Posted on 09/26/2006 5:07:03 AM PDT by RKV
From behind the benign façade and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace’s interview on Fox News Channel. There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know – the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation. Clinton jabbed his finger in Wallace’s face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator’s space.
But beyond noting the ex-president’s non-presidential style, it is important to answer his distortions and misrepresentations. His self-justifications constitute a mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about what the “definition of ‘is’ is” could perform.
Clinton told Wallace, “There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down.” Nobody said there was. The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9-11 is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that the precipitous American pullout after Black Hawk Down convinced him that Americans would not stand up to armed resistance.
Clinton said conservatives “were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day” after the attack which killed American soldiers. But the real question was whether Clinton would honor the military’s request to be allowed to stay and avenge the attack, a request he denied. The debate was not between immediate withdrawal and a six-month delay. (Then-first lady, now-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) favored the first option, by the way). The fight was over whether to attack or pull out eventually without any major offensive operations.
The president told Wallace, “I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill bin Laden.” But actually, the 9-11 Commission was clear that the plan to kidnap Osama was derailed by Sandy Berger and George Tenet because Clinton had not yet made a finding authorizing his assassination. They were fearful that Osama would die in the kidnapping and the U.S. would be blamed for using assassination as an instrument of policy.
Clinton claims “the CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there.” But he could replace or direct his employees as he felt. His helplessness was, as usual, self-imposed.
Why didn’t the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Laden’s involvement in terrorism? Because Clinton never took the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center sufficiently seriously. He never visited the site and his only public comment was to caution against “over-reaction.” In his pre-9/11 memoirs, George Stephanopoulos confirms that he and others on the staff saw it as a “failed bombing” and noted that it was far from topic A at the White House. Rather than the full-court press that the first terror attack on American soil deserved, Clinton let the investigation be handled by the FBI on location in New York without making it the national emergency it actually was.
In my frequent phone and personal conversations with both Clintons in 1993, there was never a mention, not one, of the World Trade Center attack. It was never a subject of presidential focus.
Failure to grasp the import of the 1993 attack led to a delay in fingering bin Laden and understanding his danger. This, in turn, led to our failure to seize him when Sudan evicted him and also to our failure to carry through with the plot to kidnap him. And, it was responsible for the failure to “certify” him as the culprit until very late in the Clinton administration.
The former president says, “I worked hard to try to kill him.” If so, why did he notify Pakistan of our cruise-missile strike in time for them to warn Osama and allow him to escape? Why did he refuse to allow us to fire cruise missiles to kill bin Laden when we had the best chance, by far, in 1999? The answer to the first question — incompetence; to the second — he was paralyzed by fear of civilian casualties and by accusations that he was wagging the dog. The 9/11 Commission report also attributes the 1999 failure to the fear that we would be labeled trigger-happy having just bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake.
President Clinton assumes that criticism of his failure to kill bin Laden is a “nice little conservative hit job on me.” But he has it backwards. It is not because people are right-wingers that they criticize him over the failure to prevent 9/11. It was his failure to catch bin Laden that drove them to the right wing.
The ex-president is fully justified in laying eight months of the blame for the failure to kill or catch bin Laden at the doorstep of George W. Bush [RKV: 96:8, I don't think there is a comparison]. But he should candidly acknowledge that eight years of blame fall on him.
One also has to wonder when the volcanic rage beneath the surface of this would-be statesman will cool. When will the chip on his shoulder finally disappear? When will he feel sufficiently secure in his own legacy and his own skin not to boil over repeatedly in private and occasionally even in public? [RKV: Never]
ROFLMAO! I'll never get to sleep at this rate. I just can't believe it! OMG. No more Wilbur?
Still ROTFLMAO --- you have not slept yet?
Hey, I slept 2 hours.
Bill Clinton is a liar plain and simple.
This is what really gets me. Everyone knows Clinton and his administration governed by polls. I don't think it has ever occurred to Clinton to simply do the right thing in spite of political expediency. So what if every conservative wanted him out of Somolia (not that I'm saying it's true), he as the President had a responsibility to do the right thing. He wasn't interested. He was only interested in his image. The Wallace intervew was a striking example of this as he painted himself as powerless to stand up against the military, CIA, FBI (ACK!), he was their commander for god's sake. If he was having a problem with them, THAT's when he should have used his famous temper.
But that's not the way Clinton's built, is it.
The real Clinton will continue to emerge.
Driven by his ego, he will think that all he has to do is spin his version even more vigorously in the public forum and the sheeple will flock to his side.
