I can certainly understand why former President Bill Clinton lost his temper at Chris Wallace when the Fox News reporter asked him:
WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I got to say I was surprised most of them wanted me to ask you this question. Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President? There’s a new book out which I suspect you’ve read called the Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, Bin Laden said “I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of US troops.†Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole.
CLINTON: OK..
WALLACE: …may I just finish the question sir. And after the attack, the book says, Bin Laden separated his leaders because he expected an attack and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is 20/20.
CLINTON: No let’s talk about…
WALLACE: …but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?
CLINTON: OK, let’s talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network…ABC just had a right wing conservative on the Path to 9/11 falsely claim that it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. 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. Same people.
If there was ever a clearer example of bias in news reporting, I have yet to see it.
First of all, Wallace had the temerity to ask a question that seemed to be uppermost in viewer’s minds. Imagine that! PAYING ATTENTION TO THE PEOPLE WHO WATCH YOUR NETWORK!
Ab. So. Lute. Ly. Shameful. You’d never catch a real news network like CNN or MSNBC doing anything so “unjournalistic.”
But that wasn’t the worst of Wallace’s outrageous bias. The Fox reporter actually had the balls to take information from a book penned by a notorious, far left liberal journalist that documents the sorry history of the Clinton Administration’s response to terror to ask the former President a question that those real journalists at CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and every local reporter from Aberdeen, TX to Zion, IL never got around to asking because they were too busy fawning and groveling at the feet of The Charming One;
WTF WERE YOU THINKING, YOU NITWIT?
It really is quite telling that Clinton blames his inaction on “right wingers.” When the number one enemy of the United States boasts that that US is, in effect, a paper tiger and that he felt he could attack us with impunity all because of the tentative, agonizingly slow and tepid response from the American Administration, it speaks to a curious lack of introspection on the part of the ex-President and his blind, rabid supporters that they refuse to allow that their actions in any way contributed to the disaster that followed.
Ace is sputtering with rage:
The man simply lies. It is a breathtakingly stupid and mendacious claim that rightwingers, as he calls us, actually opposed his weak single effort to get bin Ladin. Throughout the late nineties, I was apopleptic we weren’t doing anything at all about bin Ladin. We wanted more action. Not less.The pretext for this lie is that rightwingers, myself included, did in fact “question the timing” of his one attempt to kill bin Ladin. It occurred, coincidentally enough, during the Lewinsky furor. On the eve of some testimony; can’t remember which, and it really doesn’t matter.
Conservatives did not object to this attack. We were enraged, however, that the man refused to attack bin Ladin at all until he was motivated to action by a threat to his own political safety. We were not angry he’d attacked bin Ladin; we were angry he hadn’t attacked bin Ladin before (or after, actually; anyone remember a subsequent attack?).
We were angry that the man had let bin Ladin attack us with impunity for years until he saw it as a good move politically to finally launch a poorly-timed cruise missile at bin Ladin. He was animated to action not to save American lives, but to save his own f**king political life.
I’m sure in his own mind, Clinton did not allow the Monica mess to impact his decision to let fly the cruise missiles on Afghanistan and Sudan. But Clinton, certainly one of the most talented politicians of the 20th century, knew full well what the perception would be of his military action taken in the middle of an impeachment inquiry. Wagging the dog speculation was not limited to right wingers. That scenario was on the lips of leaders around the world as well.
Lefty blogs are all agog over Clinton’s outburst. They consider it a “s smackdown.” They’re cheering on “The Big Dog,” actually believing in their delusional mindset that Clinton is “reframing the national security debate” by pointing out that Bush never tried to get Osama in 8 months while he tried exactly once in 8 years.
Oh please, please, pretty please reframe the debate just like that.
