First Lady and she's odds on favourite to be the next and first female President of

the United States of America.

Her new memoir Hard Choices gives us a tantalising insight into her four years as America's premier

diplomat but Guardian readers, viewers and contributors just wanted to know more.

So Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for answering some of our questions.

Thank you so much for having me Phoebe.

OK, first up is a question from comedian Sarah Silverman.

OK.

I heard that when Bill was President you... you guys went on a trip to your home town

and you stopped at a gas station and the gas station attendant was a guy that you once

dated and as you drove away Bill was like: "I wonder what your life would have been like

if you stayed with him," and you were like: "Oh, he'd be President." So tell me that's

a true story.

Ha ha ha ha....

Oh, I hate to disappoint Sarah, who's very funny, but it's not a true story.

Oh no!

But it's a great story and it's one that I've heard before in different settings, so I want

to urge all the viewers to use it because it actually applies in a lot of different

situations.

OK, well sorry Sarah, but she's got a second question for you.

What's your plan when you are President with this women's rights stuff? What men would

ever put up with making laws about what they can and can't do with their bodies?

OK, so just to explain to those of us who may not be following this issue as carefully,

last week the US Supreme Court ruled that some companies can use their religious beliefs

as an exemption from paying for contraception for their employees as is mandated under the

affordable healthcare act. This follows a raft of quite radical personhood Bills that

would seek to criminalise abortion and some forms of contraception. Now, Secretary Clinton,

you've been campaigning for women's rights for more than 20 years, what do you plan to

do about these threats, this roll back on the right of American women to choose?

Well, I think it's outrageous and the Supreme Court decision was so deeply disturbing because

it was the first time that any decision was made which said, basically, that an employer's

religious beliefs could affect the health care available to women who were in the employment

of that employer. Absolutely a terrible decision that has so many implications even beyond

the core issues of women's rights. So we're going to have to keep our fight up, which

is what we've had to do for so many years in the United States. I'm pro-Choice because

I think that's the best position. If someone chooses to have an abortion or chooses not

to have an abortion, that is such a highly personal decision that that woman should make

based on her own faith beliefs, her own personal situation, her own medical condition. The

fight is not over in the United States and we're going to have to keep standing up for

women's rights and particularly reproductive health rights.

Next we have a question from Conservative MP Rory Stewart.

In many areas of the world it seems the lack of a strong government and legal system is

creating areas where terrorists are thriving. We've struggled for more than a decade to

deal with that threat, do you have a new theory on how we can address that threat?

Well, first I want to thank Rory Stewart for his excellent works in both Afghanistan and

Iraq, a lot of people paid a great deal of attention to what he had to write. I think

he's hit on the most difficult issue we face because the United States, the UK, Europe,

other countries cannot impose democracy, we have certainly learnt that lesson. But where

we have to do a better job is conveying the values that should be the birth-right of every

human being. These are universal values of freedom and opportunity, of equality, and

democracy is the best way to deliver on those values. So we have to stand up for people

who are exercising their human rights. There are other ways of doing it besides military

action. Sometimes military action is necessary but not always. We could do more to help support

political parties that are truly democratic. We could do more to help support institutions

like labour unions and others that play key roles in democracies and we could do more

to get information into societies about how they can help organise themselves. So i think

we've learned a lot of hard lessons the last 10-12 years that we need to be applying, going

forward.

OK, but when you came to the State Department, you came committed to aggressively going after

al Qaeda, now, in Iraq we have ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot declaring a caliphate. Specifically

about Iraq, what would you do there?

Well, I think it's important to note that we did degrade al Qaeda, core al Qaeda, in

Afghanistan and Pakistan and I said from the very beginning that the philosophy, the ideology

underlying the Islamist extremism is one that was going to find fertile ground in other

places. So, in Iraq specifically, much of the problem is because the Sunni Iraqis have

made common cause with the extremists named ISIS because they were not included in the

government of Nouri al-Maliki in the way they should have been. Maliki really moved far

from what he had told us and others, including Iraqis, he would do as Prime Minister. And

he, in fact, purged the government, he purged the military forces, so a lot of the Sunnis

are saying: "Well, we're going to combine with ISIS to try to put pressure on Maliki

and then we'll take care of ISIS. The problem with that idea is that the last time they

tried to do that, the United States military helped them to do that because they didn't

have the resources to be able to take on al Qaeda in Iraq. We joined together, we got

rid of al Qaeda in Iraq. Now the government in Iraq and the military in Iraq needs to

integrate the Sunnis to take on this threat from ISIS.

And how would you help that? What would you do?

Well, we are helping. We, you know, President Obama has sent several hundred technical advisers

and surveillance experts, we're providing intelligence, we are working with the people

that we have worked with before to try to help them, frankly, organise better to be

able to take on this threat. But it is, at bottom, it is an Iraqi problem. They had a

very reasonable chance to build a unified Iraq, they wouldn't pass laws to give the

Kurds the autonomy they deserved and they wouldn't pass laws that would guarantee revenues

from oil and they made a lot of other decisions that were not in the best interests of a unified

Iraq. So yes, you have to work on the immediate threat and try to do everything we can to

stop that, but you also have to work on the political problems that are underlying the

extent of the threat.

And yet these are extremists who pose a threat to the rest of the world as well. I mean,

two years ago we discovered that the British government was offered a proposal to train

100,000 moderate Syrian rebels and the British government turned this down. This was very

similar to a plan that you proposed to President Obama, which was also turned down.

Right.

