So was I. 
Or, less alarmingly, I was being facetious.
Remember, it has *all the vowels, and in order.
So in order to ask the question, Wallace had to pass some kind of test? Or did he just have to list all the things that Clinton did to catch ObL in his question? Because wouldn’t that actually be answering the question, not asking it?
In fact, we have no idea from the question whether Wallace was intimately familiar with Clinton’s actions, or if he’d never heard the name Osama bin Laden before and was just reading it off an email. So I doubt that Clinton got angry because Wallace didn’t know what he was talking about, because there’s no way Clinton could have known how much Wallace knew about the subject. Unless Clinton had some kind of ESP, but I kind of doubt that.
I humbly submit that if you see ignorance in the question asked, then your view is being tainted by preconceived biases against Fox News and its reporters. Because there’s nothing in the question that suggests that Wallace didn’t know what he was talking about.
No, it isn’t. The question assumes that Clinton didn’t do enough, which Clinton admitted. Clinton also admitted that the question was fair.
Personally, I think people are sticking up for Clinton when they don’t really need to. I think he answered the question fairly well, albeit with more ire than I would have expected, and he trailed off with the conspiracy theories on Fox News. But overall, I think people are making excuses when none are needed.
More interesting than Olbermann’s opinion is some actual reporting of his. Rising to Clinton’s challenge, he boldly takes MSNBC where no FOX has gone before, and asked what Bush was doing for those first eight months.
Seems a number of Dems already had a post-9/11 mindset well before 9/11:
Maybe that’s why the GOP puts so much blame on Clinton - here Cheney needs six months to prepare to meet with a senator. How could they possibly do anything about bin Laden in under eight months?? Ce n’est possible.
Speaking of Osama:
Can’t say I’d heard of this before.
Actually, I do recall hearing this stuff. It was buried in lefty blogs and only we of the secular-terrorist wing knew or cared. For instance, the fact that Cheney had task-forced a committee on terrorism that never met. Knew that for a long time, mentioned it any number of times, nobody much cared. I don’t necessarily attribute that to partisan stubborness or media conspiracy, just one of those odd facts of mass cognitive disfunction. Something happens, nobody notices, something else happens, the shit catches fire.
I think Clinton referred to it as a legitamate question, if it was asked of all those involved including the current admin. He also said the reason it was asked everywhere he went is because the right had launched a campaign to present the dishonest idea that he could have stopped OBL if he had tried. It was that dishonest campaign and CW playing into it that pissed him off. The point he stressed was although I didn’t get him at least I tried. The people who plotted to create this false impression had an opportunity to try and didn’t, so be a real reporter, {for a change} and ask them the same question.
Yes, he said it was a “legitimate” question. You’ll have to explain to me what the difference is between a “fair” question and a “legitimate” question in the current context.
But he didn’t say it was legitimate if they asked it of Bush. He just suggested that it should be asked of Bush, too.
As quoted below:
Some people seem to have that impression, but that’s not what the question assumed. The question merely assumed that he didn’t do enough to catch bin Laden. And Clinton admitted that was true.
I’ve got to admit, I thought that was one of his weaker arguments.
First of all, the 9/11 Report suggested that neither Clinton nor Bush went after bin Laden as hard as they could have. So there’s some question as to whether it was a false impression, especially since Clinton admitted it wasn’t false. And the White House weren’t responsible for the impression.
Second, I’m shocked that people seem to believe that no one has asked the Bush admin why they haven’t done more to find Osama Bin Laden? Heck, it was spun as a huge PR victory for Dems when Bush was asked that very question, and he responded that he thought he was on the run and marginalized, so he didn’t spend that much time thinking about ObL (emphasis added):
You’re being too literal minded, suggesting that question b balances question a, tit for tat. Bill’s point is that the question has not been investigated enough, certainly not by Fox News. Howcome Cheney forms a whoopity-whoop committee than never manages to meet? Howcome there was so much emphasis on missile defense in comparison to the threat of terrorism? Howcome the goddam cockpit doors were unlocked, when we’ve been having planes hijacked for forty years?