In fact, the left wishes to re-establish The Narrative that may have taken a bigger hit with the ABC semi-fictional representation of the events leading up to 9/11 than I originally thought. The Narrative’s power lay in the fact that it erased most history prior to January 20, 2001 except to highlight the brave but doomed efforts of the Clinton Administration to battle the terrorists. While they did indeed take Bin Laden seriously, what is missing from The Narrative has always been the details; the hesitancy, the reluctance to engage, the institutional roadblocks deliberately put up to thwart one agency or another, and finally the suicidal underestimation of Bin Laden’s potential to do us harm.
There were exceptions, of course. Richard Clark (damn his self promoting hide) and John O’Neil of the FBI. I would add to that list Michael Schuer of the CIA who recognized the threat but was marginalized by superiors in the agency. But we know all of this and, like Ed Morrissey points out, it is time to move on:
The time has come—it has long since come—for that history to become just that: history. None of us can pretend that Bill Clinton could ever have declared war on al-Qaeda in the manner Bush did without having a 9/11-type event as a catalyst. Not only would the Left have screamed much as they do now, albeit without the Hugo Chavez-type conspiratorial thinking, Republicans would have never given Clinton the kind of support needed to send American troops into Afghanistan. The political climate had been thoroughly poisoned by the time of the African bombings and Congress would never have put aside its deathmatch with Clinton to unite in a war effort, especially against a band of terrorists most Americans didn’t know existed.
All good points. But I would add one other. The way the left has constructed the 9/11 Narrative, it is still useful to them politically – even after 5 years. For that reason, they relish Clinton’s anger at someone asking a question that implies anything less than a strict adherence to their construct of events. They can even fantasize that The Narrative will change the political dynamics of debate over national security, although that kind of juvenile analysis should be beyond even the shallow thinkers over at Firedog Lake.
Clinton’s reaction is special because no one dared challenge him over his terrorist policies before. There were precious few questions asked about it during his Administration and even fewer since he’s left. And certainly, there were never questions asked that challenges the “approved” version of how the Clinton Administration carried out their obligations to protect the country. The Clintonistas and the left successfully buried most of this information in the 9/11 Commission Report by simply concentrating on the very real and outrageous failings of the Bush Administration in the lead up to 9/11. The rest of the history from that period went down the leftist rabbit hole and, according to Clinton and the rest of his slavering sycophants on the left, it should remain there, unseen and unspoken.
Chris Wallace should be commended for asking a question that was indeed on the minds of many of Fox News viewers. And the fact that Bill Clinton reacted the way he did speaks volumes about his being unaccustomed to ever being challenged on the issue before. His automatic fall back position of blaming “right wingers” reveals a man bereft of the capability of self-examination or shame.
But then, we knew that about him didn’t we…
11:48 am
I just went to “Think Progress” (big mistake) and read the complete interview. Then I read some of the 350+ comments. (much bigger mistake – I could’nt keep my breakfast down). Where were all of these people fawning over this guy on Think Progress when “The Big Dog†went on National and International TV - in front of hundreds of millions of people – pointed his finger straight at the cameras and said: “I dont know anyone named Monika Lewinsky!â€???????? And I actually believed him!
Right! and Pete Rose never bet on Baseball! The lefties are now calling him “classy”…… an American hero”. Try low life, lying slime ball………
11:59 am
[...] Also writing: RightWingNuthouse Tom Maquire [...]
12:51 pm
Bill Clinton – a legend in his own mind!
1:23 pm
[...] Rightwing Nuthouse [...]
2:27 pm
“The Narrative’s power lay in the fact that it erased most history prior to January 20, 2001”
And your Narrative utterly ignores the fact that the Bush administration was warned, authoritatively and repeatedly that 1) al Qaeda agents were in the U.S., 2) that they would likely try to hijack an airplane and 3) likely try to attack a major building.
The Bush response? The Taliban offered Bush bin Laden in Feb. 2001, but he never followed up. Soon after he received the urgent warning on Aug. 6, 2001, he went fishing. Even after he was told the country was “under attack,” he remained in a classroom watching children read a book.
