Posted on 08/15/2005 8:08:34 PM PDT by wagglebee
Ex-president Bill Clinton now says he would have taken out Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks – if only the FBI and CIA had been able to prove the al-Qaida mastermind was behind the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.
"I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early."
"I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11," he added. "But it certainly would have complicated it.”
Despite his failure to launch such an attack, Clinton said he saw the danger posed by bin Laden much more clearly than did President Bush.
"I always thought that bin Laden was a bigger threat than the Bush administration did," he told New York magazine.
Yeah, he would have attacked bin Laden -- on a day when someone was testifying about one of his Administration's many scandals, and then with weak bombs and while Osama was out for a walk. Then he would have gone on TV and bitten his lip while he explained how we just missed him.
We look forward to his opinion as much as an overflowing toilet at a texas chili cook off.
Which dumbass?
Take your pick!
I also remember an interview with Bubba when he was asked what his biggest regret was. He said: "Not taking out Usama". Well, duh!
That's his legacy.
Haven't heard anything about Nice Mr. Wilson lately....our very own tea sippin' Niger expert. Would you say the Dems have "outed" him?
Is this the document produced from the "rough drafts" that Sandy Berger stole?
Sudan.
Bingo. Bill Clinton's Incredible Shrinking Legacy.
Oh...details, details. You can't bother Billy boy with little things like facts and details when he's busy re-writing history.
You have done a stellar job keeping all the bookmarks!
Wish you could confront him on nation TV.
Slinton Cucks !
No, his legacy has actually expanded. He and his administration are responsible for allowing our enemies to act with impunity and pull off 9/11.
This guy is so full of crap....Sandy Burglar stole the notes that they declined to strike Bin Laden for fear of killing 50 AQ family members. The Clinton Administration cared more about Bin Laden's family than 3000 AMERICANS!
No need to insult everyone in Arkansas. The multitude of government employees and beneficiaries of welfare elected him in a different era. There's a chill wind blowing here now and his kind can't get arrested.
Bill Clinton's Plan for World Domination
"There’s a tangible, almost merciful way that the postpresidency agrees with Bill Clinton. Here in Africa, where he’ll be spending the next seven days, he’s relaxed, smiling, pink. On the first night of our trip, in a faded old colonial hotel in Mozambique, he comes bounding to the dinner table in bright-white pants, a bright-white shirt, an almost-as-white sweater (knotted around his shoulders), and brand-new canary-yellow running sneakers, like some Queer Eye project gone cheerfully awry. I will soon discover that these running sneakers perfectly match one of his ties—he’s brought a whole array of pastel cravats for the Southern Hemisphere.
(snip)
Today, one could say the former president has the best of both worlds: He still visits with heads of state everywhere he goes, yet “there are no earthshaking adverse consequences,” as he puts it, if he declines to take up a cause. Though he no longer flies on Air Force One, private jets don’t seem to be in short supply.
(For this particular trip, Issam M. Fares, the business magnate and deputy prime minister of Lebanon, lent us his private jet, a fabulous flying wonderland of retro suede recliners, wood paneling, and mirrors—one half expects Austin Powers to pop out of the loo.) He still stays in the finest hotels, yet he’s also regained some measure of privacy:
In Zanzibar, two young women in bikinis, each roughly proportioned like Jessica Rabbit, spot him as he wanders by the pool and leap out of their chaise longues to chat. He loves it, lingers. Could he have done this before, without the tabloids wrenching some double-entendre headline out of the moment? One gets a perspective now that Ken Starr’s cloying legion of moralists could never fully appreciate:
To Clinton, the world’s a seascape of temptations. And the hip-shaking sensuality of the pageantry here—so awkward for other world leaders they haven’t a clue where to put their eyes—seems perfectly of a piece with who he is.
“I loved being president,” Clinton tells me later that night. “I’d have done it again if there hadn’t been term limits, until the people threw me out. But now, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve woken up and said, ‘Gosh, I wish I were still president.’ I just don’t do it anymore.”
(snip)
Clinton is still a man of huge public-service aspirations. He’s still adored abroad. And he’s still considered president by the nation’s estranged, bluer half. Yet he’s also still deeply wounded, burdened by a sense of both underappreciation and unrealized promise. Much more than his successor, Clinton understood exactly which direction the world was headed when he twice took the oath of office, yet he didn’t, for reasons both circumstantial and of his own unlovely making, deliver some of the things he valued most: universal health care, a shored-up system of social security, energy independence, security at home and in the Middle East. He can’t rest on his laurels.
