When Jimmy Carter pulled the Persian rug out from under the Shah, we wound up with the Ayatollah Khomenei and a line of spiritual/political descendants culminating in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Terence Jeffrey has now pointed out that by her highly-critical statements undermining Pervez Musharraf, Hillary Clinton could be precipitating an even worse disaster in Pakistan. The editor-in-chief of CNS News.com, NB's sister organization, has thus described Clinton as "Jimmy Carter on steroids."

At about 4:15 PM ET today, CNN aired a Wolf Blitzer interview of Clinton notable for these two statements by her.

View video here.

WOLF BLITZER: Do you trust the Pakistani government right now to conduct a full and fair investigation [of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto] so that all of us around the world will know who killed this woman, and how she was killed?

HILLARY CLINTON: I don't think the Pakistani government at this time under President Musharraf has any credibility at all. They have disbanded an independent judiciary, they have oppressed a free press. Therefore I'm calling for a full, independent, international investigation.

And a bit later.

BLITZER: Since 9-11 the United States has provided the Pakistani military with some $10 billion. Will you as a United States senator continue to vote for these billions of dollars continuing to go to the Pakistani military?

CLINTON: No. And I'm very pleased that finally congress began to put some conditions on the aid.

Jeffrey appeared about a half-hour later.

TERENCE JEFFREY: I'll say this, Wolf. I think all of a sudden Hillary Clinton has become Jimmy Carter on steroids on foreign policy. Back in the late 1970s we had an authoritarian leader in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran, who was a good ally of the United States, shared interests with the United States. He was threatened by a revolutionary Islamic movement, and Jimmy Carter all of sudden started wringing his hands and basically withdrew our support from a friend there.

I think Hillary Clinton is basically doing to Musharraf what Jimmy Carter did to the Shah, and the potential consequences are far greater, Wolf. We're talking about a regime that already has nuclear weapons, al Qaeda is already present on the ground there, they have a massive Islamist movement. If we try to meddle too much in their internal politics what we could end up with is our worst nightmare: an Islamist regime armed with a nuclear weapon that's friends with al Qaeda.

—Mark Finkelstein is a NewsBusters contributing editor and host of Right Angle. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net.