CNN's Zahn Forwards Notion Impeachment Hurt Hunt for bin Laden(Newsweek's Fineman-Imus transcript)

MRC ^ | Wednesday June 23, 2004 | BrentBaker Megan McCormack

[fight_truth_decay]

Impeachment process to blame for 9-11? Interviewing impeachment manager Bob Barr, CNN's Paula Zahn on Monday night advanced the notion that "analysts...are suggesting that this impeachment was a great distraction to the country and might have slowed down any kind of progress that was being made on the hunt for Osama bin Laden." In contrast, Newsweek's Howard Fineman, appearing on Imus in the Morning, held Bill Clinton culpable for doing a "big nothing" in response to a series of terrorist attacks on his watch. Fineman pointed out how Clinton said he was worried about how "it would look like he was pursuing a wag-the-dog strategy," but Fineman contended that was his own fault "for having sacrificed his own ability to, to defend the nation because of what he did in the Oval Office."

MRC analyst Megan McCormack took down some of the conversation between Fineman, who appeared by phone, and Don Imus on MSNBC's June 22 simulcast of the Imus in the Morning radio show:

Fineman: "To me the bottom line of this whole thing is, that what we're all looking at this book now through the post-9/11 lens. And one of the things we're looking back at the Clinton administration for, fairly I think, is, you know what they did after the World Trade Center bombing in '93, after the Khobar Towers in '96, after Kenya and Tanzania, after the USS Cole, and it all adds up to, for the most part a big nothing, and Clinton himself in his book talks about how there was discussion after '98 of some kind of major retaliation of strikes involving al-Qaeda and so forth, which they were just beginning to realize was so powerful. But Clinton was told he couldn't dare do that politically, because it would look like he was pursuing a wag-the- dog strategy and he was trying to take attention away from his own problems, and that to me is the biggest reason yet, why we should, we should, why he goes down the list in history, for having sacrificed his own ability to, to defend the nation because of what he did in the Oval Office."

Fineman soon elaborated: "I haven't read the whole book, but I've read a good bit of it and when Clinton gets to controversial stuff like the draft or like Monica Lewinsky, its in such a jumbled style, and its so, its not laid out clearly, that Russert would take all of it, he would clearly kind of unscramble the assertions that Clinton's making, and the evasions that he goes through he, and would try to get the historical record straight using this document to do it, and Clinton's not about to assist anybody in doing that."

Fineman took on Clinton's hypocrisy and, in a rarity for a member of the media, noted how Clinton destroyed the reputations of others in order to protect himself: "He as he was forced to do, he admits the Gennifer Flowers thing, and basically says that Gennifer Flowers should kill her lawsuits against James Carville and George Stephanopoulos and he says that she should leave them alone. And I think there's an example of Clinton being hypocritical, where he says that his whole aim in life after he survived this alcoholic stepfather was to not want to hurt anybody. That he was always, he always wanted to make peace, he never wanted to hurt anybody. But they destroyed a lot of reputations in his, in Clinton's defense..."

Imus: "...For him to describe as his worst day having to tell his wife the truth....If that was his worst day, what was it when Vince Foster killed himself, that just a troubling day, or how was that day, how did that day go down?"

Fineman: "Well, or when many Americans were killed in the Keynan-Tanzania bombing, the Khobar bombing, or you know in the USS Cole attack and-"

Imus: "What kind of day was that?"

Fineman: "Or when he had to order troops in and knew he was putting people in harm's way. I mean, there are lots of others. But he's, listen, this is the maddeningly self-involved Bill Clinton that we've known all along. Some of his insights in here about politics are brilliant, and he's obviously a guy with enormous capacity...I come away having read large chunks of it, not all of it, just thinking what a sad, what a sad waste it was, what a sad waste it was."

Yet many of Fineman's colleagues are enthusiastically promoting it.

[snooker]

Here is what she was searching for. (try this sagin)

[CyberAnt]

That's probably true!