I've been relatively silent, for the most part, when it comes to the U.S. presidential election. None of the three remaining candidates excite me all that much, and the statements each of them has made on foreign policy issues make me rather nervous – some of McCain's more belligerent comments are downright scary.

There have been some real whoppers when it comes to China policy of course. No surprise, I suppose, since half of the politicians in D.C. bash China on a regular basis. On the campaign trail, pandering to folks in areas that have been hit by losses of manufacturing jobs means saying misleading and inaccurate things about trade policy and China.

McCain was actually the only candidate who even tried to be honest about trade and jobs – during the run up to the Michigan primary – and he lost that contest, at least in part, because of that honesty. Many of his recent statements on other issues suggest that this straight talk on trade was just an aberration anyway and that he will no doubt stick with traditional pandering from now on.

I bring all this up because Clinton has gone one step further, this time in Indiana. In a region that has suffered from manufacturing job losses, she threw out this red meat over the weekend:

"We are so dependent upon decisions made in other countries' capitals," Clinton said, singling out China's potential power over U.S. foreign policy decisions because of its financial leverage.

Clinton cited a discussion she had with a retired general who raised a "nightmare scenario" in which China threatened Taiwan and the U.S. president wanted to send ships toward the island to ward off Beijing.

"He said, 'You know, suppose the Chinese decide that they're going to go after Taiwan the way we see them, you know, with Tibet,'" Clinton said, describing the general's remarks and referring to the recent unrest in Tibet.

"'We start to move the fleet, and the Chinese say, 'Fine. You do that, we will dump your dollars. We will flood the market. We will not buy any more of your debt.'"

Apparently her speech was primarily focused on China, which has been the whipping boy of choice throughout her Indiana campaign stops. Nice.

That quote from one of her speeches does shed some light on her thinking, though, and before I jump to conclusions, I should probably consider the possibility that she is misinformed as opposed to simply pandering. After all, apparently she is getting advice on international monetary policy from a retired general. Unless Paul Krugman used to be in the army, I'm not sure that a retired general is such a great source of economics advice.

Would China actually dump dollars, and significantly reduce the value of its foreign exchange reserves in the process, during a military incident? Anything is possible, but this one is highly unlikely. China maintains a realist foreign policy, and drastically reducing the value of its reserves is certainly not in its best interests.

But this is almost beside the point. Setting up this whole Taiwan doomsday scenario is irresponsible and reminds me of the ridiculous "What If" hypotheticals bandied about by U.S. officials looking for reasons why torture should be legal.

Remember? "What if there was a scary Arab guy with a beard who had hidden a suitcase nuke at the Superbowl and refused to tell us where it was and there was only 24 hours before the game? Wouldn't you sanction torture in that case?"

Hypotheticals suck, unless they are on law school exams, in which case they are evil. The only exception would be if I'm the one writing the exam.

Let's not overlook Clinton's timely comparison between Tibet and Taiwan. That must have been dreamed up by some speechwriter at 3:00am who was hopped up on Ritalin and watching a rerun of Red Dawn. I'm sure that this was quite valuable and relevant information for those nice working-class folks in Indiana. I suppose the Clinton campaign was just trying to educate them about world affairs, huh? I mean, she wouldn't deliberately try to demonize one of America's largest trading partners, would she?

OK, back to being relatively silent on the campaign again.