I quote myself:
-FrL-
That’s not my suggestion. It’s Bill’s. He suggested that question B was legitimate, but it hadn’t been asked. I’m merely pointing out that it has.
But that’s not what Bill said. Bill asked why it hadn’t been asked. So his point was that it hadn’t been investigated. And it has.
To the extent that Bill’s point was that it hadn’t been investigated by Fox news, I’ve got to disagree with him. I’m not a big Fox news watcher, but I find it laughable to suggest that they haven’t asked about Bush’s intelligence failures. This whole idea that Fox is a conservative news service certainly has no more basis in reality than the idea that the mainstream media organizations – the NY Times, the Washington Post, CBS News, ABC News, CNN, etc. – are overtly liberal.
And the suggestion that it hasn’t been investigated enough is pretty incredible. We’ve been investigating it pretty much non-stop for the past 5 years. We’ve had the 9/11 Commission, Joint Congressional investigations, a Senate Intelligence Committee report, innumerable books and tv shows and newspaper articles and editorials and magazine articles, etc., etc., etc. What else do you want? I’m sure there are some facts that we’re unaware of, but the vast majority of facts are laid out before us now. Now it’s just a matter of interpreting the facts we know. And what we know is that we didn’t see it coming.
Because none of us appreciated the magnitude of the threat posed by al Qaeda. Not me, not you, not the editorial board of the New York Times, not the Pentagon, not the Senate Intelligence Committee, not the CIA, not the FBI, and not the Bush or Clinton admin.
I assure you that if Clinton or Bush could go back in time, they’d both have paid a lot more attention to terrorism. In fact, they’d probably have both sent the entire military after bin Laden, or done whatever it took to make sure that al Qaeda was ground into dust. We all would have.
But we just didn’t know. And no amount of 20/20 hindsight or wishful thinking is going to change that.
Wow. I’m having a hard time believing that anyone typed this. Let me try to answer plainly.
Admitting that you didn’t do enough is an admission that you didn’t do enough.
President Bill Clinton is a former Rhodes scholar, and he’s supposed to have a genius level IQ. I’m sure he knows that if the question is, “Did you do enough,” and he answers, “No,” then that means he’s saying that he didn’t do enough. If he thought he did enough, then the appropriate answer would be “Yes.” That wouldn’t surprise a 6 year old, so I doubt it’s a surprise to Clinton 'cause he’s really smart.
And saying that you didn’t do enough by definition doesn’t mitigate that at all. If anything, it makes it worse.
There are times when spin can be really effective, but you’re working really hard on an argument that doesn’t pass the laugh test.
“I didn’t do enough to cure AIDS because some people died of it.”
As you see, Clinton has correctly read how high the bar of ‘enough’ has been set. His answer is responsive to that high standard and reflects his acceptance of that standard, which reflects positively on him. There is no ‘admission’ there.
Clinton was not asked: “Did you take all reasonable measures, pursue all prudent action and act according to your best advice, dutifully avoiding any dereliction or negligence?” Had that been the question, the interviewer would have broken faith with Fox and asked of Clinton a question earning a ‘Yes’ answer.
An assertion is not necessarily an admission, even if it is an assertion that one’s own efforts did not yield the optimum results.
I do remember the Cheney task force on terrorism that never met; heard about it a fair number of times over the years.
But this nugget in the news from early 2001 that the Bushies might’ve had an opportunity to deal for bin Laden at that time - first I’d EVER heard of that.
Be nice to see some MSM followup on that, even at this late date. Like Bill said, they don’t ask the Bushies the tough questions.
Nearly three and a halr years later, we still haven’t had any followup to Bart Gellman’s remarkable story in the WaPo on 5/11/2003 about how our troops invading Iraq made no efforts to secure prospective WMD sites - this in a war that was supposedly fought to keep those WMDs from falling into terrorists’ hands.
Everybody’s so afraid to have their ‘access’ cut off - as if that ‘access’ is good for anything besides being used to spread the party line in the form of a deliberate ‘leak.’
