Whoa, 'ang on a sec Lib. As far as this foreigner recalls, Ashcroft’s appointment was the result of Bush’s pact with the Devil (Jerry Falwell) about 2 ½ years ago and as he (Bush) was about to burn in the Primaries. Names like (John Mc)Cain spring to mind… Bush didn’t have any real choice in the matter:
Falwell delivers the masses > Bush wins > Ashcroft represents Falwell as AG. All very…biblical, really.
Ain’t that the way it went ?
Quite a lot, since we arrested, tried and jailed – wait for it – international terrorists for it. Why do you think the Cole was attacked, or the embassy in Kenya, you dolt?
I was? I don’t think I was. No, pretty sure I wasn’t.
I didn’t say it wasn’t an issue. I said that it’s the guys in the Oval Office and with the stars on their shoulders who get to decide “where we should be,” not the guys with three stripes up and two down. There’s this whole “chain of command” thing, maybe you’ve heard of it. The job of the enlisted men and junior officers is to go and do what those other guys tell them.
Who has claimed that?
That’s it. I’m calling the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and putting my voting records online just to make all the pinheads who call me a “conservative” look stupid.
Everyone except al Qaeda who, it would appear, doesn’t exactly tremble with fear before the power and might of the U.S. Judicial System.
Idiot.
So there’s a choice between Bill Clinton, who makes some people happy because he does his little Frowny Face thing (you know, where his lower lip goes up and he scrunches his chin) that makes him look like he’s a sensitive guy and cares about you, even though he’s ridiculously transparent in his insincerity and did pretty much none of the things he said he would; or George W. Bush, who makes some people happy because he’s not Bill Clinton, even though he can barely speak English and careens from pillar to post in his dealings like a drunk on a Segway. (I’m for free trade - let’s raise some tariffs!)
The people who like Mister Frowny Face don’t like Dubya because Dubya isn’t sensitive and seems kind of stupid about a lot of little details like, you know, the economy. The people who like Dubya don’t like Mister Frowny Face because Mister Frowny Face spent more time getting slurpies from his interns than actually doing anything he’d promised to do. The people who like Mister Frowny Face therefore castigate the Dubya fans as “Conservatives” and “Fascists” and say they’re uncaring ogres. The people who like Dubya castigate the Mister Frowny Face fans as “Liberals” and “socialists” and say they’re fools and henonistic ne’er-do-wells. All the while, the difference between the administrations of Mister Frowny Face and Dubya are, on the majority of issues, pretty much the same.
Gosh, and you wonder why election turnouts are low.
Not to you know, respond to the thread topic, but does DL have transcripts up already?
BC is indeed wonderful to listen to a competent, informed, president, who, by the way, is twice the communicator that George “terra” Bush is.
I’m surprised that Bush hasn’t banned Clinton from speaking, as every word he pronounciates makes Bush look ever worse.
A year has passed since 9-11 and we can see the results. As our favourite clog wearing Rush fan said:
"You do realise that had there not been a 9/11, the Taliban would still have ruled Afghanistan, and Al Quaida would still be unaffected (and the extent to which it has been affected now is debatable).
In other words: these actions cannot be attributed to Bush’s policies. Any president, Republican or Democrat, that would have reacted to 9/11 with apathy would have been dragged out of the White House by an angr lynch mob of about 100 million people. Sending troups to Afghanistan was not a choice. It HAD to be done."
I agree.
Have there been any more terrorist actions against the U.S. in the past year?
I think the message was well delivered and other governments have taken note of the U.S. policy of “if you ain’t with us you’re fucked.” As militantly anti U.S. as some governments are they seem to realize that certain actions or lack of action could result in devastating consequences from both the United States and other countries.
Canada could just threaten to stop exporting beer and poutine and many governments would cave in. On the other hand we could threaten to send them Celine Dion. Either way, we’re not to be trifled with.
Enough with the hijack… Clinton was and is about as slick as a person can get. His suits must be teflon coated because shit just won’t stick to the guy.
Bush on the other hand, despite his bumbling good old boy demeanor is one scary motherfucker. Actually, the thought of the shrub doing his mom is a pretty scary visual in itself.
Of course we have Jean Cretien so perhaps I should not be casting aspersions on your leaders… 
A year has passed since 9-11 and we can see the results. As our favourite clog wearing Rush fan said:
"You do realise that had there not been a 9/11, the Taliban would still have ruled Afghanistan, and Al Quaida would still be unaffected (and the extent to which it has been affected now is debatable).
