Free Republic

Clinton fires back, and it's about time By John Nichols http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=100674&ntpid={TOP2_NTPI2} Regular readers of this column will know that it maintains no great affection for former President Bill Clinton. A Democratic Leadership Council stalwart, Clinton got elected president by promising health care and education for all and then proceeded to give the country fiscal conservatism and a corporate-sponsored free trade agenda. But there has never been any doubt that Clinton was more serious about combating terrorism than his successor, George W. Bush. The fact that Bush's supremely political presidency treats "homeland security" as a slogan rather than a necessity is...

While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was ripping President Bush's handling of American ports management, Bill Clinton was pushing for one of his favorite White House aides to be hired to defend the deal. The former president proposed to the United Arab Emirates his onetime press secretary, Joe Lockhart, as Washington spokesman for the UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World. The Lockhart deal was never consummated. But the spectacle of the two Clintons going in opposite directions on the port-management question exposed a Democratic fault line. Widespread public reaction against outsourcing control of the ports was seen by Sen. Clinton and other...

<p>Former President Bill Clinton has resisted taking potshots at U.S. foreign policy as war unfolded in Iraq -- up until now.</p> <p>On Monday, Mr. Clinton went on the offensive. "Our paradigm now seems to be: Something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us. And if they don't, they can go straight to hell," he told a symposium sponsored by Conference Board, a New York-based nonpartisan business research group.</p>

Mansour Ijaz, the Pakistani-American businessman who says he was rebuffed by the Clinton White House after negotiating a deal for the extradition of Osama bin Laden to the U.S. in 1996, has gained an important new witness who backs his story - none other than ex-President Clinton himself. Former Clinton administration officials such as senior National Security Council aide Nancy Soderberg have described Ijaz as an unreliable witness. Former Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri recently slammed him as "a liar" and "a crackpot." But a tape recording obtained exclusively by NewsMax.com shows Clinton himself confirming all the key points of...