# Bill Clinton - Why linked video indicates he couldn't pursue Bin Laden **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 8, 2014, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610 "2014-04-08T02:26:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/61 "2014-04-09T23:28:13Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > No. Is it relevant? Ilks are \*\*always \*\*relevant! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/62 "2014-04-09T23:30:58Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > Should be, but it wasn’t. Actually, it shouldn’t be. It was a direct result of Clinton’s actions. You’re going all off on a tangent attacking the Republicans using something started by Clinton’s failures. Keep to facts. Get your head straight. What are you babbling about? Clinton went after Bin Laden. Justifiably. Republicans at the time dismissed his attempts to get Bin Laden and strike back at Al Qaeda as cynical attempts to distract the public from the Lewinsky affair. Post 9-11, it should be clear that Clinton was right and the Republican were wrong. Clinton wasn’t “wagging the dog”. He was going after a person and a group that posed a real threat to the United States. And the Republicans should have supported his actions against Al Qaeda, regardless of what was going on with Lewinsky. To summarize – yes, it would have been great if Clinton had done more to fight Al Qaeda. He probably would have if the Republicans in Congress in the 90’s hadn’t aggressively criticized anything he did do. I swear, it’s like living in the novel _1984_. The fact that the Republicans _vigorously opposed_ the war on terror prior to 9-11 has gone right down the memory hole. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/63 "2014-04-09T23:53:38Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > Or, maybe because he (bin Laden) had become marginalized as a leader, and finding and killing one person who wasn’t doing too much of anything, wasn’t going to change too much about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan… And I suppose the FBI just should have left poor old Whitey Bulger alone instead of arresting that horrible murderer? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/64 "2014-04-10T00:18:42Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > What are you babbling about? Clinton went after Bin Laden. Justifiably. Republicans at the time dismissed his attempts to get Bin Laden and strike back at Al Qaeda as cynical attempts to distract the public from the Lewinsky affair. Clinton screwed up, having an affair. It gave a reason for partisanship. One of the reasons I believe that anyone who becomes President becomes an asshole soon thereafter. It will hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances at the Presidency. Obama became an asshole during the Democratic primary, but he is a Democratic asshole. Do the Republicans think that the forklift of forms his administrations did away with and the budget surplus they left a bad thing? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/65 "2014-04-10T01:04:45Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Clinton screwed up, having an affair. It gave a reason for partisanship. More facts down the memory hole. The Republicans in the 1990’s were aggressively partisan toward Clinton long before the Lewinsky scandal broke. And are you seriously suggesting that because Clinton had an affair that gets the Republicans off the hook for their cavalier attitude toward Al Qaeda prior to 9-11? Oh that wicked, wicked Clinton! His penis was so distracting the Republican Party was completely unable to protect the nation! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/66 "2014-04-10T01:16:32Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > More facts down the memory hole. The Republicans in the 1990’s were aggressively partisan toward Clinton long before the Lewinsky scandal broke. > > And are you seriously suggesting that because Clinton had an affair that gets the Republicans off the hook for their cavalier attitude toward Al Qaeda prior to 9-11? Oh that wicked, wicked Clinton! His penis was so distracting the Republican Party was completely unable to protect the nation! It helped a lot. A friend of mine here in Arkansas liked him, and hated his guts after the affair. I believe that is one of the reasons Hillary Clinton is so vehemently hated by some people. Of course, there is something to be said for dicks thinking about dicks. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/67 "2014-04-10T01:44:53Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > At any rate, this changed my concept of Clinton from a jerk to a good President. There’s no reason he can’t be both. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/68 "2014-04-10T02:09:23Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > There’s no reason he can’t be both. All Presidents become jerks. Some are good Presidents. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/69 "2014-04-10T02:17:45Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > More facts down the memory hole. The Republicans in the 1990’s were aggressively partisan toward Clinton long before the Lewinsky scandal broke. Why was that? I didn’t vote for Obama in the Democratic primary because I thought a Black guy couldn’t win the general election. I’m glad that I was wrong. But I digress. I’m sure lots of people hate him because they think he will do good things for African Americans. Was Clinton hated because he was from the South? I disremember the proper term, but he seemed to hold some middle ground between Democrats and Republicans. Did the Republicans hate Carter, who was very, very Southern? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/70 "2014-04-10T03:07:59Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > Or, maybe because he (bin Laden) had become marginalized as a leader Once he was dead it turned out he wasn’t all that marginalized. That was an assumption that was convenient for the Bush administration, so it’s a real shock that it didn’t pan out. > [@](#): > > finding and killing one person who wasn’t doing too much of anything, wasn’t going to change too much about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan… What a sad, sad sentence this is. Bush paid practically no attention to Afghanistan after 2003, so the idea that he downplayed the bin Laden search because it wouldn’t have affected the Afghan war is ludicrous. And of course it was his idea to go to war with Iraq in the first place, and even then it was a botch job. In any case, this premise fails because _Obama also had to deal with both of these wars and still managed to make bin Laden a priority_. > [@handsomeharry](#): > > You’re going all off on a tangent attacking the Republicans using something started by Clinton’s failures. Ah yes, the “Republicans can’t be reasoned with, so it’s no fair blaming them for their actions” school of reasoning. Still popular on some cable networks, but gradually going out of favor. It’s true that Clinton chose to have an affair, which was a jerk move, and then lied about it in court, which was worse. But faced with a range of options, Republicans were the ones who chose to impeach him. Nobody made them do it. It blew up in their faces, which is why they didn’t gain any ground in the 1998 midterms. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/71 "2014-04-10T13:30:11Z")
> [@AnthonyElite](#): > > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L2513JFJsY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L2513JFJsY) > > The linked video is an interview with a Fox News reporter and former President Bill Clinton regarding Clinton’s failure to act on Osama Bin Laden. I could care less about the political leanings, or the Fox bashing that occurs - my question is this: Clinton asserts he couldn’t rally support to go after Bin Laden during his administration. How can a POTUS not be able to command his troops? Or does he mean without Congressional approval? Or is it because he was involved in so many foreign spats at the time? Clinton made an attempt to get ObL, blowing up a site in the Sudan where he was (erroneously, obviously) thought to be camping out. The right-wing noise machine (possibly even this very reporter) sneered about him “blowing up an aspirin factory” in a “wag the dog” ploy to divert attention from l’affaire Lewinsky. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/72 "2014-04-10T13:34:06Z")
> [@Esox\_Lucius](#): > > Well, there were those embassy bombings in Africa, too. He couldn’t very well sit back and do nothing about them. Wellll… there you go again! If the President wants to just ignore an attack and [pull out with his tail between his legs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing), he can do so while proclaiming Morning In America! ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/73 "2014-04-10T13:44:41Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Of course, there is something to be said for dicks thinking about dicks. > 😃 All I know is, none of the actual (out-of-closet) gay people I know talk about gay sex as much as some conservative Republican politicians do. Just sayin’… ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/74 "2014-04-10T14:42:53Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > Wellll… there you go again! If the President wants to just ignore an attack and [pull out with his tail between his legs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing), he can do so while proclaiming Morning In America! Yeah, Reagan sure gave Hezbollah what fer. Nothing strikes fear into the enemy like forceful inaction and a stern withdrawal. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/75 "2014-04-13T15:36:36Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > And I suppose the FBI just should have left poor old Whitey Bulger alone instead of arresting that horrible murderer? Has the OP changed while I was asleep? ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/76 "2014-04-13T15:53:02Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Once he was dead it turned out he wasn’t all that marginalized. That was an assumption that was convenient for the Bush administration, so it’s a real shock that it didn’t pan out. WHat are you on about? > [@Marley23](#): > > In any case, this premise fails because _Obama also had to deal with both of these wars and still managed to make bin Laden a priority_. Wow. You mean he actually had time to withdraw from Iraq AND go after bin Laden? How does he do it??? Keep to the subject. Praise Obama in another thread, or, praise him in a response/chorus to somebody who has a relevant post. It took the saint 2 years. Bush didn’t in 8. Maybe Obama is 4 times better than Bush. Keep to the subject. If you can. (laughs into sleeve) And, the premise doesn’t fail, because you think Bush did a suck job in Iraq. > [@Marley23](#): > > _ **Ah yes,** _ the “Republicans can’t be reasoned with, so it’s no fair blaming them for their actions” school of reasoning. . Ah, no; as usual, you make up quotes and try to act as if I’m holding to some argument which you alone hear. Please! Stop fighting ghosts which you alone see, and name **handsomeharry**! Name them **Marley24** , in honor of their creator, if you will. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/77 "2014-04-13T17:06:32Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > WHat are you on about? He wasn’t so marginalized. > [@](#): > > Wow. You mean he actually had time to withdraw from Iraq AND go after bin Laden? How does he do it??? You forgot Afghanistan, too. The word you’re looking for is “prioritizing.” > [@](#): > > Keep to the subject. Praise Obama in another thread, or, praise him in a response/chorus to somebody who has a relevant post. You brought it up, pal. You said Bush didn’t make much of an effort to get bin Laden because it wouldn’t have helped how things were going in Afghanistan or Iraq. I pointed out that Bush was already neglecting Afghanistan and chose to go to war in Iraq, so that’s not an excuse for him. And Obama managed to handle those things and get bin Laden, too. > [@](#): > > It took the saint 2 years. Bush didn’t in 8. Maybe Obama is 4 times better than Bush. That’s not how math works. > [@](#): > > And, the premise doesn’t fail, because you think Bush did a suck job in Iraq. _I_ think Bush did a suck job? Are you saying that’s a minority opinion? Are you arguing he did a great job? > [@](#): > > Ah, no; as usual, you make up quotes and try to act as if I’m holding to some argument which you alone hear. I heard your argument quite clearly- but this post suggests _you_ didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610/78 "2014-04-13T18:16:40Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > Has the OP changed while I was asleep? No, I applied a ridiculous rejoinder to your ridiculous statement. “Bin Laden wasn’t bothering anyone when SEAL Team Six went after him” is silly beyond belief. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-clinton-why-linked-video-indicates-he-couldnt-pursue-bin-laden/685610.md?page=3)