IT'S HARD TO KNOW WHICH PART OF THIS OPERATION IS PURER GENIUS...:

"We're going to ring China with missile defense. We're going to put more of our fleet in the area," Clinton said in a 2013 speech. "So China, come on. You either control them or we're going to have to defend against them." [...]

Clinton also privately criticized China's position on another sensitive issue, the South China Sea. China claims almost the entirety of the strategically vital waterbody has lashed out at an international tribunal's rejection of its claims in a July ruling.

By China's logic, Clinton told a different audience in 2013, the U.S. after World War II could have labeled the Pacific Ocean the "American Sea."

"My counterpart sat up very straight and goes, 'Well, you can't do that,'" she said. "And I said, 'Well, we have as much right to claim that as you do. I mean, you claim (the South China Sea) based on pottery shards from, you know, some fishing vessel that ran aground in an atoll somewhere."

In another remark revealed in the Wikileaks hack, Clinton called Xi "a more sophisticated, more effective public leader" than his predecessor, Hu Jintao. She noted Xi's plans for economic and social reforms, but blamed what she called "a resurgence of nationalism" on the Chinese government.

Tweet   @brothersjudd