Posted on 09/26/2006 10:20:40 AM PDT by standingfirm
From behind the benign façade and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallaces 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 Wallaces face, poking his knee, and invading the commentators space.
But beyond noting the ex-presidents 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 militarys 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
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
He's too smart to try that stuff with Hillary.
O'Reilly said Clinton was a good President?? WTF??? Oh maaan, that dude must be older than I thought...He`s going senile, losing his mind. I haven`t watched him in quite a while, but I do remember that Rather interview in which RaTHer said "someone can lie and still be honest" but B.O did curse him out later on although not to his face. What I`m waiting for more than anything is somehow getting Ann Coulter to debate the Clintons, I mean even if it is just some passing meeting on the street. Somehow we got to get that together. I see Ann all the time in New York city and one time came thiiiiiiis close to picking her up in my cab (I drive a taxi) but some other cabbie got to her first. If I ever meet her all I`m going to talk about is getting her in a position to debate the Clintons (either one). It shouldn`t be hard, all Ann has to do is confront and challenge either one and I`m sure Ann wouldn`t be too put off by the idea after Hellary cursed out her book.
>>>DICK MORRIS: The real Clinton emerges...>>>
The one who bites a woman's lip during a rape and advises her to 'put some ice on that' afterward?
Yep, I saw that guy in that interview.
Morris probably is correct, but it's worth tossing a grain of salt in there: Morris has an axe to grind against both Clintons for personal (or "business personal") reasons.
The rest of the article...
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 militarys 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 didnt the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Ladens 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. 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?
IIRC, Morris has previous said he was physically attacked by Clinton when Morris worked in the White House.
"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."
This is, in essence, no different in principle than the defense used by children who, having murdered their parents, then plead to be forgiven because, after all, they're "orphans."
The defect was, as Morris notes, self-inflicted. If the CIA and FBI weren't doing a satisfactory job, why didn't Clinton fire the heads of the respective organizations? That he didn't implies that Clinton WAS satisfied with the job they were doing; thus, his complaint that HIS failure was their responsibility is illegitimate, the bastard child of a failed Presidency that was more interested in getting blown by an intern than in blowing up bin Laden.
There once was a Morris named "Dick"
Renowned for the toes that he licked
When thrown out on his head
Could have ended up dead
But he outsmarted the Arkansas hick
Yeah, me too. I disagree with Mary Matlin's version of it last nite on H&C. She said everything they do is for a reason, as if it were staged. I think he was really PO'd big time. His eyes were raging mad, like they could kill.
An eyewitness to ex-President Bill Clinton's physical attack thirteen years on his one-time senior political advisor Dick Morris has confirmed the ... |
Disbarred Arkansas lawyer, convicted perjurer and draft dodger; who cares what he says?
You recall correctly. Ever since then, I couldn't hate Morris anymore.
And he's not the first person to be attacked by Clinton or probably the last. He liked to attack women too as we all know too well.
I'm sure there are all kinds of stories we will never hear about this guy's abuse and worse.
Add "Rapist" and you'll have the complete Clinton Legacy there!
Hey how do you like in that Wallace interview Clinton says "We could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al-Qaeda was responsible.."
Well gee whiz, who`s fault was that? Who is the putz Mr. Clinton who along with Jamie S. Gorelick who so eagerly as well blamed Bush, disallowed the CIA and FBI from trading info? Clinton right here in that interview by that comment above is admitting why his administation failed in combating terror. This putz is a slick piece of work isn`t he?
There he was on live television...
Sorry Dick, it was taped on Friday.
Here's some food for thought: After the first Trade Tower in 1993 let's pretend for a second that Ronald Reagan or Bush Sr. were POTUS. Would they have:
A) Established that Bin Laden was behind the bombing and attacked him wherever he was in the world
B) Done nothing like Clinton
NUFF SAID
I'll pay to do it! What I wouldn't give to have one chance to slug Bill and/or Hillary Clinton!
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