Hillary Clinton took no quarter Tuesday in responding to a reported claim by Barack Obama that he has more foreign policy experience than either Clinton or Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain.

According to the Huffington Post blog, Obama was addressing a crowd of fundraisers in San Francisco on Sunday when he began talking about his choice for vice president, and said he would choose someone who adds to his expertise.

“I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more commander in chief-like. Ironically, this is an area — foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain,” Obama reportedly said.

Clinton, speaking with FOX News Tuesday morning, said she was baffled by the claim.

“I’m somewhat shocked by that since I don’t see any evidence of it,” Clinton said, chuckling. “This is, you know, kind of hard to square with his failure ever to have a single policy hearing on the only responsibility he was given, chairing the European and NATO subcommittee on the Foreign Relations Committee.

“And as he admitted in the last debate, he was too busy running for president to pay attention to what we needed to do to improve our chances in Afghanistan and get NATO more involved. So, you know, I, I ,I don’t, I don’t know, I’m speechless. I mean, you know, making an assertion like that belies the facts and the record.”

Obama is scheduled on Tuesday to chair the subcommittee’s hearing on the nomination of Kurt Volker to be the permanent U.S. representative to NATO. All three presidential candidates are in town for Senate hearings with Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker, the top U.S. military and diplomatic leaders in Iraq.

According to the report, in his remarks Obama again mentioned his childhood years in Indonesia and family in Kenya, and blasted Clinton’s claim of visiting more than 80 countries.

“When Senator Clinton brags ‘I’ve met leaders from 80 countries,’ I know what those trips are like. I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There’s a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then you go.

Clinton on Tuesday scoffed at the notion that Obama is more in touch with other countries than her.

“He’s apparently talking about his own experience, which is quite limited,” Clinton said. “You know, for 15 years I’ve been spending a lot of time in other countries,” she said, naming China, Ireland and Kosovo among the places she’s traveled to “where the conversation and discussions were substantive and lengthy.”

“So I’m not quite sure exactly where Senator Obama has been. So far as I know, he’s maybe taken two trips. But that’s fine, I mean, he can say whatever he wishes about his own experience and we’ll leave it up to voters to determine who really is ready to be commander in chief and who is ready to restore America’s standing and moral authority in the world,” Clinton said.

Click here to read the Huffington Post story.

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