Bill Clinton chief liar lies again.

I wonder if Osama is dead yet? The guy has a $250 million price on his head, it is not like he can expand his social network under that condition and it might be hard to get the best doctors.

Personally I think Saddam's biggest problem was that he refused to enslave future generations of Iraqis by taking the loans from the western bankers so that US construction companies could go in and buld things for his country. Then he priced oil in Euros... big no no on his part. I recall the Tri Lateral analysts talking about the construction projects in Kuwait that would be let after the first Iraq war, before the war even started. They wound up giving the work to Japanese companies. Maybe this second war is just to even the score on that and give some work to the American construction guys.

This whole "Bush lied people died" thing is sounding more pathetic to me as time goes on, I don't think the anti-war wing of the Democratic party is going to win any seats in congress with that tiresome mantra.

The previous admin talked about Saddam having WMD. From the Wall Street Journal some quotes from John Kerry, both Clintons, Kennedy, Pelosi, Cohen, Graham, Levine, Gore, you know, all those people that are absolutely worshipped by the left:

---------------- following is qoted from Wall Street Journal --------------------

Here is Bill Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.
Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:

Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.
Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:

He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.

Finally, Mr. Clinton's secretary of defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained "absolutely convinced" of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.
Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. A few months after Mr. Clinton and his people made the statements I have just quoted, a group of Democratic senators, including such liberals as Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urged the President "to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs."

Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.
This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Mr. Bush succeeded Mr. Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House.

In a letter to the new president, a group of senators led by Bob Graham declared:

There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical, and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.

Sen. Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Mr. Bush's benefit what he had told Mr. Clinton some years earlier:

Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed, speaking in October 2002:

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed as well:

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.
Even more striking were the sentiments of Bush's opponents in his two campaigns for the presidency. Thus Al Gore in September 2002:

We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.
And here is Mr. Gore again, in that same year:

Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

Now to John Kerry, also speaking in 2002:

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force--if necessary--to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.
Perhaps most startling of all, given the rhetoric that they would later employ against Mr. Bush after the invasion of Iraq, are statements made by Sens. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, also in 2002:

Kennedy: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Byrd: "The last U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons."

 

Those with a brain, can watch...

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/24/clinton-video/

 

Another non answer- How many times did you watch it before you finally believed Clinton's lies z10?

 

This guy was smoking Lewinsky flavored cigars at the time.

 

I understand, you don't have a brain...

 

Posted at 12:17 pm on September 24, 2006 by Allahpundit

I tried to cut all the best parts but you’re well advised to read the transcript. Righties are going to have a field day fact-checking him. Points to take away:

1. He showed leadership by not pulling out of Somalia while the bodies were still warm.

2. Contrary to Chris Wallace’s assertion, Bin Laden wasn’t involved in Mogadishu. Which, actually, wasn’t Chris Wallace’s assertion.

3. He was all set to do exactly what Bush ended up doing after 9/11 except that he couldn’t get basing rights in Uzbekistan and the CIA and FBI wouldn’t “certify” that Bin Laden was responsible for the embassy bombings. Really? I’d be curious to know what Michael Scheuer has to say about that. I’d also be curious to know why, if the FBI refused to certify, Osama’s been on their Ten Most Wanted list for his role in the embassy bombings since June 1999.

4. He had eight years to confront Islamic extremism, four years to address Bin Laden’s declaration of war on the U.S., and two and a half years to respond to the embassy bombings, yet somehow Republicans had “three times” as long as Clinton did to get him.

5. Despite the fact that it’s central to a debate that’s been raging for weeks, Wallace’s question about whether he did enough to eliminate Bin Laden is a “conservative hit job” designed to appease Fox’s right-wing viewers, who’ll all be very, very sore when they find out Rupert Murdoch is working with Clinton on climate change. Presumably Wallace should have stuck to the script followed by Meredith “Giggles” Vieira, CNN schlockmeister Larry King, who bombarded Clinton with tough questions like “How’s your health?” and “Have you seen Gore’s movie?”, and of course Keith Olbermann, who played his part perfectly except for the lack of a blue dress.