Only his handlers can keep him from making that kind of blunder ... and they're probably too intimidated by now.
What I like best, was Morris's comments that the BIGGER THE LIE--the MORE EMOTIONAL HE GETS! As a confinante' of Slick's for 20 years, if anyone would know, Morris would.
So we are still paying the price for his 'cigar' episodes. And here I thought it was his own personal life! (s/off)
Because of his use of our nation's highest office, the Oval Office, as his VERY OWN PERSONAL MASSAGE PARLOR--we paid the huge price of 9/11--are still paying the price--and will be paying for a long, long time (because he felt he could not go after Bin Laden).
Because he IGNORED the WTC bombing, enboldened Bin Laden in Black Hawk down, and because his 'hummers' made him afraid of any more "Wag the Dog" accusations--we are still paying the price.
And here I thought it was his own personal sex life that was the issue. (/s)
"THANKS, SLICK."
I am going to nap soon. IF I can stop laughing.
Yup---"Jimmuh Cahtah" and "Bubba" Clinton--the "one-two punch" of presidential incompetence.
Bill is forgetting the first rule of holes: when finding oneself in a hole, stop digging. Every time that liar opens his mouth, he convicts himself.
Payback is a real b!tch, eh? I wonder what Dick has on Bill that keeps Bill from ordering a hit?
LOL! I doubt that anyone here has had a more fun morning.
Shakespeare gives us a good understanding of Bubba. "....me thinks the gentleman doth protest to much..." I hope the shameless MainStreamMedia don't let Bubba put over this naked attempt at blame-shifting.
Bill is forgetting the first rule of holes: when finding oneself in a hole, stop digging. Every time that liar opens his mouth, he convicts himself.
You're missing what is going on here. Bill Clinton is feeling pressure, pressure that some day YOU might figure out what really happened on the road to 9/11. This headline grabbing "behavior" to you looks attention getting but it diverts your attention from the real problem.
Terrorist attacks in the continental United States did NOT start with 9/11, they started with the Iraq sponsored attack on the WTC in 1993. Bill Clinton in response to that said we need "not to overreact."
Bill Clinton didn't overreact, actually, he did the least possible. Ben Laden has been quoted as saying he found the US would not fight with the Somalia incident. Understand that Iraq believed the same thing.
When Iraq sponsored the OKC bombing in April, 1995, Clinton not only did NOTHING in response, he convered up the ties to Iraq. Jamie Gorelick, 9/11 Commissioner was in on it. She had to be on the commission. Richard Clark, the first star of the 9/11 Commission bashing Bush, remember.
And don't forget Sandy Berger stuffing TOP SECRET SPECIAL CATAGORY documents into his underwear while preparing for the 9/11 Commisson.
And then we have hundreds of witnesses who saw a missle shoot down an airliner in 1996. Let's see, who do you believe, the witnesses or a government investigation which ignores physics? You know which story the media buys.
http://www.twa800.com/eyewitnesses.htm
http://twa800.com/images/times-8-15-00.gif
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1175272/posts
So, Bill Clinton is pulling out one of his old tricks, when the fools are getting close to seeing the real story, give them SOMETHING ELSE to think about, divert, divert, divert.
Misdirection is one of the classic tactics and Bill is indeed a master of the same. That said, I wouldn't say the diversion is working. In fact, given some of what has managed to be broadcast in the M$M in the last few days (in direct contradiction of Xlinton's statements) I wonder if Bill has finally worn out his welcome (or at least the presstitutes have seen the writing on the wall, that the American people bought a clue on this subject).
He (and his sycophant followers led by James Carville) attacked Jennifer Flowers, they attacked Paula Jones, they attacked Kathleen Willey, they attacked Juanita Broaddrick, they attacked Ken Starr, they attacked his Ark state troopers, heck, they even attacked (and are still attacking) their imagined VRWC!!.
That 'defense' plan has always worked for them in the past--at least up until now. We'll see if it continues to work. I fear that it may work in a 'pre-emptive' mode to stop any further questioning of Slick's record.
I fear that any other member of the MSM will now be AFRAID or INTIMIDATED to DARE ask Slick or Hillary anything that could even POSSIBLY 'set them off'.
My question to BillyJeff would be, "If you could off your friends, Vince and Ron, why could'nt you bring yourself to whack Osama?"
Osama didn't have any inside dirt on Bubba, but Vince and Ron did. No Arkancide for you -- NEXT!
Agreed. I think most of us saw through the cheap veneer to the real Clinton, but now the rest of the world is starting to catch on...
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