Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State the U.S. Specifically, she said "we cannot permit northern Mali to become a safe haven." The next day, January 24, Clinton introduced John Kerry before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as hearings were held on his nomination to succeed her. She called him "the right choice to carry forward the Obama Administration's foreign policy", and called out his testimony before the same committee in 1971 in opposition to the Vietnam War as "speaking hard truths about a war that had gone badly off track." At both public appearances, as well as at the second inauguration of Barack Obama, Clinton wore
Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State accordingly. At a meeting in Tunis of the consequent Friends of Syria Group, Clinton again criticized the actions of Russia and China as "distressing" and "despicable", and predicted that the Assad regime would meet its end via a military coup. Later, during the summer of 2012, she repeated her criticism of those two countries. At that time, Clinton developed a plan with CIA Director David H. Petraeus to send arms to, and perform training of, vetted groups of Syrian rebels, using the assistance of a neighboring state. The plan also had the support of Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and