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Skriven 2006-09-27 11:20:00 av Noel Sheppard (1:397/22)
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Ärende: Clinton's Hysterical Revisions!
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Bill Clinton, Bin Laden, and Hysterical Revisions
September 25th, 2006

Last week, former president Bill Clinton took some time out of his busy
dating schedule to have a not so friendly chat with Chris Wallace of Fox
News Sunday. Given his rabidity, Mr. Clinton might consider taking a few
milligrams of Valium the next time he allows himself to face "fair and
balanced" questions, assuming once wasn't enough that is.

This wasn't Mr. Clinton's finest hour. In fact, it could be by far the
worst performance of his career, which is saying a lot given that his
acting skills were typically much more apparent than his policy-making
acumen when he was in office.

From the onset, Mr. Clinton seemed ill at ease. This is understandable, as
he didn't see the normally comforting initials of the "Clinton News
Network" proudly displayed on the video cameras in front of him. But, this
doesn't absolve him of appearing before the American people as if he were
Norman Bates just questioned about his mother.

On the other hand, maybe asking the former president anything of
consequence these days will elicit such volatility, as the fireworks
started as soon as Wallace brought up historically factual statements made
in a new book, The Looming Tower. In it, author Lawrence Wright addressed
how Osama bin Laden had indicated that when American troops pulled out of
Somalia in 1993, he and his al Qaeda buddies saw this as an indication of
American weakness.

Although this certainly couldn't have been the first time he had heard
this, it didn't sit very well with Mr. Clinton, who lashed out in a fury
akin to a president that had just been accused of having sexual relations
with an intern:

    I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans
    who now say that I didn't do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with
    Bin Laden. All of President Bush's neocons claimed that I was too
    obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn't have a single meeting
    about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right
    wingers who now say that I didn't do enough said that I did too much.

Republicans claimed that Clinton was obsessed with bin Laden? He did too
much to try to capture the infamous terrorist leader?

Do the facts support such assertions, or is this the typical Clinton modus
operandi: when questioned about your own mistakes, bring up Republicans,
neocons, and conservatives - the liberal equivalent of lions and tigers
and bears.oh my - and how it's all some kind of a conspiracy the
complexities of which only Oliver Stone fully grasps.

Historically this line of attack has worked quite well with an adoring
interviewer that buys such drivel hook, line, and sinker. However, what
Mr. Clinton and his ilk seem to forget regularly is a recent invention
known as the Internet. It is indeed odd the former president is unaware of
this, inasmuch as his vice president created it.

Regardless, this tool - with the assistance of search engines and services
such as LexisNexis - allows folks to go back in the past to accurately
identify the truth. Sadly, as has often been the case with the rantings of
the Clintons, their grasp of the past is as hazy as their understanding of
what the word "is" means. At least that is the charitable interpretation.

Nothing but GOP support for getting bin Laden

With that in mind, a thorough LexisNexis search identified absolutely no
instances of high-ranking Republicans ever suggesting that Mr. Clinton was
obsessed with bin Laden, or did too much to apprehend him prior to the
bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000.  Quite the contrary, Republicans
were typically highly supportive of Clinton's efforts in this regard.

As a little background, prior to the August 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in
Africa, there is hardly any mention of bin Laden by President Clinton in
American news transcripts. For the most part, the first real discussion of
the terrorist leader by the former president - or by any U.S. politicians
or pundits for that matter - began after these bombings, and escalated
after the American retaliation in Afghanistan a few weeks later.

At the time, the former president was knee-deep in the Monica Lewinsky
scandal, so much so that the press was abuzz with the possibility that
Clinton had performed these attacks to distract the American people from
his extracurricular activities much as in the movie Wag the Dog.

Were there high-ranking Republicans that piled on this assertion? Hardly.
As the Associated Press reported on the day of the attacks, Speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) said the following on August 20, 1998:

    Well, I think the United States did exactly the right thing. We cannot
    allow a terrorist group to attack American embassies and do nothing.
    And I think we have to recognize that we are now committed to engaging
    this organization and breaking it apart and doing whatever we have to
    to suppress it, because we cannot afford to have people who think that
    they can kill Americans without any consequence. So this was the right
    thing to do.