No matter what you want to make of Clinton’s actions or inactions, they pale before those of Bush’s.
2:40 pm
The Clintonistas and the left successfully buried most of this information in the 9/11 Commission Report by simply concentrating on the very real and outrageous failings of the Bush Administration in the lead up to 9/11.
Maybe if you read the post (if you are capable of doing so) you would have noticed that this “Bushbot” (shallow thinkers inevitably lump anyone they disagree with in this category)knows full well the failures of the Bush Administration in the lead up to 9/1..
In fact, you prove a point I’ve been making for weeks; that the real problem with the ABC project and the discussion since then is that no one is blaming Bush ENOUGH for 9/11.
It is ludicrous, of course. Which is why your critique of this article is so stupid. I’m not the one with a narrative to defend here. I’ve got the facts on my side.
All you have is spin…
4:01 pm
I get more tired of this debate each time I hear it. It’s largely nothing more than political finger-pointing by both sides. Both administrations are to blame. In fact, blame can be traced back through to the Carter administration. Frankly, I’m surprised the Dems don’t focus more on Reagan who’s policy of funding Islamists in collusion with the Saudis to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan could be considered the genesis of the entire Jihadi movement. The right also never talks about Reagan and Bush the elder pulling out of Afghanistan completely, including all of our CIA connections, after the Soviet withdraw, or any number of other factors that severly limited reprisal options available to Clinton. Likewise the left doesn’t acknowledge the same limited options available to Bush before 9/11 or any number of factors that limited his ability to confront AQ.
But like Morissey said, it’s time to move on. In fact, I just now read his whole piece and agree with it 100%.
5:40 pm
Rick, help me with this one. If Clinton couldn’t take OBL because we couldn’t prove that OBL broke our laws how can Clinton then say
“I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him.”?
Double-double talk?
It is likely that the “truth” will never become history.
8:25 pm
Clinton was an exceedingly timid president. His finger was always in the air, trying to read the fickle winds of political popularity. In contrast to his successor, he spent precious little political capital. Now, he’s trying to remake himself as an activist, held back only by his political opponents (who, ironically, helped Clinton in his few accomplishments: NAFTA and welfare.) We’re in the middle of a political makeover not seen since Nixon. Bill’s got his eye on the prize: history books in place of opinion polls.
10:06 pm
Clinton had become so accustomed to the media playing defense for him, he naturally assumed that Chris Wallace would play the game. The Great Obfuscater obviously expected Wallace to go along with the usual wink-and-a-nod MSM pretensions of “I’m going to ask a couple of questions that seem tough, so you can fully explain your position.” Instead, Wallace confronted Clinton with questions he has never had to answer before an unsympathetic interviewer. It caught the Great Obfuscater like a sucker punch. He lost it, and it was ugly. Finger-wagging ugly.
While it’s true that we should concentrate on the future, it’s also true that Clinton should (for once) have to confront his own actions—without hiding behind the findings of the ‘bipartisan’ 9/11 Commission, which after all, were tainted by several of his most partisan co-obstructionists (especially Richard Ben-Veniste and Jamie Gorelick). Clinton’s (ahem) ‘lack of candor’ in the Wallace interview surprised no one.
What Clinton and his apologists don’t understand is that all the spin and revisionism in the world will not change the facts. History would not be flattering to them in any case, but will be even less so for their deliberate distortions.
10:45 pm
Kurt,
The answer to your question is kind of complex. First of all, there were competing interests in the government over how to classify terrorists like UBL. Terrorism had long been considered primarily a law-enforcement problem, and so the Justice Department and the FBI wanted to capture terrorists and do it legally so they could be legally prosecuted. The CIA, DoD and others wanted them killed. Unfortunately, the precedent set in the 1970’s was largely toward law-enforcement.
Add to this were laws put in place after CIA adventurism in the 1970’s that legally limited covert ops, especially assassination.
