|
Even though I've always liked Bill Clinton (pg. 2)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| The17sss |
Time to break up this circle jerk. God that guy is a solid actor. Look at how defensive he's getting! LOL he's so used to getting the fluffy softball questions from the usual fawning media, hence this reaction to strait up questions asking for accountability. Time to bust out the playbook: when questioned about your mistakes, bring up Republicans, neocons, and conservative boogeymen. What is he talking about? General Richard Clarke said he was "obsessed" with finding Bin Laden, but he's a Democrat. But that's it; in fact, there is not ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE that can be produced of "high ranking Republicans" suggesting Clinton was obsessed with Bin Laden or "did too much to try and capture him" before the bombing of the USS Cole or Somalia or whatever. Republicans were VERY supportive of Clinton's moves to go after him and other terrorist networks during that time. Me thinks the man doth protest too much.
Imagine President Bush on CNN or MSNBC speaking this way to Chris Matthews or Anderson Cooper when he is being grilled, or in the middle of any of his interviews for that matter. Imagine him getting in the face of his interviewer and tapping on the host's notepad that's sitting on his lap. Would this be acceptable? Not a chance... he'd be crucified. Chris Wallace gave Bush a brutal interview over Iraq and Afghanistan and I don't recall such childish petulance.
He is actually a very well respected journalist- he's the same guy he was when he reported for Lefty outlets such as the Boston Globe, NBC, and ABC, where he won a bunch of journalism awards and 3 emmys. But now he's a hack? LMAO. |
|
|
| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by The17sss
Time to break up this circle jerk. |
No way, Bill Clinton is a really cool guy. Eh plays the saxophone and doesn't afraid of picking up two chicks at the same time in enemy territry!
Not to mention the big Nomica Lewinski! |
|
|
| tubularbills |
| i think the point Slick Willy was trying to make was that reporters on Fox News tend to not ask the same questions to both sides of the table. |
|
|
| WhooCares |
everyone in faux news is a hack....besides shep smith..sometimes:p
lets be real tho, you cant compare faux news with CNN OR MSNBC...
faux news is so far out there that no other network is remotely like it..period
i also find it funny how you call out Clinton for bringing up "Republicans, neocons, and conservative boogeymen" yet its totally fine for you to bring up other networks. typical republican move.. |
|
|
| Joss Weatherby |
| quote: | Originally posted by The17sss
Time to break up this circle jerk. God that guy is a solid actor. Look at how defensive he's getting! LOL he's so used to getting the fluffy softball questions from the usual fawning media, hence this reaction to strait up questions asking for accountability. Time to bust out the playbook: when questioned about your mistakes, bring up Republicans, neocons, and conservative boogeymen. What is he talking about? General Richard Clarke said he was "obsessed" with finding Bin Laden, but he's a Democrat. But that's it; in fact, there is not ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE that can be produced of "high ranking Republicans" suggesting Clinton was obsessed with Bin Laden or "did too much to try and capture him" before the bombing of the USS Cole or Somalia or whatever. Republicans were VERY supportive of Clinton's moves to go after him and other terrorist networks during that time. Me thinks the man doth protest too much.
Imagine President Bush on CNN or MSNBC speaking this way to Chris Matthews or Anderson Cooper when he is being grilled, or in the middle of any of his interviews for that matter. Imagine him getting in the face of his interviewer and tapping on the host's notepad that's sitting on his lap. Would this be acceptable? Not a chance... he'd be crucified. Chris Wallace gave Bush a brutal interview over Iraq and Afghanistan and I don't recall such childish petulance.
He is actually a very well respected journalist- he's the same guy he was when he reported for Lefty outlets such as the Boston Globe, NBC, and ABC, where he won a bunch of journalism awards and 3 emmys. But now he's a hack? LMAO. |
Dude. I WAS ING 12 AND I REMEMBER THEM BLASTING HIM FOR ATTACKING AFTER THE US EMBASSY ATTACKS! |
|
|
| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: |
"A Serious Disinformation Campaign"
Clinton: There's been a serious disinformation campaign . . . The people on my political right who say I didn't do enough spent the whole time I was President saying "Why is he so obsessed with bin Laden? That was 'Wag the Dog' when he tried to kill him."