Gingrich was not alone in his support. CNN's Candy Crowley reported on
August 21, 1998, the day after cruise missiles were sent into Afghanistan:


    With law makers scattered to the four winds on August vacation,
    congressional offices revved up the faxes. From the Senate majority
    leader [Trent Lott], "Despite the current controversy, this Congress
    will vigorously support the president in full defense of America's
    interests throughout the world."

Crowley continued:

    "The United States political leadership always has and always will
    stand united in the face of international terrorism," said the
    powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
    Jesse Helms.

It was vintage rally around the flag, just as they did for Ronald Reagan
when he bombed Libya, for George Bush when he sent armed forces to the
Gulf.

The Atanta Journal-Constitution reported the same day:

    "Our nation has taken action against very deadly terrorists opposed to
    the most basic principles of American freedom," said Sen. Paul
    Coverdell, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations
    Committee. "This action should serve as a reminder that no one is
    beyond the reach of American justice."

Former vice president Dan Quayle was quoted by CNN on August 23, 1998:

    I don't have a problem with the timing.  You need to focus on the act
    itself.  It was a correct act.  Bill Clinton took-made a decisive
    decision to hit these terrorist camps.  It's probably long overdue.
    [emphasis added]

Were there some Republican detractors? Certainly. Chief amongst them was
Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana:

    I think we fear that we may have a president that is desperately
    seeking to hold onto his job in the face of a firestorm of criticism
    and calls for him to step down.

Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) also questioned the timing at first.
However, other Republicans pleaded with dissenters on their side of the
aisle to get on board the operation, chief amongst them, Gingrich himself.
As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Speaker felt the "Wag
the Dog" comparisons were "sick":

    "Anyone who saw the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, anyone who saw the
    coffins come home, would not ask such a question," said the House
    speaker, referring to the 12 Americans killed in the embassy bombings.


In fact, Gingrich did everything within his power to head off Republican
criticism of these attacks as reported by the Boston Globe on August 23,
1998:

    Indeed, Gingrich even saw to it that one of his political associates,
    Rich Galen, sent a blast-Fax to conservative talk radio hosts urging
    them to lay off the president on the missile strikes, and making sure
    they knew of Gingrich's strong support. [emphasis added]

    That's the same Rich Galen, by the way, who is openly urging
    Republican congressional candidates to try to take political advantage
    of the president's sex scandal in their television advertising this
    fall.

Sound like Republicans were complaining about President Clinton obsessing
over bin Laden? Or, does it seem that Mr. Clinton pulled this concept out
of his. hat in front of Chris Wallace, and ran 99 yards with the ball,
albeit in the wrong direction?

Regardless, in the end, sanity prevailed, and both Specter and Coats got
on board the operation:

    After reviewing intelligence information collected on bin Laden,
    Specter said: "I think the president acted properly."

As for "neocons," one so-called high-ranking member, Richard Perle, wrote
the following in an August 23, 1998, op-ed published in the Sunday Times:

    For the first time since taking office in 1993, the Clinton
    administration has responded with some measure of seriousness to an
    act of terror against the United States. This has undoubtedly come as
    a surprise to Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist believed to have
    been behind the bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,
    and to the regimes in Afghanistan and Sudan who provide him with
    sanctuary and support.

    Until now they, along with other terrorists and their state sponsors
    in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea, have manoeuvred, plotted,
    connived and killed with confidence that the United States would do
    little or nothing in retaliation.

    So Thursday's bombing is a small step in the right direction. More
    important, it reverses, at least for now, a weak and ineffective
    Clinton policy that has emboldened terrorists and confirmed that
    facilitating terror is without cost to the states that do it.

Does that sound like a "Bush neocon" claiming that Clinton was "obsessed
with bin Laden" to you?

In reality, the only person that appears to have said that Clinton was
fixated with the al Qaeda leader was Richard Clarke, who stated the
following on CNN on March 24, 2004:

    Bill Clinton was obsessed with getting bin Laden. Bill Clinton ordered
    bin Laden assassinated. He ordered not only bin Laden assassinated but
    all of his lieutenants.

