ROME, N.Y. (AP) - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she won't make a decision about running for president until after the first of the year. During a visit to an aircraft maintenance facility at the former Griffiss Air Base, Clinton confirmed she is talking to people in New York and across the country about a possible run for president in It was the first time Clinton publicly confirmed what her aides and fellow Democrats have been saying about a possible presidential run.
"I'm talking to people who have opinions about what our country needs to do going forward and whether or not I make any decisions, I can't really confront until after the first of the year," Clinton said.
The former first lady said she had not yet decided whether to form a presidential exploratory committee, but that technical requirements of federal election law might require her to do so if she continues to consider a presidential run.
"I'm certainly interested in what happens to our country," she said when asked if she was interested in being president. "I'm looking at where our country is, where I would like to see it go, listening to people who think I might make a contribution to that."
Asked if she would make a good president, Clinton said, "obviously if I make a decision to pursue it, that would be one of the conclusions I reach."
Regarding Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, a possible rival for the Democratic nomination, Clinton said the warm reception Obama has been getting around the country, including a stop in New Hampshire on Sunday, is "terrific."
Clinton, however, wouldn't say whether she thought Obama should run for president.
"That's going to be up to everybody to make a decision," she said. Asked if Obama would make a good president, Clinton chuckled.
"We just have to take one day at a time right now," she said. "I'm just excited there's a lot of enthusiasm for Democrats around the country."
Clinton was in Rome for the announcement that the airline JetBlue will begin sending 20 percent of its planes to a maintenance facility located on the former air base.
___
NEW YORK (AP)—Israel and the world are threatened by a "possibly deranged and surely dangerous regime" in Iran, White House hopeful Sen. John McCain told a Jewish audience.
As the world's "chief state sponsor of international terrorism," Iran defines itself by its hostility to the Jewish state and its chief ally, the United States, the Arizona Republican said in a speech for a Hanukkah dinner at Yeshiva University on Sunday.
He noted that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a "myth," urged that Israel be "wiped off the map" and defied international demands and incentives to end a drive to gain nuclear weapons capability.
"It is simply tragic that millennia of proud Persian history have culminated in a government that today cannot be counted among the world's most civilized nations," McCain said.
The former Vietnam prisoner of war, who tried and failed to gain the GOP presidential nomination in 1998, is considered the probable front- runner for his party's nomination in two years.
McCain made his speech during visit to the home turf of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, potential rivals in the 2008 presidential race
Ahmadinejad has denied that Iran seeks to build weapons, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and the country will not give up its right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel. The United States and many European nations believe Iran's enrichment process is aimed at producing weapons.
McCain said Tehran's pursuit of nuclear weapons posed "an unacceptable risk" in that it would increase the threat of Iran-sponsored terrorist activities, render the nonproliferation treaty obsolete and cause non- nuclear nations such as Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to "reassess" their own nuclear potential.
Iran, McCain said, "must understand that it cannot win a showdown with the world."
___
Associated Press Writer Richard Pyle in New York contributed to this report.
