I find this interesting on its face. Though Bill Clinton has no real personal need to make hay from Bush’s Iraqi-uranium gaffe, Clinton has passed up an opportunity to make hay for any potential candidacy of his wife Hillary, or for other Democrats.
Perhaps Bill Clinton is being gracious, and is keeping his real feelings under wraps. Perhaps he feels it’s bad form for a former president to criticize a sitting president. On the other hand, perhaps Clinton is shooting straight. Perhaps any political differences between himself and Bush are outweighed by a sense of knowing compassion.
THE DEBATE – are Clinton’s statements, taken at face value, reasonable? Is he apparently neglecting some significant factor or another when he makes such statements as above?
Lastly, does Clinton’s status, both as a Democrat and as Bush’s direct predecessor, add or detract from the face-value meaning of Clinton’s statements?
Remember, he himself was in a similar situation some time back. He blew the holy stuffing out of a medicine factory in Sudan. And more or less since the end of George Bush’s (GWB I) presidency, there have been consistant reports that Iraq was looking for WMD or had silently stocked away their own. Look at the events of the last year: people argued over whether Saddam was a threat or the moral blah blah blah blah blah… but not over whether or not Saddam had WMD, or was looking for them. Heck, Saddam practically admitted to it one several occaisions by his rather suspicious actions.
Clinton’s mastery of tactical politics is still underappreciated, and so is his dedication to advancing his party and its current politicians. This is not a slip of the tongue - he’s had too much time to think about it.
Seems to me he’s just giving Bush enough rope to hang himself with. The case for war is based on a whole lot of mismanagement factors, lies not excepted, and the Niger thing is a trivial item compared to the shitstorm that is still gathering. If he can help draw Bush into acknowledging what he did in a provable small example now, Bush won’t be as able to hold up as well when the more serious stuff gets more seriously examined. Right in time for the election, of course.
Or, if you’re less charitably inclined toward Clinton, you could see it as CYA for the Sudan bombing - those who want to let Bush off the hook for this example of simple “bad intelligence” will have to shut up (but won’t) about Clinton’s “dog-wagging”.
Yeah, let’s not forget that Clinton was accused of the same sort of “dog wagging” during his presidency as Bush is now, although IMO he didn’t go nearly as far with it as Bush has. Also IMO, it doesn’t excuse what Bush has done.
I hear this sort of thing all the time, which makes me wonder: what exactly would you like to see the Bush administration do? If you were president and this happened on your watch (and spare me any “I’d be too smart to make any such mistakes in the first place” nonsense), how would you handle the situation?
I caught the Bill Clinton call-in last night, BTW, and was surprised and a little frightened by the fact that I agreed with pretty much everything he said about Iraq.
He never realized that his real chance to make a legacy for himself lay in foreign policy. Now, in hindsight, I think he does realize it and regrets his inattention to it. He’s a smart guy when he’s actually thinking about something.
[aside: a preresponse to the inevitible defense to Clinton’s inattention to foreign policy, re lying and blowjobs.]
Sure, he was being prosecuted for lying in front of a grand jury about blow jobs. But, I go back to his choice to sit in front of the grand jury. If I were him I would have refused to sit, one. If Starr had the balls to send marshalls to the White House–the greatest media event that never happened–Clinton should have surrendered himself, taken the Fifth, and lapped up all the negative publicity that would have attended such drastic action by a special prosecuter.
But NOOOOOOOO, Bill decides to finess his testimony in front of the federal grand jury, and either succeeds or fails, depending on what your definition of “success” is.
My criticism of Clinton was usually from the right. I feel that both parties politicize military action in a very hypocritical fashion. I tend to argue for more troops sooner, not isolationism. You can disagree with me, but at least I try not to be hypocritical. If you want to uphold ‘human rights and freedom’ in oil rich Iraq, it’s important to try to do the same in historically connected Liberia, bloody Kosovo, or nearby Haiti. If the US doesn’t do it, many times it won’t get done. Cooperating with the UN on these things should not rule out the possibility of actually doing them. How many times must Kofi beg for a couple thousand US Marines?
Why is it “nonsense” to suggest he made mistakes? I think the basic criticism here (beyond the criticism for going to war in the first place) is that the administration tried to lie its way out of the mess. They played the blame game with the CIA, and it backfired. Should have just come clean to start with. And sorry, I just can’t spare you: He shouldn’t have used bogus info in his State of the Union address in the first place.
I did not say it was “nonsense” to say he made mistakes. Indeed, seeing how the Bush administration has stated they erred by including the uranium materials in the SOTU address, I don’t see how you could possibly reach that interpretation of my remarks.
What I DID say was that, in answering my hypothetical, that it would not be appropriate to reply with “I would not have made that particular mistake in the first place.” That would be nonsense, because it would defeat the purpose of the hypothetical. As Clinton pointed out last night, every administration has its share of errors in judgment. The point of the hypo was to find out how the poster thought a president should respond when such a mistake happens.
Meaning what, exactly? Is it just that the admissions of error have come from administration officials other than Bush that’s got you in a tizzy? Or do you mean something more?
When I asked “what would you have the president do?,” I was seeking more than just another vague, general statement about “responsibility.” I want a statement as to what exactly you would have the president do. What acts would be sufficient for you to say the president has taken responsibility for the lapse in judgment of putting the uranium line into the SOTU address?
I think nothing short of hari-kari will satisfy some of the people in this thread.
No, it’s NOT nonsense, and your hypothetical is overly restrictive in that it ASSUMES Bush’s current predicament is inadvertent, which is a HUGE stretch in my opinion.