At least partly true. Whether there has been a "disinformation campaign" is a matter of opinion. However, the conservative punditocracy – including sources like The Washington Times editorial page and Fox News host Bill O'Reilly – has certainly blamed Clinton for not getting bin Laden. Clinton is probably including the ABC miniseries when he refers to a "campaign" (see above).
"Wag the Dog" refers a popular 1997 film about a president who fakes a war to distract the public from paying attention to his personal scandal. When Clinton, who was embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, launched airstrikes on bin Laden camps in Afghanistan and a factory in Sudan in August, 1998, "[s]ome Republicans in Congress raised questions about the timing of the strikes," the 9/11 Report recalls (p. 118). "Much public commentary turned immediately to scalding criticism that the action was too aggressive." |
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-...hardest_to.html
| quote: |
Following the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the new president sent stringent anti-terrorism legislation to Congress as part of his first crime bill, including new deportation powers and a federal death penalty for terrorists. The passage of portions of that legislation many months later was the last time he would enjoy real cooperation against terrorism from congressional conservatives. When he sought to expand those protections in 1995 after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, he was frustrated by a coalition of civil libertarians and anti-government conservatives, who argued that his "overreaction" posed a threat to constitutional rights.
No anti-terrorism legislation reached Clinton's desk until more than a year later. Thanks to an increasingly obstreperous Republican majority on both sides of the Capitol, law enforcement officials were denied new authority for roving wiretaps and new powers to monitor money laundering that Clinton had requested. All that would have to wait until after Sept. 11.
Back then, Sullivan was among those who accused Clinton of having "shredded civil liberties in the war on terrorism," a concern that no longer seems to disturb him. His memory of the actual legislation is pretty dim, anyway. He wrongly claims that the administration's 1996 bill "focused on domestic terrorism" rather than "dealing with the real threat" from al-Qaida. Among that bill's most controversial provisions were new powers to turn away suspect immigrants, swifter deportation procedures and a new deportation court that can view secret evidence.
Recalcitrant Republicans, led by then-Senator John Ashcroft, later defeated another potentially crucial White House initiative. Along with computer-industry lobbyists, they rejected proposals to tighten controls on encryption software and to ensure that law enforcement officials could crack the kind of coded messages found on the laptop owned by Ramzi Yusef, the man who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Intelligence experts believe that encrypted computer links were probably used by the Sept. 11 plotters and their masters in al-Qaida. Some Democrats, no doubt swayed like their GOP colleagues by the generosity of industry lobbyists, joined the Republicans to deny this important tool to law enforcement.
The Clinton administration's attempts to improve airport security were similarly obstructed in Congress. The Gore commission urged U.S. air carriers to screen all passengers with computerized profiling systems, to upgrade poorly trained private security personnel and to install high-tech baggage-screening equipment. But action on key measures was stalled by lawmakers at the behest of airline lobbyists, and ultimately by the sluggish bureaucracy at the Federal Aviation Administration. Key senators on the Senate Aviation Subcommittee shot down mandated changes recommended by the White House and instead urged "further study." (Eight of the nine Republicans on the subcommittee had received contributions from the major airlines.)
While Clinton and Gore certainly share responsibility for failing to push Congress and their own bureaucrats harder, the aviation industry could rely on conservative ideologues and PAC contributions to stymie burdensome reforms.
Among those attacking the Gore Commission recommendations, incidentally, was the New Republic, which noted that "two billion dollars a year to guard against terrorism and sabotage" would amount to "a cost per life saved of well over $300 million." The cost of such libertarian dogma must now be measured in thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.