Over the course of the Clinton administration, the strategy slowly changed from one of capture and prosecution to one of kill, though the specific policy was still confusing. After the attempt on UBL in 1998, which almost got him, he was much more conscious about his security and we never really got the intel for another chance.
11:11 pm
Andy
Thanks for your opinion. I still believe that
It is likely that the “truth†will never become history.
Leaders used to be just that. Hell, even Nixon knew when to quit. Today we have Carter and Clinton with the xvp Gore spouting off as if they are all knowing. What they did is what they did and they should follow the tradition of keeping out of the lime light.
The issue with the Clinton statement is that he is not following the script. You can’t say that it is a legal issue and then later say you permitted a killing. It confuses the facts which are???? Besides, killing OBL would not be an assassination. He is not a head of state.
The underlying fact is that we should be focusing on those who wish to do Americans harm…Period! This bickering by the left has made us less secure. Believe me; history is replete with politicians who disagreed with policy without trying to destroy an administration. There are plenty of areas that complaints can be raised but when you do you are EXPECTED to have an answer. Not an answer that changes daily, one that you are willing to stand by.
My complaint is that both parties have moved in their own direction and have simply forgotten that it is the center that declares a winner not the parties.
What is the truth? Nobody knows because everyone has an agenda.
9:54 am
Kurt,
I think your confusion has to do with the timeframe. In the early 1990s, bin Laden had not committed a crime against the United States. At that point, Clinton is exactly right – there was no cause of action against bin Laden, just a bunch of anti-US screed from him.
It was only after the bombing of the US embassy in Kenya that bin Laden broke US laws and could become a focus of US efforts.
10:39 am
Rice was also doing Bush and teaching him the WMD thing:
http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2006/09/24/1888923-sun.html
Someone got a disease?
7:18 pm
Finally I can breath after six years of propagandic stench excreted by the Bush Administration and the Right-Winger cowards that propagate our media. The filthy scoundrels and Chris Wallace were walloped by truth. More democrats should visit talk radio, FOX, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and NBC to beat back the Conservative foul odor that permeates our land. The Wingers on talk radio are banning me (Larry Elder), or hanging up on me (cowardly Dennis Prager) and or not taking my calls (Al Rantel) because they can’t deal with truth. Today Chris had a problem. He didn’t have a hang-up button to silence Bill and he got stomped on. Meanwhile the lovesick Bush supporters want to dump the UN because they were not dumb enough to back Idiot George’s Iraq final solution.
7:22 pm
Larry:
Gee…I can’t imagine why someone would ban you or hang up on you. You’re such a quiet, rational sort of guy, not given to conspiracy theories, and very polite with people who disagree with you.
Nope…just can’t see it…
10:37 pm
President Clinton was brilliant on FOX news! Every point he made was right on the target. I only wish the current President had half of his intelligence. We wouldn’t be in this mess!
11:39 pm
Given that the Richard Clarke book really doesn’t make former President Bill Clinton’s case, I predict ..
According to the previously established rules for Clinton vs. VRWC, sometime in the next few weeks we will learn that Richard Clarke has Alzheimer’s Disease. This will render any additional information from Richard Clarke useless.
7:23 am
Good grief
Where are the damn strawberries? Clinton most certainly looked like Captain Queeg. All that were missing were the steel balls rolling through his fingers. Get a grip X-Prez. He certainly doesn’t remember his presidency the way some of us do. But, it seems to be coming back to him now. Karma has a way of catching up with all of us when we least expect it. I heard on fox news he really went off on his staff when leaving the studio. Chris looked somewhat perplexed, fearful, and amused all at the same time. It was worthy of a Saturday Night Live skit. Do it again Mr. President!
9:46 am
Ha! George W has proven he is a coward just like his wimp dad.
We need another Clinton – lies, Bj’s and all.
