I missed this two months ago, but it's worth repeating even if some of you previously came across it. At a time when the US intelligence sources did not believe Iran had an active nuclear weapons program in place, and when President Obama preferred diplomacy with Iran, diplomacy which ultimately produced a nuclear deal that prevents Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, Hillary Clinton preferred the violent overthrow of the the Assad regime in Syria as the best way to protect Israel's monopoly on nukes in the Middle East.

What proof so I have for such an astonishing claim? An email from then Secretary Clinton sent on December 31, 2012, in which she openly advocated for just such a policy. We know of this email thanks to Wikileaks. Here's a screenshot of the email in question:

To whom the email was sent is not known, but its message could not be more stark as to then Secretary Clinton's view that military force was the only viable option to restrain Iran in the Middle East, specifically military force applied against Syria to force Bashar Assad, an ally of Iran, from power. Here's the full text of that email, which reveals Clinton's view that diplomacy with Iran was the worst possible option, as well as her crystal clear recommendation to employ military force to start an illegal war under international law against Syria. I've highlighted the most relevant portions in bold:

The best way to help Israel deal with Iran's growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.

Negotiations to limit Iran's nuclear program will not solve Israel's security dilemma. Nor will they stop Iran from improving the crucial part of any nuclear weapons program — the capability to enrich uranium. At best, the talks between the world's major powers and Iran that began in Istanbul this April and will continue in Baghdad in May will enable Israel to postpone by a few months a decision whether to launch an attack on Iran that could provoke a major Mideast war. Iran's nuclear program and Syria's civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. For Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked Iranian nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. What Israeli military leaders really worry about -- but cannot talk about -- is losing their nuclear monopoly. An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today. If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself. Back to Syria. It is the strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel's security — not through a direct attack, which in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel has never occurred, but through its proxies in Lebanon, like Hezbollah, that are sustained, armed and trained by Iran via Syria. The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel's leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests. Speaking on CNN's Amanpour show last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak argued that "the toppling down of Assad will be a major blow to the radical axis, major blow to Iran.... It's the only kind of outpost of the Iranian influence in the Arab world...and it will weaken dramatically both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza." Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel's security, it would also ease Israel's understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted. Right now, it is the combination of Iran's strategic alliance with Syria and the steady progress in Iran's nuclear enrichment program that has led Israeli leaders to contemplate a surprise attack — if necessary over the objections of Washington. With Assad gone, and Iran no longer able to threaten Israel through its, proxies, it is possible that the United States and Israel can agree on red lines for when Iran's program has crossed an unacceptable threshold. In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria.

The rebellion in Syria has now lasted more than a year. The opposition is not going away, nor is the regime going to accept a diplomatic solution from the outside. With his life and his family at risk, only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's mind.

Her judgment was wrong on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin. As we now know, US support of Saudi Arabian backed rebels, through funding and arms, helped lead to the creation of ISIS. This policy led to a war that has dragged in parties as diverse as Turkey, the Kurds, Russia, Iraq, Iran, our Gulf allies and too many radical terrorist organizations to count. The massive humanitarian crisis that this conflict engendered led to the refugee crisis in Europe and terrorist attacks in France and Belgium. Hillary Clinton's belief that taking out Assad regime by force would prevent a wider war in the Middle East was dead wrong -m in fact, it created the very war that she claimed regime change in Syria would prevent. What's also deeply disturbing is her continued insistence that war with Iran, with Israel as our partner, was very much a possibility in her mind at this late date, despite all the warnings from military experts that such a war would have enormous and unforeseen consequences for the region and our national security, including assessments by Israeli intelligence analysts.

And her persistent acceptance that Iran was operating a fully functional program to obtain a nuclear weapon capability was simply delusional on her part, as our own Intelligence agencies at the time were telling the Obama administration, intelligence to which one must assume the Secretary of State had been made privy. From James Risen's report in The New York Times, "U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb," dated February 24, 2012:

Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.

In Senate testimony on Jan. 31, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, stated explicitly that American officials believe that Iran is preserving its options for a nuclear weapon, but said there was no evidence that it had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view at the same hearing. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements in recent television appearances.

When you have the Director of National Intelligence, David Petraeus, former US military commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all stating for the record that Iran had shown no intention to proceed to develop nuclear weapons, its simply astounding to me that Hillary Clinton determined, based on nothing more than her own judgment, apparently, that the consensus opinion of all sixteen of the federal government's intelligence agencies was wrong and she was right. Even more ludicrous, is her, to me, non-reality based faith that military intervention to overthrow the Assad government in Syria would lead to a more stable Middle East. Obviously, the conflict there has only gotten worse since we became actively involved, and by worse I mean the wholesale slaughter of nearly a half million non-combatants and the displacement, as refugees, of millions of Syrian civilians.

Thank god she left office when she did, so John Kerry could revive the diplomatic talks that eventually led to a successful agreement with Iran to dismantle their nuclear program. However, the thought of Clinton as our nation's potential Commander in Chief of our military, in light of these revelations regarding her neoconservative views while she was Obama's Secretary of State, should frighten any reasonable person. I do not see, based on her record that Hilary Clinton would have much interest in non-intervention in other sovereign states, preventing unnecessary military conflicts involving the US, or risking the lives our men and women in uniform only when an imminent danger to our country exists that would justify sending them off to war.