Even before the Gore Commission report, the Clinton administration had moved to place bomb-detection equipment in major airports and to upgrade background checks on airport personnel. Unfortunately, as Samuel Skinner, former transportation secretary in the first Bush administration, told an interviewer in 1996: "[T]he airlines decided it was not in their short-term best interest to pay for these services from their own pocket, so they made a concerted effort to make sure that [they] didn't have to pay for this and didn't have to charge passengers for it." Also unfortunately, congressional Republicans had repealed a tax on airline tickets that would have financed high-tech improvements in baggage screening and passenger security.
If corporate lobbyists pursued their own narrow interests at the expense of national security, so did Clinton's adversaries on Capitol Hill.
Among the most egregious was Senator Phil Gramm, who blocked an administration bill to close loopholes that let terrorist groups launder money through offshore banks. The Texas Republican denounced that legislation, now belatedly endorsed by the Bush White House as necessary to dismantle al-Qaida, as "totalitarian."
The typical partisan reaction to Clinton's counterterror proposals was enunciated in 1996 by Rep. David McIntosh, who insisted on steering the debate back to a phony White House scandal. "We find it very troubling that you're asking us for additional authority to wiretap innocent Americans," declared McIntosh, "when you have failed to explain to the American people why you abuse their civil liberties by having FBI files brought into the White House."
Harassing the White House was the overriding aim of congressional Republicans throughout the Clinton era, and not only after January 1998 as Sullivan implies. Terrorism and other serious national problems were of relatively little concern to the national GOP leadership. Looking back now, knowing what we know, the greatest scandal of that naive period was its pointlessly destructive scandal-mongering.
Nevertheless, while politicians and pundits fanned the scandal frenzy, Clinton and his appointees tried to prepare for the serious threats they anticipated. After Oklahoma City, they began a nationwide initiative to improve home-front security that continued to grow until Clinton left the White House.
Between 1996 and 2001, federal spending on counterterrorism increased dramatically to more than $12 billion annually. The FBI's counterterrorism budget rose even more sharply, from $78 million in 1996 to $609 million in 2000, tripling the number of agents assigned to such activities and creating a new counterterrorism center at the bureau's Washington headquarters. Whether that gusher of funding was properly used by FBI director Louis Freeh (who has somehow escaped criticism in the aftermath of Sept. 11) is a separate question.
But as Sullivan surely knows, it would hardly be fair to blame Freeh's shortcomings on Clinton alone. As FBI director, Freeh didn't conceal his contempt for the president who had appointed him. He eventually aligned himself with Clinton's adversaries in Congress and in the media. The president had no real power to remove him, and in any case the degree of the bureau's deterioration didn't become clear until near the end of Clinton's second term. But his agency received abundant resources from the White House that Freeh continuously tried to undermine.
Besides strengthening law enforcement, the Clinton administration sponsored a series of wide-ranging simulations that brought together local, state and federal officials to determine how government would respond if terrorists attacked with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Clinton himself was reportedly obsessed with the potential threat of anthrax and other bio-weapons.
That is why, by the time he left office, scores of those planning exercises were taking place annually across the country. Spending on "domestic preparedness" programs rose from $42.6 million in 1997 to more than $1.2 billion in 2000. The foresight represented by those appropriations has given his administration's successors an important head start.
Several months before Clinton left office, the federal Centers for Disease Control issued a $343 million contract for 40 million doses of smallpox vaccine, as part of a wide-ranging research and development program of defense against biological weapons. The Clinton administration also established a new stockpile of drugs, vaccines and medical supplies for use solely in national emergencies. On Sept. 11, the first shipments from those warehouses went out in trucks headed for New York City, under orders from Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson. How fortunate for Thompson and the rest of us that someone had thought ahead.
None of this means that Clinton's record is free of blemish. Could he have done more to reform the intelligence and law enforcement bureaucracy? Should he have spent even more money, with greater wisdom, on homeland security? Was he distracted by domestic concerns and scandals, including the Lewinsky affair he so stupidly brought on himself?
Yes, but such observations are only of historical interest at this point. And meanwhile, that history should also include successes Clinton had in fighting terrorism, which his critics never mention.
