Damn, Uncle Dave sure wishes we had had a man of Clinton’s intellectual caliber and understanding of history, foreign relations, politics — well, everything — in the White House these past 6 years. The quality of this intervew shows alot about both sides.
And when WILL the White House be asked/made to answer these questions, Fox News?
Fox News Sunday, Interview With President Bill Clinton, 9/22/06 (Rough Transcript)
CLINTON: What did I do? I worked hard to try and kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him. Now I never criticized President Bush and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that think Afghanistan is 1/7 as important as Iraq. And you ask me about terror and Al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive theme when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive systematic way to try to protect the country against terror. And you’ve got that little smirk on your face. It looks like you’re so clever…
WALLACE: [Laughs]
CLINTON: I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin laden. I regret it but I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could. The entire military was against sending special forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter and no one thought we could do it otherwise…We could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaeda was responsible while I was President. Until I left office. And yet I get asked about this all the time and they had three times as much time to get him as I did and no one ever asks them about this. I think that’s strange.
If you are old enough to remember Media vs. Nixon in the 70’s and Media vs. Reagan in the 80’s, then a couple of tough questions in the other direction shouldn’t be so threatening to your golden boy…
#62, Greg Allen –
Sounds like you didn’t watch Rather, Jennings and Brokaw much during their prime.
Comment by Frank IBC — 9/25/2006 @ 5:28 am
And what does that have to do with anything? This thread is more about Clinton handing Wallace’s ass to him then any of the Television newscasters. Although I notice that Fox Spews doesn’t even have a National News broadcast. Real civic minded folks.
Frank, you and James Hill have got to ease up on those stupid pills. You both are incomprehensible.
Wallace asked Donald Rumsfeld March 28, 2004:
I understand this is 20/20 hindsight, it’s more than an individual manhunt. I mean — what you ended up doing in the end was going after al Qaeda where it lived. . . . pre-9/11 should you have been thinking more about that?
. . . . What do you make of his [Richard Clarke’s] basic charge that pre-9/11 that this government, the Bush administration largely ignored the threat from al Qaeda?
. . . Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority.
9/11 didn’t happen on his watch.We will elect in 2008 the man we feel who will best protect us regardless of his other agendas or policies.This is what Hillarys hardass political stand on Iraq is about.Chris Wallace handled the interview just as he was told to.I wonder what its like to be Rupert Murdochs bitch!
Clinton is relying too much on Richard Clarke. Clarke does his best to protect Clinton, but he is not a complete partisan like Blumenthal or Ickes, and every so often the talking points melt away. He has said that Clinton made a mistake in not focusing on Bin Laden, saying that people higher than his pay grade had to decide how certain actions would have impact on policies in Yugoslavia and the Mideast peace process.
Frank –
Now on that you and I can agree. The right has certainly been blessed in its opponents & I’ve always said so.
When it comes to hits, “9/11 Conspiracy” and “Porn” have nothing on “Bubba”.
Neo, funny how you were so quick to get on that liberal high horse you missed the point of my post: Uncle Dave’s political viewpoint caused him totally misread the story. Clinton failed in this interview because he came off as a fool, something I agree he is not.
As for your comments, both men will go down as failures: Clinton for his inability to get things accomplished, Bush for his ability to get the wrong things accomplished. Which is more damning is, sadly, more a matter of perspective than body count.
I did like the way you phrased your comment, however, regarding writing history. History is written by the winners… and there’s nothing on the horizion which can be used to draw the conclusion that the left will be considered as such.
Mr. Effusion –
My previous comment was in response to Greg Allen’s comment – What patriotic American hasn’t wanted to wipe the arrogant smirk off some Fox talking head?
I was simply saying that Fox hardly holds a monopoly on smirking talking heads. And if you think that’s not true, you obviously have spent precious little time watching Rather, Jennings and Brokaw.
Rule #1 of all guide books to the US:
Never discuss politics or religion with the Americans!
🙂
Fabrizio
At least Clinton can respond with intellect. “W” and shoot-from-the-hip Dick and rummy Rumsfeld have had six years to do something and all the’ve accomplished is to bury the U.S. in debt and start a civil war in Iraq, turning it into a lab to make more terrorists. They are idiots and so are most of the GOP and the people who vote for them!
FYI/FYA – On YouTube, “certain” copies of this interview now lead to this:
“This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Fox News Network, LLC because its content was used without permission”
This must be what they mean by FAIR AND BALANCED!
#70, Frank,
Thank you for the explanation. That makes more sense and I apologize for my over reaction.
#69, James,
Nope. Initial partisan rantings are written by those with the loudest pens, evidence the wailing and tears when Reagan died. Then common sense took over and people spoke up what a dud he was.
History is corrected by the impartial, objective, intellects looking for truth. For example, while personal memories of Nixon are pretty low, Historians have a higher regard for his accomplishments. The same may be said for Truman and the reverse is true for Eisenhower and Kennedy.
Clintons a smart man and he saysd it the way it is.
Americans can’t get thier act together becuase thier always stabbing each others in the back for political gain.
#15
>Clinton failed! Clinton is a failure.
#19
>Trying and failing is Clintons trademark
Ya. Unlike his wildly successful replacement, Clinton admitted that he failed at something. Sonny-boy, on the other hand, (with the notable and expensive exception of funnelling the wealth produced by 300M Americans into the astronomically overstuffed pockets of 30,000 already-incredibly-wealthy pals and supporters), otherwise fails miserably at just about everything his puts his arrogant, semiliterate, semiconscious hand to, yet never, ever admits to a mistake nor does he change his mind. A Real Man, indeed!
QED: Clinton = failure
Dubya = Mission Accomplished!
Objective fact, as a source of understanding, is of as little use to Republicans as Merchant-Ivory films are to preschoolers. “But Mommy, the man on the teevee said “Mishin Complished. That means we won, dunnit?”
Funny how you cutesy liberals like to snark at “FauxNews” and seem to think CNN, MSNBC, and ABC are just middle of the road networks. I know it’s hard my babies, but do try to understand that not everything John Stewart tells you is true.
Fox did nothing wrong here, and it was a perfectly legit question. And yes, Wallace asked similarly tough questions of Rumsfeld on Fox in 2004 when he had a chance.
And no, Clinton was not the victim and some neocon hit job. He may have been in the late 90s…but he wasn’t on Sunday. Let’s all play nice, children.
“There was never a plan, Andrea,” Clarke answered. “What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table.”
“So there was nothing that developed, no documents or no new plan of any sort?
“There was no new plan.”
“No new strategy? I mean, I mean, I don’t want to get into a semantics
“Plan, strategy — there was no, nothing new.”
“Had those issues evolved at all from October of ‘98 until December of 2000?”
“Had they evolved? Not appreciably.”
#36: “Using American intelligence.
Comment by Mr. Neolib Fusion — 9/24/2006 @ 5:27 am”
Lie. Americazn intelligence had nothing to do with it.
In January of 1995, police in the Philippines capital of Manila accidentally discovered an al-Qaida plot to blow up 12 American airliners over the Pacific Ocean using nitroglycerin micro bombs. The attack on the Japanese airliner was seen as a test run. The plot was uncovered only because a fire broke out in the Manila apartment kitchen where the chemicals were being made into nitroglycerin. If successful, the plot would have resulted in up to 4,000 deaths. It was masterminded by Ramzi Yousef, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and planted the timed explosive on the Japanese flight, and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2006/09/us-clinton-he-foiled-plots-and-up.html