Reply #75: Hillary Clinton is the most pro-Israel anti-Iran candidate.

[Apollo11]

One of the most senior people in Hillary Clinton's campaign is Mark Penn, who is also worldwide CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. He is often described as Clinton's "chief strategist". In her autobiography Living History, Hillary describes Penn as "brilliant".

Here is what we know about Mark Penn, from The Washington Post, April 30, 2007:

Penn has deep roots in the national security wing of the Democratic Party, along with other centrist Democrats -- some of them Jewish and pro-Israel, like Penn -- who saw the merits of invading Iraq before the war began.

"Penn has always believed that strength is critical for running the country, and that people want to have a president who's going to be willing to defend the country -- that's the number one criteria," said Al From, the chief executive of the Democratic Leadership Council, who considers Penn a friend.

Penn gained his foreign policy expertise working on numerous campaigns overseas, especially in Israel. In 1981, he and business partner Doug Schoen helped reelect Menachem Begin, one of the most right-wing prime ministers in the country's history, and emerged with a new outlook on the Middle East. "We got a chance to experience firsthand the perils and possibilities that the state of Israel presents," Schoen said in an interview.

In a pivotal moment, the pollsters watched as Begin launched airstrikes against a developing Iraqi nuclear facility, Osirak, in the middle of the campaign. "In the end, bombing the Osirak reactor became a metaphor for the type of man that Begin was and the steps he was willing to take to safeguard Israel's security," Schoen wrote in his autobiography, "The Power of the Vote."

Ever since, Penn has been a prominent advocate of conveying strength in foreign policy. As recently as the 2004 presidential contest, Penn argued that Democrats would lose if they failed to close the "security gap." His client list includes prominent backers of the Iraq war, particularly Lieberman, whose presidential campaign Penn helped run in 2004, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose campaign he advised when Blair won a historic third term in 2005.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901661.html?hpid=topnews

See also wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Penn