10:27 am
Being a republican and a republican campaign volunteer, I wasn’t surprused of FOX’s exposed deliberate bias and “unbalanced” views. The bit Fox did on clinton reapears Daily against Muslims and Arabs who love America and the American people. Fox needs to understand that we can win more people over by being persuasive and objective and not by encouriging division and hate-mongering.
4:02 pm
As an Independant it did not suprise me that a simple question to Clinton would set him off. Bill Clinton did not implode, he exploded witgh 45 minutes of “I” this “I” that.
Bill’s diatribe was soon proven a lie by none other than Clark, who Clinton used his name as his escape. Bill lied about “that woman” and he lied again ! Blame it on the “right wingers”, who ever that is ? Ask Hillary she knows from her lie about Monica.
Well not much to say, exce3pt Goodluck on your legacy Bill.
4:46 pm
CLINTON: Legacy
Failed presidency
Failed mariage
Failed human being
enough said
12:30 am
Actually, I am quite the nice, polite, quiet, rational sort of guy, not given to conspiracy theories. To actually go on talk radio and communicate to America goes against my humble introverted nature. I only do it because the lies told by the Right that are apparently effective in getting incompetent and ineffective Republicans elected; are also simultaneously good at getting Americans killed. The Right-Wingers that infest our public airways have called me some of everything legally possible. I struck back and they turned into a bunch of girly-men “victocrats” and demanded that I apologize, because I dared say the word lie! Those sissies can’t stand up to a plainspoken American. One on one or as a group I can beat them down with the truth. They know this. They need lies to get Republicans elected. Their banning me was simply an excuse to get me off the air because America is in an election season. They do this every time it gets close to vote casting time. Now while you may call it my conspiracy theory- they call it good strategy.
So you’ve struck your first unwarranted direct blow against me. I’m a big guy. I can take it. Consider it a freebee. To all lying Right Wingers- the gloves are off, the truth is on.
To: All others
Re: Chris Wallace’s attempted ambush of Clinton
What a partisan slime ball Chris Wallace is. The Clinton interview came on the heals of the chock-full of lies Republican infomercial called the “Path to 9/11â€. The FOX News hit-man was in control of that interview with Clinton and he could have kept control by using the first half of the agreed upon allocation of time to ask questions that related only to Clinton’s recent fund-raising activities. Chris could have then asked single point questions, one at a time about any other subject matter during the time that remained. But that’s not what he did. In his eagerness to nail Clinton on the Bin Laden issue he jumped into Right-Wing Super Hero mode (trying to please his e-mail groupies) and hit Bill with a haymaker loaded with four or five items. This roundhouse also had a nasty accusatory twist to it. What a disrespectful thing to do. As the former President was systematically chewing up Chris’ knuckle sandwich and spitting it out, one bone at a time, Chris (in obvious pain, vainly) tried to regain the upper hand by interrupted Bill time and time again. Then the cable goon tried to toss another three point loaded sucker punch into the mix only to get his head chewed off. He finally conceded and tucked the remainder of his crooked tail between his wobbly legs and cowardly finished the interview, a shaken and smaller nub of a Conservative Attack Hack Dog. He got his posterior kicked but good! What was left of Chris (the punk formally thought of as a man) could only muster a cheep shot directed at Bill, after he left the premises. Some hours later the pathetic Airheads on “Fox and Friends†had to come to Chris’ aid and lick his wounds. They are real good at that. The rest of the media joined in on the orgy, servicing the exposed area where Bill left his shoe imprint on Chris’ back-side by calling the dung slinger “professional†in his antics that attempted to directly blamed Clinton for Bin Laden having survived the Nineties. The Conservatives blamed Bubba even as the Right ridiculed Bill for every bomb he dropped. Chris came to that interview with a load of bull and Clinton made him eat it.
Larry in L.A. (Banned but not out)
7:16 pm
Sleep tight America,
It’s Larry and he’s here to save us from our stupid selves.
I for one, am thankful.
Roger