Bill Clinton Takes On Fox News

I felt comfortable responding to the theme of reporters ambushing politicians and making aggressive, accusatory statements. Do you claim it was somehow worse that the other instances I describe?

My brother has my copy of the book, but it's not an expensive book and you could probably afford a copy.

http://www.amazon.com/Without-Conscience-Disturbing-Psychopaths-Among/dp/1572304510

Parados, remember the 911 Commission? Remember our conversation about whether how in the world could Clinton "offer" Bin Laden to anyone if he didn't have him available to offer? Remember the 911 Commission didn't care? Remember the great Sandy Berger stuffing classified papers into his pants? How do you guys keep defending a loser named Clinton and his cronies? And information keeps coming out that we could have arrested or killed OBL and maybe have prevented 911, who knows for sure, but the distinct possibility is for sure. If Clinton had been working like Bush is, instead of playing, maybe we wouldn't have needed to make up for 8 years of do-nothings about terrorists. Dare I ask, who has blood on his hands? Clinton knows he screwed up and thats why he was angry, very angry, that anyone should dare to call him into question. If I am Chris Wallace, I would watch my backside.

A Textbook Definition of Cowardice
A Textbook Definition of Cowardice
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Monday 25 September 2006

Keith Olbermann comments on Bill Clinton's Fox News interview.

The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong.

It is not essential that a past president, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

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 Bush Administration did not try.

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest "pass" for incompetence and malfeasance in American history!

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs - some of them, 17 years old - before Pearl Harbor.

President Hoover was correctly blamed for - if not the Great Depression itself - then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.

Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War - though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this president.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11th, 2001 -- or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the executive.

But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except for this.

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts - that he was president on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton's.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: the very weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is - not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it.

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired - but a propagandist, promoted:

Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don't even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for "e-mailing" you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth untold about this administration's negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about bin Laden.

He was brave.

Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist, and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.

Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with "The Path to 9/11." Of that company's crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush's new and improved history.

The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

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.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been "distracted" by the Lewinsky witch-hunt, who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt?

Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?

Who preempted them in order to strangle us with the trivia that was, "All Monica All The Time"?

Who distracted whom?

This is, of course, where - as is inevitable - Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.

The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.

But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it's all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.

The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton, but by the same people who got you elected President.

Thus, instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it, we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently read the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus, instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since - a statement that might range anywhere from zero, to 100 percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush, you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous president to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be a textbook definition, Mr. Bush, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.

That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair - writing as George Orwell - gave us in the book "1984."

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power...

"Power is not a means; it is an end.

"One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

"The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power… is power."

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?

What a bunch of hogwash! Nobody is supposed to question his highness, Bill Clinton, but reporters can treat Bush like dirt. The fact that Clinton still has one supporter surprises me. As a child, I always wondered how the Hitler thing could have happened, how could he have been elected? Now I know how psychopaths can be elected, Clinton was, I still don't understand it, but now I see it can happen.

okie


Your problem is that you don't have enough smarts to recognized Clinton's talent and leadership. That's your problem, not his.

BBB

Godwin's Law...

I wonder if Olbermann will ever get his reputation back after writing so much crap?

Re: okie


Thank goodness! Hitler had talent and leadership too. I'm looking for a bit more character than you may care about. Like somebody I would at least trust far enough to buy a used car from, let alone vote for.

Amen. Are we all supposed all bow down and kiss Clinton's shoes? How dare we ask him a single question that might embarrass the loser?

Allright, c'mon. You don't like Clinton, that's fine. But, Hitler comparisons?

Cycloptichorn

I don't see how the same thing couldn't be said about the current president. I think it is at least as likely that Bush is a psychopath as Clinton is. And before you call partisanship, I didn't vote for or support either one of them. But next to Bush, Clinton looks like a friggin' genius.

I don't think it's fair to blame Bush for 9/11 (though I do think he might've done more if partisanship hadn't played such a major part in his operations) and I don't think it's fair to blame Clinton either. Tell me, if a reporter asked that exact same question to Mr. Bush, how would you want him to react?

By all means, ask Clinton questions. Ask Bush questions. Ask all the questions you can think of to as many people as possible. Then maybe we can start to get some perspective.

Cyclops, yes thats a bit extreme isn't it? I don't think Clinton would be able to be a Hitler in the current framework of our government, however I am simply pointing out that I perceive his personality to be a dangerous one. I think he is very untrustworthy on a personal basis, and I think he is capable of being a very bad actor indeed. He shows no remorse and he shows no compunction to be moral toward his fellow man. I don't trust him, period. I am not being flippant or expressing something I don't believe.

As for Bush, you can agree or disagree with his policies, but I see the man to be fairly balanced on a personal basis. I could never see him ever becoming a Hitler.

BBB
I never voted for Bill Clinton but you have to admit he was a better president than Bush could ever pretend to be.

BBB

Re: BBB


Based on what? The fact that you don't like Bush? That we are in a war? What is it exactly that would qualify Clinton as a "better" president?

It should be pointed out that in the interview, Clinton attacked Fox News and Chris Wallace before even attempting to answer an honest question, and then continued to mount a vigorous defense of himself by more misrepresentations of history and lies. No former president has ever conducted himself in such a pathetic manner. Did anyone notice him laying his hand on Wallace, sort of a no-no in interviews like this in my opinion. The man is threatening, he was angry anyone dared to not fawn over him and his legacy, and I would not wish to even have him as a neighbor.

I hope when you get to heaven God gives you a mansion right between Bill's and mine.

Re: okie


You don't look for character in a psychopath....

Hare says 50% of the guys in for violent crimes in prisons are basically psychopaths. That says you could take any of half the guys in max security prisons and give them a hundred and eighty IQ, and you'd have another Slick KKKlinton. That's all the guy really is.

Re: BBB


The economy, international relations and respect, the budget (hat tip to newt as well). I doubt you could find a matrix in which he could be considered to be a worse president than Bush...

Cycloptichorn

Re: BBB



KKKlinton is dead-heat tied for worst president with Jimmy Carter who, along with guys like Chuck Darwin, Thomas Malthus, and Paul Ehrlich, is a legit candidate for stupidest white man ever to walk the earth.