Posted on 10/05/2002 9:19:52 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has so far declined to comment on her husband's shocking address to Britain's annual Labour Party conference this week in Blackpool, England, a speech described by British newspapers as "a devastating attack" on President Bush.
Calls requesting comment from the Senator or her spokespersons, placed by NewsMax.com on Friday to her offices in New York and Washington, D.C., have gone unreturned, with Clinton herself volunteering no public reaction.
Though U.S. news coverage of Mr. Clinton's speech has downplayed the unprecedented attack on his successor, a move that completely violated protocol for former presidents, British press accounts have been far more candid.
In fact, the ex-president pulled out all the stops in an effort to portray Britain's Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair as the world's last best hope to rein in America's reckless cowboy president as he plunges the West into war in the Mideast.
And in an even sharper break with the tradition that Americans not criticize their own government from foreign soil, Clinton went so far as to paint Bush as an illegitimate president, suggested he was not working hard enough to effect "non-military regime change" in Iraq, and complained that it's wrong for the U.S. to try to dominate the world.
He also blamed the Reagan administration for giving Saddam Hussein chemical weapons that he later used to gas the Kurds in the 1980's, a charge flatly denied last week by Reagan Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger.
In a naked attempt to pit Prime Minister Blair against the Bush White House, Clinton made it clear to the Blackpool conference that he was counting on British leadership to put the brakes on Bush's preemptive strike policy towards Iraq.
"Weighing the risks and making the calls are what we elect leaders to do, and I can tell you that as an American, and a citizen of the world, I am glad that Tony Blair will be central to weighing the risks and making the call," the top Democrat told the Labourites.
"The rest of us should support his efforts in the United Nations and until they fail we do not have to cross bridges we would prefer not to cross," he added.
The ex-president went out of his way to portray Britain's governing party as being at odds with "conservatives in America."
"I think this whole Iraq issue is made more difficult for some of you because of the differences you have with the conservatives in America over other matters, over the criminal court and the Kyoto Treaty and the comprehensive test ban treaty," he told the Labourites.
In an attempt to capitalize on growing anti-American sentiment amongst the British left, Clinton reminded his audience that he also disagreed with the Bush administration "on nearly everything: on budget policy, tax policy, on education policy, on environmental policy, on health care policy. I have a world of disagreements with them."
Then, in one of the uglier moments of his speech, the former U.S. president portrayed Bush's 2000 election as illegitimate, complaining sarcastically, "The election was so close in America that they won it fair and square -- 5 to 4 at the Supreme Court."
"We should actually be glad, though," Clinton continued to grouse. "Because there were seven Republicans and only two Democrats on the Supreme Court -- and two of those Republicans - God bless them, they will be rewarded in heaven - they actually took the decision that we should count votes when the American people vote, and I appreciate that."
Clinton said that while he supported "regime change" in Iraq, he disagreed with the White House's support for preemptive military action against Iraq.
"If the inspections go forward, I believe we should still work for a regime change in Iraq in non-military ways," he told the Labourites, apparently oblivious to reports this week on that U.S. aircraft patrolling the no fly zone have been fired upon by Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries.
Then, playing right into the hands of Baghdad's propaganda machine, Clinton warned, "A preemptive action today, however well justified, may come back with unwelcome consequences in the future..... I do not care how precise your bombs and your weapons are -- when you set them off, innocent people will die."
While downplaying the Iraqi threat, the ex-president seemed particularly concerned that his own country had grown too powerful.
"You cannot have an integrated world and have your say all the time. And America can lead the world towards that, but we cannot dominate and run the world in that direction," he told the Blackpool crowd.
Clinton's most outrageously partisan assault on the U.S. came when he told his foreign audience that the Reagan administration was to blame for giving Saddam Hussein the technology he needed to launch his bioweapons program, technology later deployed against the Kurds, killing hundreds of thousands.
The West has a lot to answer for in Iraq, " the ex-president told the Labourites. "When Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds and the Iranians -- there was hardly a peep in the West because he was (fighting) Iran. Evidence has now come to light that in the early 1980s the United States may have even supplied him with the materials necessary to start the bio-weapons program."
"We cannot forget that we are not blameless in the misery under which they suffer," Clinton charged.
The former U.S. leader leveled the allegation that the U.S. shared responsibility for the Iraqi genocide despite a nationally televised denial just days earlier from Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.
"It's a total lie for one thing. Let's just start with that," Weinberger said responding to the bioweapons charge, in a Sept. 30 interview with Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes. "It's not even close to being anything remotely resembling the truth," he added.
Clinton thinks he's God! Excuse me while I go hurl.
Clinton knows who deserves a reward in heaven because he's a theologian...Clinton the divine.
Of course, it depends on what the meaning of "divine" is.
Sorry, I am not quite sure what you mean here. Could you clarify this a bit for me?
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