Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton watch during the second presidential debate between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at Washington University in St. Louis, Sunday, Oct. 9, 2016. (Jim Bourg/Pool via AP)

Showdown: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton traded blows in the first televised presidential debate on Monday night

Hillary Clinton waves as she arrives for a meeting with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu in New York (AP)

A second batch of leaked email exchanges allegedly between Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign chair John Podesta have been seized on by both left and ring wing commentators as evidence of inconsistencies in the Democratic presidential nominee’s foreign policy stance.

The 2,000 new messages, dumped on Monday, are the second release in the last four days from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who promised the supposed 50,000 strong email haul from Mr Podesta will provide “significant” insights into the current election campaign.

In one thread of correspondence from August 2014 Ms Clinton sent an eight-point plan to Mr Podesta, at the time a counsellor to President Barack Obama, outlining a strategy on how to defeat terror group Isis which involved supporting Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq with military advisers.

The Obama administration ended up taking similar action to that described as desirable by Ms Clinton.

The exchange also appears to show the presidential candidate identified the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Qatar as “clandestine” “financial and logistic” supporters of the terrorist group, despite surface cooperation between the US and the Sunni states on combating the militants and other actions in Syria’s multi-sided civil war.

“While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [Isis] and other radical Sunni groups in the region,” Ms Clinton reportedly wrote.

“This effort will be enhanced by the stepped up commitment in the [Kurdish Regional Government]. The Qataris and Saudis will be put in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious US pressure.”

The governments of both Saudi Arabia and Qatar deny deny arming Isis, although critics point out the terror group and the states share a common enemy in President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite government. The states' respective embassies in London did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In the 2010 Wikileaks released cables signed by Hillary Clinton when she was US secretary of state that said that Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money.

"More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," Clinton wrote in the leaked 2009 memo.

"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide."

Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Read more

Read More

Analysts have speculated that the Podesta emails came from a recent leaks from the Democratic National Convention.

The Obama administration appeared to confirm this last week by commenting that the new Wikileaks releases are “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.” Ms Clinton's campaign has not yet issued a response to the second batch of emails, but slammed GOP nominee Donald Trump's office for "cheering on a release engineered by [Russian President] Vladimir Putin."

Also revealed in the emails is correspondence between Mr Podesta and the former lead singer of American rock band Blink 182 about UFOs.

Tom DeLonge emailed the senior advisor at least twice talking in cryptic terms about their shared - and well-documented - interest in the extraterrestrial.

Read more

Read More

Clinton Foundation

According to The Intercept, the Saudi regime has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, with donations coming as late as 2014, as she prepared for her presidential run.

A group called “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” co-founded “by a Saudi Prince,” gave an additional amount between $1 million and $5 million.

The Clinton Foundation says that between $1 million and $5 million was also donated by “the State of Qatar,” the United Arab Emirates, and the government of Brunei. “The State of Kuwait” has donated between $5 million and $10 million.

Independent News Service