on Libyan targets.

The 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270.

Clinton had been in office barely a month when terrorists first tried to destroy the World Trade Center, killing six. His term saw the following attacks on American interests overseas:

The 1995 car bombing of U.S. military headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five servicemen.

The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, killing 19 Americans.

The 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224.

The 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, less than a month before the election of Mr. Clinton's successor, killing 17 American sailors.

"Then of course," Taranto writes, "came 9/11, less than eight months after Mr. Clinton left office. How can anyone, looking back in 2007, claim, `we didn't have the terror threat’ in 1992?"

"Experience," Taranto says, "is valuable only if we are able to learn from it. At the next debate, someone should ask Mrs. Clinton if she agrees with her husband that in 1992 `we didn't have the terror threat.’"

Hillary Bodes Ill For Our Country and for Civilization

"The rise and fall of nations and empires very often hinges on the decisions, or indecisions, of one person," writes Raymond Kraft. Hillary is "hostile to the use of America's force for ideological reasons, hostile to the idea of American exceptionalism, and therefore she is very likely – if not certain – to do grave and irreparable harm to the future of the United States and to the future of free societies around the world."

In addition, Kraft continues, she is "ambivalent about America's destiny to be the beacon of liberty…and ambivalent (at best) about using the combined moral, economic, political, and military forces of America to carry out that mission. Any Democrat government at this juncture in history will dissipate America's momentum in a morass of multiculturalism and moral equivalence; in approval-seeking from foreign governments that share little or nothing of America's ideals; and in moral and political timidity and myopia."

Few people can fathom what drives Hillary’s ambition – an ambition so ferocious that it compels her to speak out of both sides of her mouth, flip-flop incessantly on matters of national security, militate against our victory in Iraq, accept dirty campaign money from criminals and terrorists, and embrace leftwing, anti-American organizations while simultaneously smearing our military.

Clearly, Hillary Clinton is unfit to be President of the United States.

Joan Swirsky is a New York-based journalist and author.