Were you aware of this proposal to the British government and was it a catastrophic mistake

and a missed opportunity not to go with it?

Well, I'm not aware of the specifics about any proposal to the British government but,

like our government I knew there was a debate because I was advocating for trying to vet

and train and arm Syrian moderates because, remember, this dispute with Assad rose out

of the very legitimate concerns that Syrians themselves had. Unfortunately, in the debate,

you couldn't say conclusively like: "If you do this, we'll get that result." But, I thought

it was a good bet. Now, what we see is our government and others beginning to train moderates

to try to stem the tide of the extremism, because it's not just ISIS, it's a whole range

of these al Qaeda wannabe offshoots that we have to worry about.

OK, great, thank you. We have our next question from Owen Jones, who is a Guardian columnist.

You're a loving parent. What would you say to the loving parents of up to 202 children

who have been killed by drones in Pakistan in a programme which you escalated as Secretary

of State?

Well, I would argue with the premise because clearly the efforts that were made by the

United States in cooperation with our allies in Afghanistan, and certainly the Afghan government,

to prevent the threat that was in Pakistan from crossing the border, killing Afghans,

killing Americans, Brits and others, was aimed at targets that had been identified and were

considered to be threats. The numbers about potential civilian casualties I take with

a somewhat big grain of salt because there have been other studies, which have proven

there not to have been the number of civilian casualties, but also in comparison to what,

you know, the Pakistani armed services was always saying: "Well, let us bomb these places."

That would have been far more devastating in terms of casualties. But, of course, anyone

who is an innocent bystander, especially a child, who's caught up in any operation against

terrorists, that is a cause of great concern and it's a cause of real disappointment and

regret on our part. But I would hasten to add that the Pakistanis themselves are the

primary victims of Islamist terrorism. More that 30,000 people, civilian and military

alike, have been blown up in markets and mosques and airports and so many other places. And

so, these extremist elements are a very real threat to the stability and lives of Pakistanis

and their government to people across the border in Afghanistan and, of course, to Americans

and others, who are trying to help end that kind of terrorism.

So, when you took the job of Secretary of State, despite some misgivings initially,

you thought that it was absolutely necessary to restore America's standing, it's reputation

in the world, which had been damaged under the Bush administration and yet, according

to Pew research figures, actually during your period, your tenure as Secretary of State,

some of the approval ratings in countries that were focuses of foreign policy, such

as: Pakistan, Egypt, China, even the UK, approval ratings for the US actually fell. How is it

that you can justify the argument that it's America that needs to go in and solve the

world's problems when, in fact, US exceptionalism gets so many people's backcs up.

Well, this is an inherent contradiction because, of course, when America acts in furtherance

of our values, our interests and our security, there's not going to be universal popularity

and when we don't act, that is not going to be universally popular. So it's a constant

balancing. What do we do? How far do we go? Now, clearly President Obama totally rejected

the Bush unilateralism: invading Iraq, imposing a different system on the Iraqis. In Afghanistan

there was universal support in our country for going after al Qaeda and the Taleban who

were taking care of them inside Afghanistan because of the attack on 9-11. So, it's not

a popularity contest but it is an effort to restore our leadership in a way that gets

problems solved and eventually is understood by people. So, in the countries that you mentioned,

our approval ratings in Pakistan have always been low, our approval ratings in Egypt have

always been low and part of that is a very active disinformation campaign. Like, if you

look at Pakistan, for example, the United States gives more humanitarian aid, development

assistance than every other country put together but there are very serious objections to American

involvement because we also work with India and we consider India a very strong partner

of ours. We also push the Pakistani government to go after al Qaeda. I said, famously: "Somebody

in this government knows where al Qaeda is!" And it turns out he was right there in a military

town in Pakistan. So, yeah, we, we stand up for our values but we also seek common ground

and it's going to be a constant balancing act and I think, certainly the Obama administration

has been much better received than the prior administration.

OK, great, thank you. Next up there's a question from our editor, Alan Rusbridger.

The new head of the NSA has said that the sky didn't fall in as a result of the Snowden

allegations. Do you think, in the end, it was a healthy thing to have this discussion

and do you think that Edward Snowden ought to be able to return to the US with some kind

of public interest defence so that he can defend his actions but the administration

can take a view over his behaviour?

Well, I would say, first of all, that Edward Snowden broke our laws and that can not be

ignored or brushed aside. Secondly, I believe that if his primary concern was stirring a

debate in our country over the tension between privacy and security, there are other ways

of doing it, instead of stealing an enormous amount of information that had nothing to

do with the US or American citizens. I would say thirdly that there are many people in

our history who have raised serious questions about government behaviour. They've done it

either with or without whistleblower protection and they have stood and faced whatever the

reaction was to make their case in public. Mr Snowden took all this material, he fled

to Hong Kong, he spent time with the Russians in their consulate, then he went to Moscow

seeking the protection of Vladimir Putin, which is the height of ironies given the surveillance

state that Russia is. If he wishes to return home, knowing that he would be held accountable

but also be able to present a defence, that is his decision to make. But, I know that

our intelligence forces are doing what they can to understand exactly what was taken and

the debate about how to better balance security and liberty was already going on before he

fled. The President had already given a speech, members of the Senate were already talking

about it, so I don't give him credit for the debate. I think he may have raised the visibility

of the debate but the debate had already begun.

Sure, but if he does return to the United States. If he "mans up" as John Kerry has

asked him to do, he'll be charged under the Espionage Act and he doesn't have recourse