The Arkansas Monday Morning Quarterback...
Oh there was so much "sympathy", as long as we were doing nothing. Bush wasted the opportunity to do nothing after 9/11 and get cheered for it by Frenchmen.
shifting from the search for Osama bin Laden to the ousting of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
He "shifted from" the search for Osama bin Laden? Meaning we're not actually searching for him at all? Wow, that is news.
The move alienated many U.S. allies
Such as? I'm looking at our allies like Britain and Australia, they don't seem all that "alienated" to me.
It may have alienated some of our non-allies, i.e. neutrals, like France. But, so what.
created a false impression among Americans that Saddam had a key role in the al-Qaida-engineered terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Clinton said.
Right, it's a false impression that he had a "key" role. Just a role. ;-)
''I think the world was really pulling for us after 9-11,''
...to do nothing. (Except: to sign the Kyoto Treaty.)
the Bush administration ''divided the world ... to pursue our vision not because of any imminent threat but because that's what they wanted to do.''
Right. How dare they do something they want to do.
It's not like Clinton tried to nationalize health care because it was something he wanted to do, or anything. There was an imminent threat! Um, wait.
However, he said, even those initiatives suffered setbacks when administration officials ''started doing things their own way and acted like we didn't care what other people thought.''
"acted"? ;-)
Bush had antagonized allies by ignoring or rejecting the nuclear test ban treaty and agreements on global warming, the international court and other issues.
Quite so. Obviously we don't have the right to determine whether we sign treaties. Frenchmen are supposed to decide for us.
That could come back to haunt the United States on other issues on which it needs international support, Clinton said.
Yes, if we had only signed the Kyoto Treaty, France would have supported the Iraq war.
Sure.
''The people in Washington, D.C., find something wrong with all of these things, and they could be right,'' he said, ''but most people expect partnerships to be two-way streets.''
Heh. So if I'm reading correctly, our representatives "could be right" that e.g. the Kyoto Treaty is a crock, but that doesn't matter, we should sign it ANYWAY because getting swindled partnerships is a "two-way street".
Remind me, why in the heck was this guy ever considered some kind of brilliant genius, again?
Clinton was not asked, nor did he volunteer any comments, about the current uproar over revelations of brutality by U.S. prison guards against Iraqi detainees in Iraqi prisons.
Why did you report it then? Was he asked about the hockey playoffs? No? Then why didn't you report that (his not being asked, and not commenting, about the hockey playoffs) too? Weird.
''Keep in mind that we had unanimous support from the United Nations to do what we had to do, unanimous support for going into Afghanistan, for going after the Taliban,'' Clinton said.
Right, that's great. But we didn't have unanimous support for ousting Hussein, in part because of the cozy bribery relationships he had made with e.g. France. That's the facts. The point being...?
We should only ever do things for which there is unanimous support?
''They (the United Nations) participated in the hunt for bin Laden ..
Heh. The word "token" comes to mind.
they also supported giving an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to open his country to inspections for weapons of mass destruction. ''We were in good shape. What happened?
The "ultimatum" was only words and they had no intention of ever backing it up with force, that's what happened. What the hell is so hard to understand.
''There was a strong group of people in the administration who believed that Saddam Hussein was more important than Osama bin Laden and believed that dislodging him was important, without regard to whether he had weapons of mass destruction.''
So?
Clinton said U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was ''begging for four or six weeks more to finish the job'' but Bush officials cut him off and went ahead with the invasion of Iraq.
In fact, Blix had ALREADY "finished the job", he had found Saddam in violation of Resolution 1441. I don't know what he thought his "job" was, preventing the war presumably, but he had finished his actual "job".
He called it ''unbelievable'' that polls show that ''half of the American people still believe Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9-11, when there is not a shred of evidence.''
Stupid Americans, says popular ex-President Bill Clinton.
That's why we love him so, right?
Clinton was and is an unevolved adolescent.
But he was pretty good at hitting George's sink and Monica's mouth when required.
Couldn't this insufferable gas bag have a heart attack and free us all of his pestilence.