Clinton generally refuses to talk about the private advice she gave her husband. But Holbrooke this week recalled a time during the subsequent NATO bombing campaign when he and his wife were invited upstairs at the White House after a social event. He said Hillary Clinton was a big participant in an hour-long discussion about the bombing, the possible use of ground troops and other matters.
She did not take sides in the conversation, Holbrooke said, "but I have no doubt that she continued the conversation in the privacy of their relationship" and made her views clear.
China: "I've been standing up to the Chinese government over women's rights."
Clinton says her participation on the UN Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 was "one of the highlights of my own life."
There had been a huge debate over whether she should even go, with some human rights advocates expressing concern that China would use the conference as a public relations tool.
Clinton got strong reviews for threading the diplomatic needle with an impassioned speech that contained a wide-ranging denunciation of human rights abuses worldwide. She criticized China, without naming it directly, for the practice of sterilization and forced abortion and for preventing many women from attending or participating fully in the conference.
In her memoir, Clinton writes about the rousing reception her speech received at the conference and adds: "What I didn't know at the time was that my 21-minute speech would become a manifesto for women all over the world. To this day, whenever I travel overseas, women come up to me quoting words from the Beijing speech or clutching copies they want me to autograph."
Rice, the former Clinton administration official now supporting Obama, credits the first lady for delivering an important speech on women's rights, but says that that doesn't translate into presidential crisis management credentials.
Bosnia: "If the place was too small, too dangerous or too poor, send Hillary."
Clinton cites her March 1996 trip to Bosnia as an example of traveling into a war zone to promote US policy, recalling a harrowing "corkscrew" landing during which she and her daughter, Chelsea, were ordered into the armored front of the plane to protect them against possible ground fire. She jokes that one mantra around the Clinton White House, was that "if the place was too small, too dangerous or too poor, send Hillary."
Clinton brought up the trip to counter Obama's suggestion that her experiences as first lady amounted to having tea at an ambassador's house.
"I don't remember anyone offering me tea," Clinton said of the Bosnia visit.
Security was very tight on Clinton's goodwill tour to Bosnia, but officials said at the time that she took no extraordinary risks.
Rice, the Obama supporter, dismissed the trip as a "meet and greet."
She stressed that comedian Sinbad and rock singer Sheryl Crow accompanied Clinton on the flight to put on a show for the troops.
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