In other words: these actions cannot be attributed to Bush’s policies. Any president, Republican or Democrat, that would have reacted to 9/11 with apathy would have been dragged out of the White House by an angr lynch mob of about 100 million people. Sending troups to Afghanistan was not a choice. It HAD to be done."
I agree.
Have there been any more terrorist actions against the U.S. in the past year?
I think the message was well delivered and other governments have taken note of the U.S. policy of “if you ain’t with us you’re fucked.” As militantly anti U.S. as some governments are they seem to realize that certain actions or lack of action could result in devastating consequences from both the United States and other countries.
Canada could just threaten to stop exporting beer and poutine and many governments would cave in. On the other hand we could threaten to send them Celine Dion. Either way, we’re not to be trifled with.
Enough with the hijack… Clinton was and is about as slick as a person can get. His suits must be teflon coated because shit just won’t stick to the guy.
Bush on the other hand, despite his bumbling good old boy demeanor is one scary motherfucker. Actually, the thought of the shrub doing his mom is a pretty scary visual in itself.
Of course we have Jean Cretien so perhaps I should not be casting aspersions on your leaders…
No argument that action needed to be taken after September 11th. But it needed to be taken after the Khobar Towers bombing, the attacks on our embassies, and the bombing of the Cole. More action than arrests needed to happen the first time the WTC was bombed as well. The international terrorist network had to be investigated and attacked.
The Clinton administration didn’t do much against terrorism in the face of this. I’ll concede the Bush administration hadn’t done much before September 11th, either.
That’s a comparison of eight years versus eight months, though.
Lobbing cruise missiles into an aspirin factory or an empty camp surely doesn’t count. I have great respect for cruise missiles, but they can’t make political points or hold territory.
For the record, Republican lawmakers worked well with Clinton when their interests coincided (trade authority comes to mind). If there was a need for a war, and a case that Clinton could have made, I as a Republican would have been on board. As a serviceman at the time, with my country threatened, I’d have gone.
If Clinton couldn’t have made the case due to impending impeachment, this is an indictment of personal shortcomings on his part. It is disingenuous for a corrupt politician to claim that his enemies are keeping him from important work when these scandals were his own making.
Clinton wasn’t kept from being a great leader because his enemies were investigating scandals; he was a poor leader because his scandals interfered with work he needed to do.
Wow that was pretty hostile pld.
What I’m trying to say is that in 1993 (not the stuff written Feb. 26 2002) that the “International Terrorist” term didn’t seem so scary.
As for the Generals getting to choose where the troops go, I never argued that they didn’t. What I said is that the troops hated Clinton. Where is the argument here? They go where they are told, but that doesn’t mean they don’t bitch about it.
Perhaps I should have said you, and every Conservative. Sorry about the “other”.
The rest was what I called “revisionist history”. All of a sudden I’m hearing about how Clinton woulda, shoulda, coulda done more, but I don’t see it. I suppose that to be expected though. after all, I am both a 'dolt ’ and an ‘idiot’.
Next time don’t use a cite with such big words.
I need something like this:
See the bad men bomb
Bomb bad men bomb
See the building fall
Fall building fall
See the people cry
don’t cry people
We are all sad
See the sad, sad people
PLD;
It’s not their fault.
They see the blinding truth, and intelligence behind your words, your integrity, and dignity, and they conclude you must be one of us.
Well, hindsight is aways 20/20, isn’t it?
The real question in this scenario is of course: would Al Gore have handled things differently when faced with the tragedy of September 11? I submit that the answer to a large extent is “no”. He would have shipped troups to Afghanistan as well, and the US military would have handled the task in a similar fashion.
Saying Clinton didn’t around to rounding up Al Quaida because the focus was on his private life is disingenious. The focus just wasn’t on that hunt back then, and it would not have been under a Republican president, blowjob scandals or not.
I think the following would apply as well: what does it say about American society and politics that a sitting President was driven to an impeachment process?
I’m not excusing Clintons lies, but for all I care, my President (or Prime Minister in this case) can get BJ’s until the cows come home from 26 horny 20 year old interns - as long as he does his job. Had Clinton been prime minister of the Netherlands, he probably wouldn’t have lied about having oral sex with an intern when faced with the question: the people here just don’t care that much about a political figure’s private life. Sure, it would have been a small scandal. But it would have stopped being news soon enough as well. The simple fact is that America is not like that. Clinton would have been raked over the coals if he had admitted to it. Yes, lying about it made it worse for him in the end. But what if he had gotten away with the lie? Better than admitting it, in terms of the political outcome. He just gambled, and lost.
Clinton was a liar, and he tried to pull one over on every American. But perhaps in another political climate, he wouldn’t have. Morally, he’d still be a man who cheats on his wife, and abuses his authority for an occasional BJ, of course. To which I say: so fucking what.
