Bill Clinton Takes On Fox News

blatham wrote:

It seems to me quite OK to be mean and insulting (Bob Novak IS a douchebag) but making or passing on claims which we do not have any good reason to believe are true is not what we ought to be doing. Truth is important.

Tell your laundry to use less starch in your shirts. There is nothing wrong, and it may be fun, to make flippant speculations.

Personal emotion should also be logical shouldn't it? Thats why I use the analogies of if I don't trust someone personally, why should I trust them to be president? I think its a good measure of how we should vote.

okie wrote:

Personal emotion should also be logical shouldn't it? Thats why I use the analogies of if I don't trust someone personally, why should I trust them to be president? I think its a good measure of how we should vote.

If emotion was logic - none of us would be married.

Intrepid wrote:

okie wrote:

Personal emotion should also be logical shouldn't it? Thats why I use the analogies of if I don't trust someone personally, why should I trust them to be president? I think its a good measure of how we should vote.

If emotion was logic - none of us would be married.

...or even posting on this thread, for that matter.

I sometimes get a double post on a2k because the software hangs and does not appear to have functioned the first time....

Blatham, obvious satire is counterproductive. It should be very subtle.

Regarding the PR separatists, that is ancient history, which has no relationship to Clinton's actions before 9/11. Clinton was rightfully angry inasmuch he was falsely accused of inaction that endangered our country.

Gunga, that was worth a double post, and judging from how some people here apparently can't get the inescapable truth through their thick heads, perhaps it should be posted 100 times, but then you would probably be barred from the forum for spamming. There were so many bad things that Clinton did, I tend to forget the vast majority of them. Thanks for pointing that one out. That one was terrrible.

We would all like to forget the loser, but unfortunately he keeps rearing his ugly head, so we have to try to keep the libs from re-writing history.

Lash wrote:

nimh wrote:

I dont claim anything, because I havent actually seen the interview.

You havent seen the interview either, yet that doesnt apparently stop you from making all kinds of claims about how exactly it compared to other interviews.

What "all kinds of claims" did I make?

The ones that I cited, here:

nimh wrote:

You are claiming that

- Partisan Dem reporters do [the same thing] on a regular basis to Republicans (and one has to be out of one's **** mind to think otherwise)

- When that Irish reporter interviewed Bush and Dan "yelled at Bush I", it was the "same thing"

- Couric e.a have done "the same thing" to Republicans

- Clinton just yelped and thats only how this was made to look much worse than when it happens to other people

But you havent actually seen the interview?

Thats a lot of things to know for sure about how this interview compared with others when you havent actually seen the interview.

Clinton's grand failure
No wonder the ex-president is so defensive - he had Osama within reach
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September 29, 2006
<<<snip>>>

So let us look at Clinton's war on terror. Thirty-eight days after Clinton was sworn in, al-Qa'ida attacked the World Trade Centre. He did not visit the twin towers that year, even though four days after the attack he was minutes away in neighbouring New Jersey, talking about job training. His only public mention of the bombing was a few paragraphs stuffed into a Saturday radio address, which was devoted to an economic-stimulus package. Those stray paragraphs were limited to reassuring the public and thanking the rescuers, the kinds of things governors say after floods. He did not even vow to bring the bombers to justice. Instead, he turned the first terrorist attack on American soil over to the FBI and forgot about it.

In his Fox interview, Clinton said "no one knew that al-Qa'ida existed" in October 1993 during the tragic events in Somalia. False. Clinton's national security adviser, Tony Lake, told me that he learned of bin Laden in 1993 and by 1994 regularly briefed the president on the terrorist. US Army captain James Francis Yacone, a Black Hawk squadron commander in Somalia, later testified in a US court that radio intercepts of enemy mortar crew firing at Americans were in Arabic, not Somali. While bin Laden's men speak Arabic, warlord Farah Aideed's men did not. CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency reports as well as reports from Ethiopian and Sudanese services placed al-Qa'ida operatives in Somalia at the time.

By the end of Clinton's first year, al-Qa'ida had apparently attacked twice. Al-Qa'ida attacks would continue for every one of the Clinton years, climbing in lethality.

In 1994, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (who would later plan the 9/11 attacks) launched Operation Bojinka to down 11 planes simultaneously over the Pacific, killing about 3000 people. A sharp-eyed Filipina police officer foiled the plot. The sole American response: increased law-enforcement co-operation with the Philippines.

In 1995, al-Qa'ida detonated a 100kg car bomb outside the US military's Office of the Program Manager in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five Americans and wounding 60 more. The FBI was sent in.

In 1996, al-Qa'ida bombed the barracks of American pilots patrolling the "no-fly zones" over Iraq, killing 19. Again, the FBI went in.

In 1997, bin Laden repeatedly declared war on the Western world. In February 1997, bin Laden told an Arab television network: "If someone can kill an American soldier, it is better than wasting time on other matters." Clinton did not respond.

In 1998, al-Qa'ida simultaneously attacked US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people including 12 American diplomats. The FBI team arrived within days. But this time the law enforcement did not seem sufficient. Thirteen days after the attacks, Clinton ordered cruise-missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan. Here Clinton's critics are wrong: the president was right to retaliate, irrespective of the Monica Lewinsky case.

<<snip>>>

In 1999, the Clinton administration disrupted al-Qa'ida's millennium plots, a series of bombings stretching from Amman in Jordan to Los Angeles. This shining success was mostly the work of Richard Clarke, a National Security Council senior director who forced agencies to work together. But the millennium approach was short-lived. Over Clarke's objections, the previous status quo quickly returned.

In January 2000, al-Qa'ida tried and failed to attack the USS The Sullivans off Yemen. (Their boat sank before they could reach their target.) In October 2000, they wouldn't fail. An al-Qa'ida bomb ripped a 12sqm hole in the hull of the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding another 39. Throughout history, an attack on an American warship has led to war, but not this time.

When Clarke presented a plan to launch a concerted cruise missile strike on al-Qa'ida and Taliban facilities in Afghanistan, every member of the Clinton cabinet voted no. After the cabinet meeting, Michael Sheehan, a State Department counter-terrorism official, sought out Clarke. Both told me they were incredulous. Sheehan asked Clarke: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan? Does al-Qa'ida have to attack the Pentagon?"

There is much more to Clinton's record - how the Predator drone plane, which spotted bin Laden three times in 1999 and 2000, was grounded by bureaucratic infighting; how a petty dispute with an Arizona Democratic senator stopped the CIA from hiring more Arabic translators; how Clinton refused to meet his first CIA director for two years - but this is enough to illustrate the point.

Clinton did not fully grasp that he was at war and that war often requires overcoming bureaucratic objections and a democracy's natural reluctance to use force.

It is a hard lesson. But it is better to learn it from studying the Clinton years than from reliving them.

Wrong again. His pardon of PR separatists has everything to do with the mindset he had, which has everything to do with how he handled terrorists. By the way, many Americans, including those relatives of people that died in 911, would like to wag their fingers in his face. How dare he wag that pathetic finger in every American's face as he essentially did. What a loser!

The U.S. government did not learn of al-Qaeda's role in the attack until 1996, presumably from Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl.2,4

By the way, many Americans, including those relatives of people that died in 911, would like to wag their fingers in his face. How dare he wag that pathetic finger in every American's face as he essentially did.

Americans Assess Blame for Bin Laden's Actions