So what does a man do with all this feral hunger—to do more, to set the record straight—and all this hurt, God, so much hurt, which steams off him with such intensity it practically blurs the air?
(snip)
On September 15, the former president will be hosting the grandly titled Clinton Global Initiative, a conference timed to coincide with the World Summit at the U.N. The guest list features an impressive and eccentric mix of moguls, heads of state, and problem-solvers—from Sonia Gandhi to George Soros to Rupert Murdoch—who, after three days of panel-going and furious rubber-chicken consumption, are expected to sign pledges to do something about bettering the world.
(snip)
Abroad, Clinton draws much simpler reactions than he does at home, affection generally uncomplicated by ambivalence. As the Lewinsky scandal garishly unfolded, Clinton spent a lot of time abroad, including eleven days in Africa. When Mandela later accepted the Congressional Gold Medal, he swept to the president’s rescue with a subtle and eloquent defense.
“Africans saw it for exactly what it was: an abuse of power,” Clinton tells me. “They got it here. And all across the world.” Seven years later, the ordeal of his impeachment still has a vibrant, ever-present life in Clinton’s mind. “During that time, a lot of world leaders would ask, What is going on? Is this serious? That kind of stuff. I kept assuring them that nothing bad had happened to America, but that we periodically went through”—he rummages for a word—“spasms.”
At home, Clinton also has another problem: To involve himself too heavily in politics would look petty and small. As a rule, he refuses to bluntly criticize George W. Bush, whose political skills he considers “extraordinary” and whose father he genuinely likes.
When I ask whether he enjoys playing good cop around the world to George W.’s bad cop, he punts, saying, “It’s not true that people dislike W. all over the world. In Russia, they probably like him more than they like me.” When I mention that both McCurry and Sandy Berger, Clinton’s former national-security adviser, told me that Clinton, too, would have gone to war with Iraq, he doesn’t deny the possibility, though he doesn’t confirm it either, saying, “I’m still not exactly sure what the intelligence really said. But I can tell you this: I would have asked the Congress for authority to use force if Saddam did not allow the inspectors back in, or did not cooperate with them, or we found weapons of mass destruction. Because he never did anything he wasn’t forced to do, at least in my experience.”
(snip)
At this point, I interrupt and ask if he’s misunderstood my question: I was asking what the Office of the First Man should be, not the role of an ex-president. “I’m coming to that,” he says. “So I think if there were a president in my party again, no matter who it was, and I was asked to do anything, I would do it. And obviously, I feel Hillary gave me all those decades and was unbelievably good, in a thousand ways, and made a real difference to my public service. So if she asked me to do anything, I would do it.”
If she asked you to do anything, you’d do it, I repeat.
“Anything,” he answers.
Without realizing it, Clinton had answered my general question with a very specific answer. What should the Office of the First Man look like? Whatever Hillary wants it to.
========================================
I'm gagging here .. it's all I have the stomach to post .. it's TEN PAGES LONG! This man is truly a demented, narcissisistic sociopath WITH delusions of grandeur.
I wish I could claim intentional wit.
I'll leave it at a Freudian slip, divine intervention, or fat fingers.
Regardless, having enjoyed your reply, I say let us all meet seven days after he's pushing up daisies, pining for the fjords, etc.
Hope you freepers can tell me if this is true or not... God I hope so... Go Bolton.... Hell with the Klintoons....
Satire for the Educated Mind
by M. Sidney Wallace
Dr. Wallace’s mission here is to educate the masses on the failings of society. He writes in very simple terms what he teaches to his students in higher learning.
United Nations Ambassador John Bolton
On August 1st the new United States Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton made history, but as usual it was not publicized in the New York Times.
The first incident happened like this:
John Bolton was visiting some senatorial offices bidding farewell to his supporters in his confirmation process. As Ambassador Bolton was walking down a “very wide” corridor in the Russell Senate Office Building, he chanced to meet Senators Kennedy and Clinton walking abreast with Senator Schumer tagging along like their favorite puppy. The two senators in front managed to fill the hallway from wall to wall, leaving no room for anyone to pass.
Senator Schumer spoke for the awesome group of Senators. He stood as despondently as he could and said conceitedly: “We never make way for fools!”
FOFL!!
Reminds me of the article Clinton wrote in (I think) the NY Slimes when leaving office .. I think it was about 6 pages
I was posting over at Lucianne's at the time and I had to beg for help ... it was so boring I couldn't get past the 2nd page
"Would have ..."
Well, talk is always cheap, Mr. "President." And your talk is worthless.
Oh, us silly Americans! We're such simpletons, aren't we?
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