I’m increasingly of the mind that the old media are unreformable, and ultimately some way will have to be found to finance independent reporting online.
Before he even answered the question he commented on the context in which it was asked. That was part of his overall point. It’s fair {as in reporter fair} if they are asking it of both parties. The goal for the pubbies is to create the impression that the Dems did not and will not keep you and your family secure. They do this by implying that Clinton didn’t really try much at all. The impression they want is that he had definitive chances to get OBL and perhaps prevent 9/11 and he was to weak. The phrasing of the question was chosen to support those false impressions. Clinton took the opportunity to fight back.
“I didn’t do enough because I didn’t get him, but at least I tried. They had an opportunity before 9/11 and didn’t try”
That’s taking the question out of context and just examining the question sure. That’s why he made a point to start by mentioning the context and also mentioned the smear campaign that put the question in the forefront of people’s minds.
The question was planned to help continue the campaign.
Sigh…please. The false impression is that Clinton did little or nothing while the fact is he did try and it was the Bush admin in their first 8 months that did little or nothing. Are you saying Clinton said the White House was not responsible for the false impression?
Yes, That is well after 9/11 when he’s purposely shifting the emphasis from OBL and the imaginary imminent threat of Saddam to the global war on terror in which Iraq is so crucial. What Bill was talking about are questions concerning his lack of action before 9/11. Now those questions are being asked more than before so that Condi has to lie through her teeth in an attempt to refute BC.
For the record, what you claim to be unable to believe typable is the following:
“‘I didn’t do enough by definition because what I did do was not sufficient to catch him’ is not really ‘admitting’ anything.”
Say I told you “I haven’t become a Doctor of Philosophy, by definition, because no university has conferred on me a PhD degree.” (I happen to be a PhD student.) Have I “admitted” anything to you? No, of course not. I’ve simply stated a fact without there being any intent to “admit” some inadequacy.
Have you done enough to fly to pluto, dig a well, and bring back the delicious green peanut butter that fuels its space stations?
If you answer “no,” then, by your logic, you’ve “admitted” (recall, my point was about what constitutes an “admission”) that, among other things, you haven’t flown to Pluto.
Is it really appropriate to call your “no” answer an admission? No, of course not.
That means that, contrary to what you’ve argued, simply to say one hasn’t done done whatever it takes to do something is not to “admit” that one hasn’t “done enough” to accomplish it.
To “admit” that one hasn’t done enough is not just to say one hasn’t done enough, but rather is to say so with the understanding that one should and could (and could reasonably have been expected to) have done more.
I see Clinton saying he didn’t accomplish the catching of BL. I see him saying also what amounts to the same thing, that the actions he did take were not sufficient to accomplish the catching of BL. But I don’t see him doing so with any understanding that he should (or could reasonably have been expected to) have done more to catch BL. Part of the very point of his tirade was to establish that people should be satisfied with the extent of his actions toward the goal of catching BL.
Maybe he should have done more, maybe he need not have, I’m not making a statement either way in this discussion. I’m questioning your judgment that he “admitted” he should have done more.
-FrL-
That PhD sentence should have read:
“Say I told you ‘I haven’t done enough to become a Doctor of Philosophy, by definition, because no university has conferred on me a PhD degree.’”
-FrL-
This is beyond silly. Imagine this conversation:
Q: Do you think you did enough?
A: No.
Q: Shuld you have done more?
A: No.
Q: WTF???
It’s not beyond silly. Imagine a situation where someone breaks a glass.
Q: Do you think you did enough to stop the glass being broken?
A: No, obviously, because it broke.
Q: Should you have done more?
A: No, because dropping a glass wasn’t likely to happen, and had I wrapped the glass in cotton wool it would have been much more difficult to drink from it.
Seems like it could work reasonably to me.
Exactly. This is part of the point Clinton is trying to make when he says (something to the effect of) “I obviously didn’t do enough, by definition, because I didn’t catch him.”
Again, I’m not claiming Clinton’s right or wrong. I’m just arguing that what he did say isn’t accurately called an “admission.”
-Kris