Hillary Clinton insists 'Muslims have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism'

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'Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people,' Hillary Clinton said during a foreign policy speech on Thursday in New York City
Reading her speech at a brisk clip, she slowed to mock three words – 'radical Islamic terrorism' – that Republicans accuse President Obama of avoiding
Clinton said she agrees with the president's insistence that Syria's refugees should be admitted into the United States
But she parted ways with her former boss on the question of putting U.S. 'ground forces' in the Middle East – which she said will be necessary

By David Martosko, Us Political Editor For Dailymail.com

Published: 11:21 EST, 19 November 2015 | Updated: 14:25 EST, 19 November 2015

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An acid-tongued Hillary Clinton ripped into conservatives on Thursday for what she said was an 'obsession in some quarters' with the notion that the global spread of terrorism is a byproduct of the Muslim faith, denying that the two are connected in any way.

'Islam itself is not our adversary,' the former secretary of state said during a campaign speech outlining her foreign policy objectives.

'Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.'

Reading her speech at a brisk clip from a teleprompter at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, she slowed momentarily to mock three words – 'radical Islamic terrorism' – that Republicans often accuse President Barack Obama of purposefully avoiding.

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IT'S NOT THE MUSLIMS: Hillary Clinton staked her presidential campaign Thursday on the curious claim that 'radical jihadism' is not a byproduct of Islam

COIFFED AND READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP: Clinton was photographed Thursday morning leavint he hair salon at the posh Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City before appearing on ABC's 'Live! with Kelly & Michael' a few hours before her speech

Clinton instead referred repeatedly to 'radical jihadism' as a global scourge, but didn't explain how the concept of jihadism is consistent with the notion that adherents of the world's second largest religion are uninvolved.

Blaming 'radical Islamic terrorism' for vicious attacks of the sort that killed 129 people last Friday in Paris, she said, 'is not just a distraction.'

Affiliating them with a religion, Clinton insisted, 'gives these criminals, these murderers, more standing than they deserve and it actually plays into their hands by alienating partners we need by our side.'

In the end, Clinton told a small partisan audience, the Obama administration enjoyed some success by decoupling its strategy to defeat al-Qaeda from its religious underpinnings.

'Our priority should be how to fight the enemy,' she said. 'In the end it didn't matter what kind of terrorist we called [Osama] bin Laden. It mattered that we killed bin Laden.'

She also backed the president's call for an America open to Syrian refugees, saying that the United States can't 'turn our backs on those in need.'

Clinton particularly warned against 'discriminating against Muslims,' saying that 'many of these refugees are fleeing the same terrorists who threaten us.'

'It would be a cruel irony indeed if ISIS can force families from their homes and then also prevent them from ever finding new ones.'

But she appeared to part ways with her former boss, and the man who defeated her in the 2008 Democratic primary race, on the question of how best to confront the ISIS terror army.

'We should be honest about the fact that, to be successful, air strikes will have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS,' she said, while wrapping that departure in cautionary language.

PUSHBACKl The chairman of the Republican Party fired a roadsied at Hillary, calling her 'the architect of the failed Obama foreign policy that has presided over a steep increase in radical Islamic terrorism'

French security move people in the area of Rue Bichat in the French capital Paris following a string of attacks on November 13

'Like President Obama, I do not believe that we should again have 100,000 American troops in combat in the Middle East,' she said, declaring that a massive troop surge is 'just not the smart move to make here.'

An 'immediate intelligence surge,' however, meets with Clinton's approval.

She said the U.S. needs to counteract 'a shortage of good intelligence about ISIS and its operations' in the war-torn Middle East that has made it difficult to wage war on ISIS.

Clinton called on the next U.S. president to recruit more 'Arabic speakers with deep expertise in the Middle East' to sift through raw intelligence.

'Our goal should be to achieve the kind of penetration we accomplished with al Qaeda in the past,' she said. 'This would help us identify and eliminate ISIS’s command and control and its economic lifelines.'

The Republican National Committee's chairman, Reince Priebus, laid into the Democratic Party's presidential front-runner after her speech.

'Hillary Clinton is the architect of the failed Obama foreign policy that has presided over a steep increase in radical Islamic terrorism and the rise of ISIS,' Priebus said.