6. The “entire military” was against using special forces to go in and get Bin Laden, thereby rendering Clinton powerless under the “Entire Military” exception to the Constitution’s commander-in-chief clause.

7. John Warner, Lindsey Graham, and the rest of the McCain anti-belly slap contingent are proof that some Republicans still believe in the Constitution.

8. Republicans will do well in November if terrorism is the central issue because Americans know the multicultural left is hopelessly ideologically compromised on Islamic extremism. Which is to say, because Americans will be “scared.”

_____________________________

Member of the ET Anti-Troll Brigade

Iustus ignarus troll

 

Bill Clinton’s Excuses

No matter what he says, the record shows he failed to act against terrorism.

By Byron York

“I worked hard to try and kill him,” former president Bill Clinton told Fox News Sunday. “I tried. I tried and failed.”

”Him” is Osama bin Laden. And in his interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, the former president based nearly his entire defense on one source: Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, the book by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke. “All I’m asking is if anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book,” Clinton said at one point in the interview. “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,” he said at another. “All you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s findings and you know it’s not true,” he said at yet another point. In all, Clinton mentioned Clarke’s name 11 times during the Fox interview.

But Clarke’s book does not, in fact, support Clinton’s claim. Judging by Clarke’s sympathetic account — as well as by the sympathetic accounts of other former Clinton aides like Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon — it’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden. Rather, he tried to convince — as opposed to, say, order — U.S. military and intelligence agencies to kill bin Laden. And when, on a number of occasions, those agencies refused to act, Clinton, the commander-in-chief, gave up.

Clinton did not give up in the sense of an executive who gives an order and then moves on to other things, thinking the order is being carried out when in fact it is being ignored. Instead, Clinton knew at the time that his top military and intelligence officials were dragging their feet on going after bin Laden and al Qaeda. He gave up rather than use his authority to force them into action.

Examples are all over Clarke’s book. On page 223, Clarke describes a meeting, in late 2000, of the National Security Council “principals” — among them, the heads of the CIA, the FBI, the Attorney General, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the secretaries of State, Defense. It was just after al Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole. But neither the FBI nor the CIA would say that al Qaeda was behind the bombing, and there was little support for a retaliatory strike. Clarke quotes Mike Sheehan, a State Department official, saying in frustration, “What’s it going to take, Dick? Who the shit do they think attacked the Cole, fuckin’ Martians? The Pentagon brass won’t let Delta go get bin Laden. Hell they won’t even let the Air Force carpet bomb the place. Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?”

That came later. But in October 2000, what would it have taken? A decisive presidential order — which never came.

The story was the same with the CIA. On page 204, Clarke vents his frustration at the CIA’s slow-walking on the question of killing bin Laden. “I still to this day do not understand why it was impossible for the United States to find a competent group of Afghans, Americans, third-country nationals, or some combination who could locate bin Laden in Afghanistan and kill him,” Clarke writes. “I believe that those in CIA who claim the [presidential] authorizations were insufficient or unclear are throwing up that claim as an excuse to cover the fact that they were pathetically unable to accomplish the mission.”

Clarke hit the CIA again a few pages later, on page 210, on the issue of the CIA’s refusal to budget money for the fight against al Qaeda. “The formal, official CIA response was that there were [no funds],” Clarke writes. “Another way to say that was that everything they were doing was more important than fighting al Qaeda.”

The FBI proved equally frustrating. On page 217, Clarke describes a colleague, Roger Cressey, who was frustrated after meeting with an FBI representative on the subject of terrorism. “That fucker is going to get some Americans killed,” Clarke reports Cressey saying. “He just sits there like a bump on a log.” Clarke adds: “I knew he was talking about an FBI representative.”

So Clinton couldn’t get the job done. Why not? According to Clarke’s pro-Clinton view, the president was stymied by Republican opposition. “Weakened by continual political attack,” Clarke writes, “[Clinton] could not get the CIA, the Pentagon, and FBI to act sufficiently to deal with the threat.”