Well, at least somebody felt Clinton was obsessed with Osama. But Clinton
referred to Clarke quite favorably during his tirade.

Moving forward, conservative support for Clinton's Afghanistan attacks
didn't end in the weeks that followed. On October 25, 1998, high-ranking
Republican senator Orrin Hatch of Utah said the following on CNN:

    You've seen the great work of the FBI and the CIA in particular with
    regard to the Osama bin Laden matters.

Yet, maybe more curious than the delusion by Mr. Clinton that Republicans
were claiming he was obsessed with bin Laden is the fact that he believes
he was. After all, if Clinton had been so focused on this terrorist leader
that Republicans would have thought it was over-kill, wouldn't there be
indications of this obsession in the record?

Quite the contrary, much as there is no evidence of any Republican
expressing such an opinion, there is no evidence that anti-terrorism
efforts were a huge focus of the Clinton administration. For instance,
just five months after the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa,
President Clinton gave a State of the Union address.

Think terrorism or the capture of bin Laden was a central focus to the
supposedly obsessed former president? Hardly. In a one-hour, seventeen
minute speech to the nation on January 19, 1999, this is all President
Clinton had to say about such issues:

    As we work for peace, we must also meet threats to our nation's
    security, including increased danger from outlaw nations and
    terrorism. We will defend our security wherever we are threatened-as
    we did this summer when we struck at Osama bin Laden's network of
    terror.

    The bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania reminds us again of
    the risks faced every day by those who represent America to the world.

    So let's give them the support they need, the safest possible
    workplaces, and the resources they must have so America can continue
    to lead.

    We must work to keep terrorists from disrupting computer networks.  We
    must work to prepare local communities for biological and chemical
    emergencies, to support research into vaccines and treatments.

Furthermore, twelve months later, even though he spoke for almost an hour
and a half during his final State of the Union address on January 27,
2000, according to a LexisNexis search, the name Osama bin Laden was never
mentioned. This appears almost impossible to believe given revelations
that very morning about a connection between the individual apprehended
trying to cross the Canadian border with explosives in December and bin
Laden.

So much for obsession.

Sadly, this entire incident speaks volumes about how the press have given
Clinton a pass for his transgressions, and, maybe more important, the
danger of such negligence. When one watches this interview, it is easy to
see a man that is unused to challenging questions from the media. After
all, this is the first time that Clinton agreed to be on Fox News Sunday,
and, as a result, he's become so accustomed to the softballs fed to him by
folks like Tim Russert and George Stephanopoulos that he feels it's his
right to not be challenged.

Just look at some of the disdain Clinton showed for his interviewer all
because he was asked a question he didn't want to answer:

    You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of
    criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is going to get a
    lot of criticism from your viewers for supporting my work on Climate
    Change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you'd
    spend half the time talking about.You said you'd spend half the time
    talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion dollars plus
    over three days from 215 different commitments. And you don't care.

Or, how about this wonderful statement by a former president:

    And you've got that little smirk on your face. It looks like you're so
    clever.

Or this one:

    So you did FOX's bidding on this show. You did your nice little
    conservative hit job on me.

Just imagine President Bush speaking this way to a member of the media
when he is being grilled either during a press conference, or in the
middle of any of his interviews since he became president. Or getting in
the face of his interviewer and tapping on the host's notepad that's
sitting on his lap.

Would this be acceptable? Not a chance. However, such was the behavior of
America's 42nd president. And, as much as he and his troops appear to be
aggressively defending his actions to preserve his legacy, they have
failed to recognize that such displays in front of a well-regarded member
of the press will defeat their purposes no matter how much they try to
rationalize them.

In the end, it's not clear which is more surprising: Mr. Clinton once
again lying to the American people and disgracing himself so, or that he
didn't realize that in his self-absorbed desire to revise history for the
benefit of posterity, he was actually doing himself more harm than good.

Noel Sheppard is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.  He is also
contributing editor to the Media Research Center's NewsBusters.org, and a
contributing writer to its Business & Media Institute. He weclomes
feedback.

Noel Sheppard


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