'Rather than putting forward a new plan to defeat ISIS, Hillary Clinton offered soaring platitudes and largely doubled down on the existing Obama strategy.'

'Across the world, the Obama-Clinton foreign policy lies in tatters. From the failed reset with Russia, to the weak nuclear deal with Iran, to her State Department’s refusal to add Boko Haram to its list of terror organizations, Hillary Clinton has demonstrated she is the wrong person to take on and defeat the growing threats facing the United States.'

THE 2016 FIELD: WHO'S IN, WHO'S QUIT AND WHO'S STILL THINKING IT OVER

A whopping 17 people from America's two major political parties are candidates in the 2016 presidential election.

The field includes two women, an African-American and two Latinos. All but one in that group – Hillary Clinton – are Republicans.

At 14 candidates, the GOP field is without two early dropouts but still deeper than ever after one current and one former governor bowed out.

A much smaller group of three Democrats includes a former secretary of state, a former governor and a current senator.

DEMOCRATS IN THE RACE

Hillary Clinton Former sec. of state

Age on Election Day: 69

Religion: United Methodist

Base: Liberals

Résumé:Former secretary of state. Former U.S. senator from New York. Former U.S. first lady. Former Arkansas first lady. Former law school faculty, University of Arkansas Fayetteville.

Education: B.A. Wellesley College. J.D. Yale Law School.

Family: Married to Bill Clinton (1975), the 42nd President of the United States. Their daughter Chelsea is married to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, whose mother was a 1990s one-term Pennsylvania congresswoman.

Claim to fame: Clinton was the first US first lady with a postgraduate degree and presaged Obamacare with a failed attempt at health care reform in the 1990s.

Achilles heel: A long series of financial and ethical scandals has dogged Clinton, including recent allegations that her husband and their family foundation benefited financially from decisions she made as secretary of state. Her performance surrounding the 2012 terror attack on a State Department facility in Benghazi, Libya, has been catnip for conservative Republicans. And her presidential campaign has been marked by an unwillingness to engage journalists, instead meeting with hand-picked groups of voters.

Bernie Sanders* Vermont senator

Age on Election Day: 75

Religion: Jewish

Base: Far-left progressives

Résumé:U.S. senator. Former U.S. congressman. Former mayor of Burlington, VT.

Education: B.A. University of Chicago.

Family: Married to Jane O’Meara Sanders (1988), a former president of Burlington College. He has one child from a previous relationship and is stepfather to three from Mrs. Sanders' previous marriage. His brother Larry is a Green Party politician in the UK and formerly served on the Oxfordshire County Council.

Claim to fame: Sanders is an unusually blunt, and unapologetic pol, happily promoting progressivism without hedging. He is also the longest-serving 'independent' member of Congress – neither Democrat nor Republican.

Achilles heel: Sanders describes himself as a 'democratic socialist.' At a time of huge GOP electoral gains, his far-left ideas don't poll well. He favors open borders, single-payer universal health insurance, and greater government control over media ownership.

* Sanders is running as a Democrat but has no party affiliation in the Senate.

Martin O'Malley Former Maryland governor

Age on Election Day: 53

Religion: Catholic

Base: Centrists

Résumé:Former Maryland governor. Former city councilor and mayor of Baltimore, MD. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Education: B.A. Catholic University of America. J.D. University of Maryland.

Family: Married to Katie Curran (1990) and they have four children. Curran is a district court judge in Baltimore. Her father is Maryland's attorney general. O'Malley's mother is a receptionists in the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

Claim to fame: O'Malley pushed for laws in Maryland legalizing same-sex marriage and giving illegal immigrants the right to pay reduced tuition rates at public universities. But he's best known for playing guitar and sung in a celtic band cammed 'O’Malley’s March.'

Achilles heel: O’Malley may struggle in the Democratic primary since he endorsed Hillary Clinton eight years ago. If he prevails, he will have to run far enough to her left to be an easy target for the GOP. He showed political weakness when his hand-picked successor lost the 2014 governor's race to a Republican. But most troubling is his link with Baltimore, whose 2016 race riots have made it a nuclear subject for politicians of all stripes.

DEMOCRATIC DROPOUTS

Jim Webb, former Virginia senator

(withdrew Oct. 20, 2015)

Lincoln Chafee, former Rhode Island governor

(withdrew Oct. 23, 2015)