I am sure that the internet will be full of talk about the Clinton interview(transcript)...I'm sure of it mostly because it already is...I'm no dummy :O)
You can visit Michelle Malkin, or visit Ace of Spades--they are reportedly "fact checking" (insert eye roll here because what they are actually doing is being snarky and pissy and passing conservative talking points off as actual thought)
I have no doubt that you will find hundreds of sites beating their chests and attempting to ridicule Bill Clinton--which is fine, since that is their MO. Funny, that the conservatives are still running against Bill Clinton...
All of that is fine...or would be if it weren't for...
The War on Terror--or if you prefer, the War on Islamic Extremism--truly began at the Munich Olympics. It grew from there to what it is today. My math skills aren't good but I'm counting 12 years of Democratic Presidents to 22 years of Republican presidents...
Two offensive intelligence operations under Clinton--how many under Reagan? how many under Bush 1? anyone know?
And while we are slamming Clinton for pulling out of Somalia, let us not forget the Republican God, Ronald Reagan, who brought the Marines home without retaliation...same thing, except there was a bigger death toll under Reagan...
Anyone want to argue that "the entire military was against sending special forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter and no one thought we could do it otherwise"...because i can submit a reading list a mile long that confirms this...
Everyone dropped the ball as far as this is concerned but the Republicans have had more years at it and while we revisit the Clinton years 15 separate intelligence agencies agree that our presence in Iraq is making the War on Terror worse...
This is my favorite quote:
"But "a really big hole" in the U.S. strategy, a second counterterrorism official said, "is that we focus on the terrorists and very little on how they are created. If you looked at all the resources of the U.S. government, we spent 85, 90 percent on current terrorists, not on how people are radicalized."
We can turn the War on Terror into a Doritos commercial:
Kill all the terrorists you want; we'll make more
Chris
Great commentary. I'm glad some people on this planet still see truth over spin.
Michelle Malkin wrote a book titled "Unhinged". Wanna see what she was talking about? Go to the Right-wing blogs and you'll see the true definition of unhinged. Everytime Bill so much as farts and these "can't think for themselves" drones go completely bonkers like fleas at a circus. Hilarious!
Posted by: Syntax | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 01:17 AM
"not on how people are radicalized."
Ah, the old "we need to understand why they hate us"... This reminds me of the late 60s/early 70s argument of dealing with criminals. (Ala "it's society's fault these people are criminals")...
Syntax and Chris, WATCH the interview rather than read the transcript (I think it's U-Tubes top video) and tell me that Clinton didn't come off as at least slightly "unhinged".
Yes, all Presidents prior to 9/11 didn't take terrorism as a top priority that in 20/20 Hindsight we think they should have, but Clinton's defensive stance in this interview is to blame everyone else except himself (Yeah, he mentioned that "he failed" but it's in that classic context of "I tried everything possible, but came up short", to make himself the tragic victim that we should feel sorry for)...
Finally, because we don't have access to the full NIE (and for that matter that the press even has partial access to the most damning parts of a case against the administration), the NYT and WaPo pieces are pure speculation.
Posted by: JFH | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 02:06 AM
JFH--you and I have had some pretty decent discussions and I always re-think my position when you and I disagree because you always bring rational arguments and really good points-doesn't mean i change my mind :O)--but I always listen...I don't care if Osama Bin Laden was as intern in the White House or if Bill Clinton did the hula during the interview--he is no longer the point...(I did watch the interview) where we are now, the choices we've made recently are now the issue...and while i get the reaction--I don't care why the terrorists are the way they are--it isn't helpful--the United States should do what it HAS to do to protect itself, and that includes stoping more extremists from being made--you don't have to believe what extremists do--you can thinnk their position is nutty--I do--but the bottom line is, we can't kill them as fast as they are making them--Rumsfeld even agrees with that
Posted by: Chris | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 05:46 AM
All the Clinton bashing won't change the following realities:
(1) Reagan and the 'Reeps' funded and armed Saddam Hussein, else he would never have achieved power in Iraq.
(2) Saudi Arabia, (the country that spawned 9 of 11 hijackers of the planes on 9/11 and the likes of Usama Bin-Laden), will continue to treat us the same as
the drug pusher treats the drug user,(our oil dependency being our 'heroin'). Remember the pictures of Bush walking with the Saudi Prince, hand-in-hand, like a couple of gay guys on Market Street, (You DO Know About Market Street, don't you?).
Clinton unhinged by Chris Wallace on Fox? Bah!
Wallace can't carry the shoes of his dad nor those of Clinton intellectually.
Unhinged, Clinton is way ahead of Bush intellectually too.
I'll take a Sax playing Rhodes Scholar over a draft-dodging cocaine/alcoholic abusing "C" student as my President any day!
Posted by: Lee | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 02:50 PM
Holy crap, Lee you make it way to easy to dismiss your opinions 'cus your facts are so wrong.
Sadam came to power during the Carter Administration, not the Reagan Administration and even then the dicitorial Baath party had been in power much longer than that.
Saudi Arabia nationals represented 11 of the 19 hyjackers, not 9 out of 11 (In fact, 3 out the 4 leaders of the flights were NOT Saudis, instead from Egypt, UAE and Lebanon, two of the those 3 countries have little or no oil reserves).