But it’s necessary to go back in time BEFORE he blamed the CIA to tell you how he should have responded. The problem is not what Bush should DO, it’s what he should have DONE. Your claim that he has admitted one mistake does not mean he didn’t make other mistakes, and dig himself deeper and deeper into a hole by trying to cover up those mistakes. What you are asking is tantamount to “Without admitting Bush did anything wrong, tell us what he did wrong.”
Let us put somethings in perpsective here. This whole argle bargle in onve this ONE line “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quanities of uranium from Africa.”- in the middle of a 5400 word speech. Are you really trying to tell me that those 15 or so words- out of 300 times that- were that significant? That there was any real numbers of Americans jumping to their feet and saying:“To hell with all the rest that stuff- jumpin jehosaphat- YELLOWCAKE URANIUM!!!- load the shotgun, Marge, I’ll start digging out the rootcellar!” :dubious: :rolleyes:
Of course, many of you are unaware of the fact that yes, SH had really bought 300tons of yellowcake Uranium from Niger. Now, before you start scremaing CITE!!!, this was in the 1980s. But this does show Saddam really was interested in the stuff, and had made an attaempt to start a nuke weapons program.
This is nothing, dudes. Small potatoes. Hardly a big lie. Some dudes fucked up, some dudes fell on their swords (not nessesarily the same ones, however), it’s all over now.
Now, of course, while you all are screaming about 15 words, GWB is running this country into bankruptcy with runaway military spending & tax cuts for his cronies- but go ahead, and fixate on those 15 words, and the “WMD that weren’t there”, while the real issue gets ignored. Of course, when inflation is triple digit, interest rates are also, there are no jobs, your monthly Social security benefit is a block of surplus cheese, and dollar bills are worth less than toilet paper- then you might be concerned about something other than those stupid 15 words. But then, it will be too late.
Once again, Bill Clinton demonstrates why he is a far better person to be President of the United States than George W. Bush.
Those fifteen by themselves? No.
Those fifteen, as part of a pattern of deception from the Bush Administration – including the nonexistent IAEA report, claims that Iraq could deploy WMDs in 45 minutes, notions of mobile biolabs, accusations of aluminum tubes for gas centrifuges, etc., etc. – then yes, there’s something fishy going on around here. Heck, do a search on this message board; a lot of folks were already pointing out the Bushit coming from the White House just a few months ago.
The fifteen words just happen to be the first thing that’s caught the attention of the general public.
If you want to expand the topic into a general critique of the Bush Administration, feel free to start a new thread, either here in GD or in the BBQ Pit. Though I should point out that if the US had not invaded Iraq, our projected deficit probably wouldn’t be as big as it is now.
No, it isn’t. Learn to read. Here is what I wrote:
“If you were president and this happened on your watch (and spare me any “I’d be too smart to make any such mistakes in the first place” nonsense), how would you handle the situation?”
Here is your reply:
“Why is it ‘nonsense’ to suggest he made mistakes?”
I never claimed it was nonsense to suggest the Bush administration made mistakes; indeed, my hypothetical assumes as part of its facts that the administration did indeed make a mistake. The hypothetical is designed to elicit information about what exactly constitutes “taking responsibility” for administration mistakes. What the parenthetical is clearly stating is that it is “nonsense” to dodge that question by the poster saying “If I were president I wouldn’t have made that mistake.” **
Actually, my hypothetical assumes no such thing – it can be answered regardless of whether the erroneous statement was inadvertant or intentional. The question is very simple: you are president; you put something in your SOTU that shoudn’t have been in there; how do you “take responsibility” for that exercise of poor judgment? **
I fail utterly to see how you draw that conclusion. What my question boils down to is this: what specifically do you think would be a satisfactory response on the part of the Bush administration to this dilemma? What precise actions would be necessary for you to say that the administration has taken “full responsibility” for its actions?
I don’t think you have an answer, short of hari-kari. I don’t think there is anything the administration could do that you would find satisfactory. I think that you would accuse the administration of failing to take “full responsibility” no matter what course of action they elected to take. Which, if true, only proves that you are less interested in the administration actually doing some particular thing and more interested in just bitching about the Bush White House.
I’m with Elvis on this: Bill Clinton considers the political implications of which flavor of syrup to put on his pancakes. He’s the Keyser Sozay of politics. Newt Gingrich used to think it was him until Bill sliced his nuts off.
Its Elder Statesmanlike, it deflects criticism about the Dems being entirely partisan “Bush bashers”, and its got a secret dagger: “…sure, I have every confidence that a full investigation will show this is just a little mistake, which is why I support a thorough investigation…”
Besides, it only grants understanding about those 16 little words, all the rest of it is fair game. Further, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has already heard about the following:
"The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, to be published Thursday, reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida, United Press International has learned.
“The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida,” said a government official who has seen the report.
Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who was a member of the joint congressional committee that produced the report, confirmed the official’s statement.
Asked whether he believed the report will reveal that there was no connection between al-Qaida and Iraq, Cleland replied: “I do … There’s no connection, and that’s been confirmed by some of (al-Qaida leader Osama) bin Laden’s terrorist followers.”
The revelation is likely to embarrass the Bush administration, which made links between Saddam’s support for bin Laden – and the attendant possibility that Iraq might supply al-Qaida with weapons of mass destruction – a major plank of its case for war.
“The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaida) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war,” said Cleland. “What you’ve seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends.”
I’ve got a pretty well-considered anti-Bush position, personally, but if Bush had made the following statement to the press, he would have earned a little respect in my eyes:
This assumes that Bush is not trying to back down from the whole war thing, only trying to defuse the 16 word issue. It’s at least an acknowledgement that all is not perfect in the White House, that presidents make mistakes, and that a bit of oversight isn’t a horrible thing.
What do you think, Dewey? Is that little titbit an admission that the anti-war freaks were right all along, or is it a suitably frank admission that mistakes were made?