OHhhh WOe is me...
whys everybody always pickin on ME???
Posted on 10/02/2006 2:12:09 PM PDT by knighthawk
A week after Bill Clinton lashed out at anchor Chris Wallace's questioning on "Fox News Sunday," prominent Democrats were still debating among themselves whether the former president's performance was good or bad for their party. But they all disregarded a harsh but widely overlooked rebuke of Clinton the next morning. On Sunday, Clinton assailed Wallace for "your nice little conservative hit job on me" in questioning his determination as president to get Osama bin Laden. On CBS's "Early Show" Monday, the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit during the Clinton administration, Michael Scheuer, said the al-Qaida leader "is alive today" because Clinton and his top lieutenants refused to kill him. "It's just an incredible kind of situation," said Scheuer, "for the American people over the weekend to hear their former president mislead them."
Scheuer's blunt remonstrance goes to the heart of what probably impelled Clinton's finger pointing on national television. Rather than attempting to shape the midterm campaign, as Republicans believe, he was interested in protecting his legacy. No former president in the last half-century has seemed so sensitive to critical assessments of his tenure.
That was demonstrated in the recent New Yorker article about Clinton by the magazine's editor, David Remnick. He reported a 20-minute Clinton tirade, at a dinner with virtual strangers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, about the Whitewater investigation that led to his impeachment. Earlier, Remnick described Clinton as "infuriated by the way the [Bush] administration's rhetoric painted anyone who criticized any aspect of its policy in Iraq as weak on national security."
Clinton grows doubly infuriated by implication of such weakness by him during his presidency. Although the intensity of his outburst against Wallace was unplanned, he was ready to upbraid anybody who questioned his performance. Unexpected by him was a rebuttal by a CIA professional never confused with being a Bush acolyte.
Scheuer resigned from the CIA in 2004 after 22 years' service to publish Imperial Hubris -- a withering assault on performances by both Clinton and Bush. As a critic of Israel and Saudi Arabia alike, Scheuer fits no conventional ideological mold.
In his role of CBS News terrorism analyst, Scheuer was asked to comment on Clinton's Sunday performance. To claim that the CIA could not verify that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the USS Cole, said Scheuer, "the former president seems able to deny facts with impunity."
Scheuer continued: "He defames the CIA ... and the men and women who risked their lives to give their administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden." Asked whether Bush was no less responsible for letting bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in Afghanistan, Scheuer replied: "The fact of the matter is that the Bush administration had one chance that they botched and the Clinton administration had eight to 10 chances that they refused to try. At least at Tora Bora, our forces were on the ground."
What Clinton as president did or did not do about bin Laden is less relevant to Democratic politicians than its impact on the midterm elections. While most applauded the former president for energizing Democratic voters, one of the party's shrewdest strategists told me it was a mistake to remove political focus from the biggest GOP liability: the war in Iraq.
Republican insiders, meanwhile, saw a Democratic plot, mapped by Clinton's longtime political advisers, James Carville and Paul Begala, to blunt the GOP comeback. On NBC's "Today" program, they agreed that their chief had just stiffened the backbone of Democrats.
Actually, Scheuer delivered a message uncongenial to Democrats and Republicans: "Both President Bush and President Clinton have been very misleading to the American people, telling them we're at war because of our freedoms and our liberties and because of gender equality and because of elections. None of that is true. We're at war because of what we do in the Islamic world." Those words go unheard by politicians seeking advantage in the midterm elections.
Imperial Hubris was written later, and, in it, Scheuer contradicts some of his points in Through Our Enemies' Eyes, claiming that he had gotten it wrong in the first book. Given that the second book is more of an attack on Bush, some skeptics suspect that facts in the first book got in the way of arguments in the second, so the facts had to be denied. Unfornately, I've forgotten what was at issue here. So, Scheuer has an agenda. I would rank him high above Richard Clarke, but then Clarke's reputation for veracity ranks only slightly higher than Clintons, IMHO.
That is quite an agenda. So we are at war because of what we do in Indonesia ?
see post #21
c # 21
Are you linking a truthout editorial as supporting material or as a joke?
Thanks for all of that information.
Hey Woodward put this in your next book, a-hole.
The way in which the MSM treats and reports on Republicans is completely different for ANY given situation, than it is for Democrats.
Watch HOW fast this Foley debacle dissappears from the NEWS, IF [when?] somehow this is PROVEN to be a DNC/DIM sting operation done for political purposes right before the election!!
I think there are at least two journalists who are very tough interviewers: One is Chris Wallace who, as any observer of FOX will know, is equally persistent with good follow-ups for ALL guests. He didn't let Rumsfeld or several others in the administration off the hot seat in his interviews.
The other is Tim Russert who, despite his Democratic background, is also a tough examiner. His great interrogation and exposure of Jeb Bush's gubernatorial opponent was a factor in Jeb's electoral victory.
Too many reporters are just shills for some ideology or party and waste everyone's time with softball questions -- Chris Matthews e.g.? - but a good reporter does his homework, knows the issues, and the past viewpoints of the ones he's interviewing.
bttt
Yea, I guess. It's just so frustrating as illegal immigration grows and all the crap that's NOW, we talk about then...it's just useless, IMHO.
The left-wing source attacks Michael Scheuer for his lies, including for his lies against the Bush Administration.
If anyone had a reason to protect him, it would be the far Left.
Yet they don't.
Based on this comment of his: "We're at war because of what we do in the Islamic world", I'd say not.
These were the folks that said Rove was going to be indicted.
And you get your information from Truthout?
no thanks
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