[QUOTE=Clothahump]
Agreed.
Clinton screwed the pooch, and I’m not referring to Monica. Read Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Endangered America’s Long-Term National Security .
[/QUOTE]
And here’s yet more info on Clinton’s malfeasance as a leader charged with protecting the U.S. and his…ahem…disingenuous…performance before Chris Wallace the other night, that everyone around here will dismiss out of hand, Clothahump, but which remains true nonetheless. As you can see by contrasting what Clinton said in the interview vs. what really happened, they don’t call him Slick Willie for nothin’.
A few choice tidbits are as follows:
“From behind the benign façade and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace’s interview on Fox News Channel…the man those who have worked for him have come to know – the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation.” [italics mine]
“His self-justifications constitute a mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about what the “definition of ‘is’ is” could perform.”
“Clinton told Wallace, “There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down.” Nobody said there was. [italics mine] The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9-11 is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that the precipitous American pullout after Black Hawk Down convinced him that Americans would not stand up to armed resistance.”
“Clinton said conservatives “were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day” after the attack which killed American soldiers. But the real question was whether Clinton would honor the military’s request to be allowed to stay and avenge the attack, a request he denied.”
“The president told Wallace, “I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill bin Laden.” But actually, the 9-11 Commission was clear that the plan to kidnap Osama was derailed by Sandy Berger and George Tenet because Clinton had not yet made a finding authorizing his assassination. They were fearful that Osama would die in the kidnapping and the U.S. would be blamed for using assassination as an instrument of policy.”
“Clinton claims “the CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there.” But he could replace or direct his employees as he felt. His helplessness was, as usual, self-imposed.”
“Why didn’t the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Laden’s involvement in terrorism? Because Clinton never took the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center sufficiently seriously. He never visited the site and his only public comment was to caution against “over-reaction.” In his pre-9/11 memoirs, George Stephanopoulos confirms that he and others on the staff saw it as a “failed bombing” and noted that it was far from topic A at the White House.”
“The former president says, “I worked hard to try to kill him.” If so, why did he notify Pakistan of our cruise-missile strike in time for them to warn Osama and allow him to escape? Why did he refuse to allow us to fire cruise missiles to kill bin Laden when we had the best chance, by far, in 1999? The answer to the first question — incompetence; to the second — he was paralyzed by fear of civilian casualties and by accusations that he was wagging the dog.”
I fully expect the information quoted above – and its source – to be routinely dismissed by those engaging in the verbal blow-job Clinton is getting in this thread…but what can I say? The truth is the truth; one can only get it out there. If the ignorant and willfully duplicitous choose to ignore it in favor of their own politically biased point of view, the onus is not on moi!