On Clinton's watch, the CIA instituted a special al-Qaida unit that thwarted several deadly conspiracies, including a scheme to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on Millennium Eve, and plots to bomb the Holland and Lincoln tunnels in New York as well as the United Nations building. Timely intelligence also prevented a deadly assault on the Israeli embassy in Washington. As early as 1996 -- as reported by the Post and other publications -- the State Department and the CIA began to neutralize dozens of terrorist cells overseas through prosecutions, extraditions and executions quietly undertaken by allies on every continent, from Albania to the Philippines.
A month before Clinton left office -- and nine months before the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- those successful operations were praised by the nation's most experienced diplomats in this field, including conservatives. "Overall, I give them very high marks," said Robert Oakley, who served as ambassador for counterterrorism in the Reagan State Department, to a reporter for the Washington Post. "The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which has made him stronger." Paul Bremer, who also held the same post under Reagan and later was chosen by congressional leaders to chair the National Commission on Terrorism, disagreed slightly with his colleague. Bremer told the Post he believed that the Clinton administration had "correctly focused on bin Laden."
But to give Clinton any credit would scarcely serve his critics, who have more sinister and explicitly political aims.
Their rhetoric is redolent of the old "stab-in-the-back" theories used by right-wing extremists to discredit FDR after Pearl Harbor and JFK following the Bay of Pigs. This brand of demagogy dates back to Germany after WWI, when the nascent Nazi movement insisted that social democrats, capitalists and Jews had betrayed the nation and the people. With that pedigree, such ugly and divisive arguments ought to be repugnant to every responsible citizen. |
http://dir.salon.com/politics/featu...ton/index3.html |
|
|
| AnotherWay83 |
| quote: | Originally posted by The17sss
Imagine President Bush on CNN or MSNBC speaking this way to Chris Matthews or Anderson Cooper when he is being grilled, or in the middle of any of his interviews for that matter. |
You're right, one can only *imagine* Bush intelligently debating anything with a journalist. |
|
|
| chlola |
| quote: | Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Clinton had the intelligence and testicular fortitude to make sure he was not ed with too much, something that our last president and current one lack, respectively. Thats why he has been the best president in the last 40 years. |
For sure.
He is the only time I have not regretted voting for a democrat. |
|
|
| Joss Weatherby |
| The funny thing is that Kevin actually thinks GW was a good president... I mean he is so caught up in worshiping the right that he actually thinks that cluster of skin cells and genetic failure was fit to hold office. |
|
|
| The17sss |
| quote: | Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
The funny thing is that Kevin actually thinks GW was a good president... I mean he is so caught up in worshiping the right that he actually thinks that cluster of skin cells and genetic failure was fit to hold office. |
This is yet again, another lie that only a stupid ing liar like you would perpetuate. You are the king of inserting beliefs and thoughts into my mouth. Forget the countless times I have railed against Bush, and brought up my disdain for how he was instrumental in helping sink the Republican party by abandoning the principles on which he got elected. Forget the fact that I have said countless times how I was furious with the way he jacked up govt. spending and grew government. Was he the worst ever? Of course not- at least we had a flourishing economy despite his mistakes... the country averaged 5.2% unemployment through the tenure of his presidency, and that's a hell of a lot more than I can say for what we have now. Stupid . |
|
|
| Joss Weatherby |
| quote: | Originally posted by The17sss
This is yet again, another lie that only a stupid ing liar like you would perpetuate. You are the king of inserting beliefs and thoughts into my mouth. Forget the countless times I have railed against Bush, and brought up my disdain for how he was instrumental in helping sink the Republican party by abandoning the principles on which he got elected. Forget the fact that I have said countless times how I was furious with the way he jacked up govt. spending and grew government. Was he the worst ever? Of course not- at least we had a flourishing economy despite his mistakes... the country averaged 5.2% unemployment through the tenure of his presidency, and that's a hell of a lot more than I can say for what we have now. Stupid . |
So wasn't Clinton a good president too then? Reigned over the largest boom in innovation and economic growth in the country and did it with a budget surplus? |
|
|
|
|
