Clinton and Trump spar over US foreign policy at forum

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump outlined sharply different visions of U.S. national security policy in a television forum Wednesday evening, with Trump calling for a broad American pullback from the Middle East and Clinton defending her more interventionist views.

But in back-to-back appearances in an NBC News special, both candidates struggled to put to rest the most urgent questions dogging their campaigns.

Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, parried a series of questions regarding her use of a private email server as secretary of state, saying again that she had erred in doing so but insisting that she had not been careless with classified information.

And Trump, pressed to defend his inconsistent policy views and lack of conventional training for the presidency, was repeatedly evasive.

He insisted that he had a plan to defeat the Islamic State but vowed to keep it secret, and repeated his false claim that he had opposed the war in Iraq from the start. (Trump made supportive comments about the invasion of Iraq both before it and immediately afterward.)

Trump also reiterated his praise for Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, and argued that there was no evidence Russia had a hand in hacking the Democratic National Committee.

"If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him," Trump, the Republican nominee, said of Putin.

Trump also did not back away from his past suggestion that sexual assault in the military was inevitable after women joined the armed forces.

[Fact-checking Clinton and Trump in NBC's 'Commander in Chief Forum']

At times, Trump offered views in apparent conflict with one another, even within the space of a single answer. In one instance, he said the United States should pull back thoroughly from Iraq, and then said troops should be left behind in "various sections where they have the oil," to secure U.S. energy interests.

Clinton offered a clearer set of foreign policy views, including some that have been controversial. She defended the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran and expressed confidence that it would work. Clinton stood by her past support for U.S. military intervention in Libya, arguing that a less assertive policy would have risked a disaster like the one currently unfolding in Syria.

"We did not lose a single American in that action, and I think taking that action was the right decision," Clinton said.

The "Commander in Chief Forum" on Wednesday night, at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York, with the two candidates fielding questions from Matt Lauer and from military veterans, came at a critical moment. Both Clinton and Trump are gearing up to deliver their closing arguments in the presidential race.

Their back-to-back appearances — in which a coin toss determined that Clinton would take questions first — were seen as a trial run for the first presidential debate on Sept. 26.

Clinton, who has returned to the campaign trail with force this week after a quiet August, has long emphasized her national security credentials and her preparedness for the role of commander-in-chief. The two candidates have widely divergent messages on national security, and polls show that voters tend to trust her over Trump to make decisions about matters of military and foreign policy.

She pressed that advantage during a campaign stop in Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday, saying Trump was "temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified" for the presidency. Aiming to undercut his message on terrorism, Clinton accused Trump of lacking any plan to combat the Islamic State. She also mocked his meeting last week with President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, after which Trump and the Mexican leader offered conflicting accounts of their conversation about Trump's proposal for a border wall.

In the NBC forum, Clinton argued that "rock steadiness" was required of the commander-in-chief, suggesting Trump did not possess that quality.

[Analysis: Matt Lauer, as moderator, presses Clinton but surrenders to Trump]

Trump is making a late bid to allay voters' doubts about his readiness to lead the armed forces. His campaign unveiled endorsements from 88 retired military leaders this week, and Trump has campaigned several times with Michael Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who is one of his close advisers.

And in Philadelphia on Wednesday, hours before the forum, Trump delivered a speech on national security featuring pointed criticism of Clinton. He rebuked her as "trigger-happy" because she has supported toppling a series of dictators abroad.

"Hillary Clinton's legacy in Iraq, Libya, Syria, has produced only turmoil and suffering and death," he said.

Trump vowed to undo military spending cuts enacted by Congress. He has offered conflicting views on United States foreign policy in the past, expressing both support for and opposition to the war in Iraq, and suggesting both that the United States should steer clear of involvement in Syria and that it may be necessary to deploy American ground troops there.

Despite such inconsistencies, Trump now appears determined to stake out a squarely anti-interventionist position in his contest with Clinton. In the Wednesday speech he named a string of conflicts that he described as having painful unintended consequences for the United States.

And in the NBC forum Wednesday night, Trump promised that he would represent a stark break with a foreign policy he called "the dumbest" he had ever seen.

Still, Trump's past pronouncements on national security have the potential to impede his efforts at recovering his footing in the race. He has struggled to win over prominent national security leaders even within his own party, and key members of former President George W. Bush's administration have declined to endorse Trump's candidacy.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting Clinton, is running a television commercial that shows Trump speaking in heated language about war and nuclear weapons, along with scenes of war and atomic weapons exploding.

The ad calls Trump "dangerous" and "unfit to be president."