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Washington: Hillary Clinton told an exuberant crowd she wants Barack Obama to win the White House, saying that even though he dashed her presidential dream he is a better choice to lead America than Republican John McCain.
The speech on Friday was Clinton's first appearance at a rally for Obama since their ballyhooed June appearance together in Unity, New Hampshire, and follows news that former President Bill Clinton, her husband and one of Obama toughest critics during the combative Democratic primary, will speak on the third night of the party's national convention.
The developments were a further sign of a thaw in relations between Obama and the Clintons, potentially easing worries within the party that bad feelings from the gruelling primary battle might erupt at the Denver convention later this month.
"Anyone who voted for me or caucused for me has so much more in common with Senator Obama than Senator McCain," Clinton told her cheering audience in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson. "Remember who we were fighting for in my campaign."
On arriving in Hawaii, Obama drew cheers from supporters by repeating his call for an end to the war in Iraq. "We've been divided for so long. We've been arguing for so long, a lot of times about things that aren't even worth arguing about and ignoring the things that we should be doing to make the next generation have a better life," he said, walking back and forth under a blazing afternoon sun in shirtsleeves.
He noted that Hawaii has a lot of military bases with many men and women who serve.
"They deserve our honour and respect," he said. "But they also deserve a civilian leadership that understands that the most important thing we can do to make ourselves safe is to fight the right wars, to finish the job in Afghanistan and start bringing this war in Iraq to a close, start bringing our troops out and, when they come home, to treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve - no more homeless vets, no more begging for disability payments."
One stop Obama said he would make during his visit is the National Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl overlooking Honolulu. His grandfather, Stanley Dunham, a veteran, is buried there.
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