Draft-dodging?? Please! Which president are you talking about? Rhodes Scholar? You DO realize Clinton didn't complete the program, WASTING this scholarship on someone who was obviously more deserving (what an ass to quit such a prestigeous program and instead use the time to play rather than study).
Finally, the intellegence of a president or any leader is rarely a good measure of being a good/great president or leader. In fact, it can sometimes be a hinderence... Witness Clinton's indecisiveness (trying to figure out ALL the angles before making a decision) or Carter's micromanagement, both were detrements not assets. This is not to say intellegence is NOT important, it's just that other factors are just as important to make a good leader
Posted by: JFH | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 06:19 PM
Lee, get your facts straight, JFH is right on every point.
Bush's first months were consumed with algore's attempt to steal the election with hanging chads, ect. so yeah, Bush was preoccupied a little by that. bill clinton was preoccupied by monica, diddling her in the house I pay rent on and even talked to arafat with monica under his desk while he was on the phone, I won't go into what monica was doing...... Gross ......
bill blew his casket, lost his cool and told some blantent lies... PERIOD.
Posted by: drewsmom | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 07:01 PM
Drewsmom Al Gore conceded before George took office. You are wrong again. You are always wrong. Only Fox viewers are as wrong as you. Oh I get it - you are a Fox viewer.
Clinton is right - Bush didn't try to get Bin Laden before 911 and the facts show that he did not try that hard since 911.
Posted by: HC | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 01:18 AM
No, Hc, I am not wrong, Clinton had 8 long years, Bush had LESS than 8 months, yall even get the lenght of time wrong, and I do watch others just to catch the bias of the left, you can't tell me with a straight face cnn and msnbc are fair and balanced, cnn wil put on an entire paenel of leftists and msnbc has heil hitler olbermann, check out olbermannwatch.com if you'd like details.
Posted by: drewsmom | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 05:46 AM
drewamom
I am sorry this statement is true 'Bush's first months were consumed with algore's attempt to steal the election with hanging chads" and bush never said this about Bin Laden "So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... We haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."
March 13, 2002 news conference.
Bush has had Six years to capture Bin Laden and Five years since 911 but he caught Saddam instead. bush does not cares if catches Bin Laden, but he caught Saddam. He really wanted Saddam because 140,000 troops chased Saddam, but only 20,000 chase Bin Laden.
Yea Drewsmon you are right.
BTW sometimes reality is not fair and balanced. The reality is bush never care about Bin Laden before 911 and he still does not care about Bin Laden. Sorry if the truth is not fair or balanced.
Posted by: HC | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 08:09 AM
One thing that hasn't been mentioned here that I won't let go deals with Reagan. Yes, Reagan made a huge mistake. He should have taken decisive action instead of pulling out. That sort of cut and run did assist in establishing a pattern. Of course, Reagan was more concerned about the Soviet Union... At any rate, I don't excuse Reagan for not doing what should have been done.
However, Reagan never went on television and say that he tried when he, in fact, didn't........
Posted by: Matt Hurley | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 08:12 AM
Most of what Clinton said has already been negated. (Doesn't he know that in computer days these things can be taken care of easily?) The real question is... how does it affect Hillary...NOT GOOD!. If they really were a couple and in the house at the same time, the frying pan would be flying!!!(Which, according to Morris and Snuffelupigus (no, was that Sesame St?)was their true selves). No wonder his guy was telling the producer to stop the interview. So, in addition to "no class" I describe him as "no self control". (Like we didn't know this?)I don't know what everyone is all shaken up about! Don't we all know who He is?
And, I like Chris Wallace. He has a good reputation of fairness. If Clinton was being interviewed by Sean Hannity, I could understand, a little. Chris is so fair that I cannot tell the side he is on many times. He really was hard on Rumsfield mant times.
Posted by: Chris Sears | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 09:49 PM
Oh, what was with the Clinton legs showing? Cannot he buy proper socks? I kept looking at the legs, it was so distracting!
Posted by: Chris Sears | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 09:53 PM
Searsie Are you kidding me? You really think this hurts the Clintons. Really?
The tide is turning and Righties seem to be blind to it.
Posted by: HC | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 10:19 PM
Righties
Olbermann hit the nail on the head with this comment:
"It is not important that the current President’s portable public chorus has described his predecessor’s tone as “crazed.”
Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al Qaida; the nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit.
Nonetheless. The headline is this:
Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years.
He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.
"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."
Thus in his supposed emeritus years has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by any one, in these last five long years
The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11.
The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.
The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."...
The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it—who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews—have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.
Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for bin Laden in 1998 because of the Monica Lewinsky nonsense, why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on Aug. 20, of that year? For mentioning bin Laden by name as he did so?
That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The Dog."
Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.
Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri—the future attorney general—echoed Coats.
Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing...
Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.
"We must disenthrall ourselves."
Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence.
He might well have.
"We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."
And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date, to save our country.
The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush.
You did not act to prevent 9/11.
We do not know what you have done to prevent another 9/11.
You have failed us—then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.
