>SHENANDOAH, Iowa (AP) – Hillary Rodham Clinton ridiculed Democratic rival Barack Obama on Tuesday for his contention that living abroad as a child helped give him a better understanding of the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

“Voters will have to judge if living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face,” Clinton said. “I think we need a president with more experience than that, someone the rest of the world knows, looks up to and has confidence in.”

Obama’s retort: “I was wondering which world leader told her that we needed to invade Iraq.”

Clinton’s conclusion: “This campaign is getting kind of heated now. It’s getting a little more exciting and intense.”

A day earlier, touting his foreign policy credentials, Obama had said his life experience gave him a better feel for international issues than most candidates gain from official trips to other nations.

He noted his father was from Kenya and that he himself spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. “Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact I spent four years overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia,” he said Monday.

Clinton has been slapping harder at Obama on the issue of experience – on Monday she said the nation’s economy “can’t afford on-the-job training” for the next president – as surveys show them in a tight race with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for January’s leadoff caucuses in Iowa.