Republicans boxed Clinton in, Clarke writes, beginning in the 1992 campaign, with criticism of Clinton’s avoidance of the draft as a young man, and extending all the way to the Lewinsky scandal and the president’s impeachment. The bottom line, Clarke argues, is that the commander-in-chief was not in command. From page 225:

Because of the intensity of the political opposition that Clinton engendered, he had been heavily criticized for bombing al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, for engaging in ‘Wag the Dog’ tactics to divert attention from a scandal about his personal life. For similar reasons, he could not fire the recalcitrant FBI Director who had failed to fix the Bureau or to uncover terrorists in the United States. He had given the CIA unprecedented authority to go after bin Laden personally and al Qaeda, but had not taken steps when they did little or nothing. Because Clinton was criticized as a Vietnam War opponent without a military record, he was limited in his ability to direct the military to engage in anti-terrorist commando operations they did not want to conduct. He had tried that in Somalia, and the military had made mistakes and blamed him. In the absence of a bigger provocation from al Qaeda to silence his critics, Clinton thought he could do no more.

In the end, Clarke writes, Clinton “put in place the plans and programs that allowed America to respond to the big attacks when they did come, sweeping away the political barriers to action.”

But the bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the will to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the will to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror.

___________________________

Member of the ET Anti-Troll Brigade

Iustus ignarus troll

 

Bill Clinton, in that Fox News interview:

<i>"OK, now let’s look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al Qaida was a growing concern in October of ‘93."</i>

Not a living soul in the world... except for President Clinton's own Justice Department. The U.S. Justice Department's indictment of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda's military commander, Mohammed Atef, on Nov. 4, 1998, for conspiring to kill Americans:

* ...Third, al Qaeda opposed the involvement of the United States armed forces in the Gulf War in 1991 and in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1992 and 1993, which were viewed by al Qaeda as pretextual preparations for an American occupation of Islamic countries....

* ...At various times from at least as early as 1989, the defendant USAMA BIN LADEN, and others known and unknown, provided training camps and guesthouses in various areas, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, Somalia and Kenya for the use of al Qaeda and its affiliated groups.

The Fatwah Against American Troops in Somalia
At various times from in or about 1992 until in or about 1993, the defendant USAMA BIN LADEN, working together with members of the fatwah committee of al Qaeda, disseminated fatwahs to other members and associates of al Qaeda that the United States forces stationed in the Horn of Africa, including Somalia, should be attacked;

The Establishment of Training Camps for Somalia
In or about late 1992 and 1993, the defendant MUHAMMAD ATEF traveled to Somalia on several occasions for the purpose of determining how best to cause violence to the United States and United Nations military forces stationed there and reported back to the defendant USAMA BIN LADEN and other al Qaeda members at USAMA BIN LADENS's facilities located in Khartoum, the Sudan;

Beginning in or about early spring 1993, al Qaeda members, including the defendants MUHAMMAD ATEF, SAIF AL ADEL, ABDULLAH AHMED ABDULLAH, a/k/a/ "Abu Mohamed el Masry," ... along with "Abu Ubaidah al Banshiri," a co-conspirator not named herein as a defendant, provided military training and assistance to Somali tribes opposed to the United Nations' intervention in Somalia;

The Attacks on the United States Forces in Somalia
w. On October 3 and 4, 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia, persons who had been trained by al Qaeda (and by trainers trained by al Qaeda) participated in an attack on United States military personnel serving in Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope, which attack resulted in the killing of 18 United States Army personnel, namely, Donovan L. Briley, Daniel D. Busch, James M. Cavaco, William D. Cleveland, Thomas J. Field, Earl Fillmore, Raymond Frank, Gary I. Gordon, James C. Joyce, Richard W. Kowalski, James Martin, Timothy Martin, Dominick M. Pilla, Matthew L. Rierson, Lorenzo M. Ruiz, Randall D. Shughart, James E. Smith, and Clifton Wolcott.


http://tks.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjFjYmQwNTY3ZDYwY2VmMTdhNjRjNTliZGMxNjY5Mzc=

 

Clinton did affirm during today's interview that he will spend the rest of his life doing all the things he didn't do while in office.

I sense some guilt somewhere.

 

Celibacy?