You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.
And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.
And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.
And there it is, Mr. Bush:
Are yours the actions of a true American?"
-------------------------------
Righties you tell me are bush's actions are the actions of a true American?
Posted by: HC | Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 01:51 AM
I have found the one person who watches Olberman. I was wondering who it was!
Oberman was a disgrace to call Chris Wallace a monkey and rip him apart. Chris did nothing wrong in this interview. And for Olberman to rip a fellow journalist (though I do not consider Olberman that, I guess, wasn't he a sports guy?) Chris Wallace is a men of integrity and worthy of respect if not just politeness. Olberman is looked at by most as much less. How dare him!
If Clinton spoke the truth about 9/11 why does the 9/11 report not agree with him?
He actually refenced Clarke's book! Alot of what he says is negated in Clarke's book! Clarke was demoted! NOT! He says himself that he requested a transfer. Can't go on - it's just ridiculous.
HC you have a right to your opinion. But the things you have stated ARE just your opinion. I just do not TRUST you. (as you have told me to trust noone) (What a way to live)
Posted by: Chris Sears | Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 09:00 PM
Hurts the Clintons??? YES!! Hillary! Hillary doesn't even get the internet which can negate her lies. Actually, her "hubby" (or whatever cute little word she may use for her loverman) also signed a warning that bin Laden was planning to srike the US.(4 yrs before) I feel so bad for her, as her "hubby" embarasses her "again and again and again and again"(to use a Ted Kennedy phrase)
Now! I hear that he never really went "nuts" but he had it all planned - oh.. yeah... that's the ticket..it was all planned for the good of the Democratic Party and his love, Hillary and her success!
Just another of the many times that Clinton "the boy" rather than the man, does something stupid without using his head, (won't go there) and all of the Democratic Party and his wife, have to try to apologize for, cover up, etc. Guys like him don't change.
Posted by: Chris Sears | Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 09:56 PM
Searsie I hate to tell you that this helps Mrs Clinton. Also, we lefties wish that more Dems had the Clinton's guts. sigh.
"I just do not TRUST you. (as you have told me to trust noone) (What a way to live)"
I think I said what anyone writes or says should be the starting point for independent thought. If you would use my opinions to challenge your beliefs you might just learn to think independently of Fox.
And still no one can answer the question; What did bush do to prevent 911?
Maybe that is because bush did nothing.
But I still luv ya.
Posted by: HC | Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 12:50 AM
Searies You are so right Clinton's Question what did bush do to prevent 911 hurts the Clintons. Here is your proof: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/More_Americans_blame_Bush_than_Clinton_0927.html
Enjoy!!!
More Americans blame Bush than Clinton for failure to capture Osama bin Laden
RAW STORY
Published: Wednesday September 27, 2006
Print This Email This
According to the latest Gallup Poll, more Americans blame President Bush than former President Clinton for the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, RAW STORY has learned.
"According to a recent Gallup Panel survey, the American public puts the primary blame on Bush rather than Clinton for the fact that bin Laden has not been captured," writes Lydia Saad for the Gallup News Service.
In the telephone survey based on interviews with 1,010 national adults, aged 18 and older, which was conducted from September 21 to 24, before and after Clinton's "heated" interview on Fox News Channel aired on Sunday, 53 percent blame Bush, while only 36 percent blame Clinton.
"Clinton's reputation in this matter is far from unblemished, however," notes Saad. "Forty-two percent of Americans believe Clinton deserves either a great deal or a fair amount of blame, while only 32% say he deserves no blame."
Posted by: HC | Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 01:13 AM
it doesnt help hilary--if she had done it, it might have helped her but she didn't. He can't run again and if she wants to be president, and I dont want her to, she needs to run--not him
Posted by: Chris | Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 06:50 AM
Chris
So you think this helps Bill, but not Hillary. I think it helps all Dems and that includes Hillary, because Bill's question:
"What did bush do to prevent 911?" is hurting the Republicans.
Sadly for me it seems that Bill is the only Dem that knows how to make the Republican Spin Machine look bad.
I know you dislike Hillary, but her husband is an asset to her. Do I believe she will be the next President? No.
But, without her Husband she wouldn't be a Senator or even be the front runner for the Democratic Nomination.
Again I do not believe that she be the next President or even win the Democratic nomination.
Do you think she is she even in the game without Bill?
Posted by: HC | Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 08:46 AM
I think Clinton doing his thing lends my theory--that she won't run--even more credibility. In order for her to run, he needs to learn how to be the supportive spouse, she needs to speak out and he needs to smile and nod, that is not what is happening here...now maybe they took a calculated risk and let him out of the box thinking that the 2008 election is far enough away for it to not look like Hillary needs her husband to fight her battles for her--but I don't think she will run and i don't think she can win-the nomination or the election
Posted by: Chris | Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 09:17 AM
Chris It sounds like we sorta agree.
Posted by: HC | Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 10:59 AM
Chris, I will pay for your lunch but NOT HC's!
Posted by: Chris Sears | Friday, September 29, 2006 at 08:19 PM
Chris--it is just you and me babe...
Posted by: Chris | Friday, September 29, 2006 at 08:35 PM