Hillary Clinton performed well, and again cited her long experience fighting for union causes. Perhaps most notable was when she spelled out America’s long-term interests in Iraq:

“I have for some time said we may still have remaining vital national security interests that are important to America. We cannot have al-Qaeda have a staging ground in Iraq. We have common cause with Iraqis themselves in places like the al-Anbar province. But that doesn’t take a lot of American forces. We have to see how the Kurds are being treated. They have behaved very well in all of this, and have been building their society in northern Iraq.” (I cannot guarantee that these are exact quotes, but this is the gist) “We need to pay attention to Iranian influence, which I think will primarily take diplomacy and getting the rest of the region together on this. We’ll have an embassy, and we will need to protect it. If the Iraqi government gets its act together, we may have continuing training mission. But no permanent bases, no permanent occupation.”

Later she added, “Iraqis have to decide for themselves whether they want to keep killing each other.” (I’ll bet that sentiment is shared by quite a few Republicans as well.)

When asked about Joe Lieberman’s comments about being prepared to strike camps in Iran that are training insurgents who are attacking U.S. troops, Hillary said, “we do have to defend our troops… There is considerable evidence that weaponry and fighters crossing the border, not just from Iran but from Syria and other countries as well. We have to try to choke off weapons coming in and the fighters from crossing over. But for now with Iran and Syria, we have to focus on extensive outreach and diplomacy. I am pleased President Bush and Secretary Rice have moved in this direction recently. My focus on the inside would be military, and on the outside diplomatically.”

Host Chris Matthews asked Hillary what she thought of a pardon of Lewis Libby. She chuckled and dodged, “I think there would be enough being said without me adding to it.”

When Matthews pressed, the audience booed and jeered. He recoiled a bit. “You wanna fight?” Hillary suggested the crowd wanted “a question that really affects the people here, not an inside Washington one.” Later on, he tussled with the crowd, “Can I ask a question of my own? One question? One friggin’ question?!?”

During her closing, Hillary joked, “I want to thank you for something I thought I would never see, and that is Chris Matthews speechless.”