I realise that that’s a rather personal approach.
My biggest beef with the shrub is that he is living up to what some of the arab nations have been accusing him of: being a war monger. Sure, we may have needed to carpet bomb a country into submission after 9/11 instead of sending in special forces to deal with the actual people that did it, but do we still need to be there a year later? Still bombing and killing innocent Afganni people on the off chance that the psychopathic Bin Laden might happen to be in a cave there? When most of his senior staff generals are saying that a war with Iraq is a bad move and most other civilized nations oppose it, is the shrub listening and showing restraint? Showing what this country is capable of, not only in it’s wartime abilities, but in it’s compassion for the people of these nations that are led by nutjobs? Nope, he doesn’t give a flying fuck and goes as far as using 9/11 rememberance ceremonies as a chance to spew more of his hate and “vengence will be mine(ours)” bullshit. Say what you will about the abilities of Gore or Clinton in the face of 9/11 and the ineveitability of an action in Afganistan, but I would rather have anyone else in the place of shrub right now, even Gore. Shrub is using this as an excuse for rampant spending (homeland security agency will cost us $30 billion per year, rather than giving an extra $10b to the FBI to beef up what they already do) not to mention pulling us out of the world court, removing the chance of the US to be a significant player in the setup and governing of what WILL become the standard of how we(the world) try international crimes in the next decade. Shrub is a xenophobic, hate filled, inarticulate little man that has no more business running this country than Letterman.
Ixnay, Scylla, you’re gonna get me in trouble.
light strand, I don’t know how you can sit there with a straight face and say that there’s no way someone can realistically think that Clinton “shoulda woulda coulda” done more. Unless the Administration and our intelligence services were completely asleep at the wheel. As early as 1996, TIME Magazine was reporting on Osama bin Laden’s terrorism-funding activities throughout the Middle East, and possible links to Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman (THE PALADIN OF JIHAD: FEARLESS AND SUPER-RICH, OSAMA BIN LADEN FINANCES ISLAMIC EXTREMISM, May 6, 1996).
In Sept. 1996, The Independent of London reported:
The Clinton Administration certainly knew who this guy was, and where he was, and what he was capable of. I certainly don’t blame Clinton in any way, shape or form for not predicting the 9/11 attacks – I blame the FBI and the CIA for dropping the ball. But Clinton certainly did not appear overly concerned with actually taking proactive steps to combat terrorism. His actions were reactive in nature, and as a result, each time these guys survived to plan future attacks.
Can’t we change the constitution so that Clinton can always be our president?
He was, after all, so effective.
Lead the way for us, Stoid!
Clinton is like… so dreamy!
I can’t tell who I’d rather have a dream date with, him, or Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
I guess I’ll just have to wait for my next Tiger Beat magazine.
LOL…Clinton may not have been perfect, although I would prefer him to Bush, who is really starting to scare me with all this “Attack Iraq!” crap.
On the other hand, Clinton was hardly a liberal.
Eh…I still say Cecil for president.
Dunno, but I taped it. Small comfort in dark moments that Dubya can’t last forever.
Only twice? The phrases “many orders of magnitude” and “exponentially” come to mind. Clinton makes George look like Koko.
This reading of history boggles the mind completely. Really it does. Honestly, Mr. Moto, think hard about what really happened to Clinton, and how…the exact sequence of events is really important.
You can hate the guy, you can be disgusted by his personal failings, and you can despise his policies. What you cannot legitimately do is suggest that the “scandals” (and there was only one, which is a critical component to an honest assessment of what happened to his presidency, that would be my point entire) were of his own making unless you manage to convince yourself that it was somehow acceptable for the investigation that revealed the Monica issue was acceptable in the first place. And that takes some cirqu de Soleil - like feats of mental gymnastics.
And thank you, ** Coldfire. **
There’s always Jeb.
Coldfire:
I think your asessment is poor, though accurate in the differences between Europe and the US. It would have been a smaller scandal had he chosen not to lie.
However his actions were an abuse of power, and was potentially sexual harassment.
It shows an extreme lack of judgement. The risk to reward scenario on the pleasure of the moment versus the potential consequences is not one that a wise man accepts, if he is at all intelligent and disciplined.
It also shows a lack of character in that it demonstrates that a couple of minutes of pleasure seems to be more valuable than a marriage commitment.
I don’t look at the lying as a gamble that didn’t pan out. It’s bigger than that. It’s a character revelation, and a damning one.
I thought he was a decent politician and decent Pres. in many ways, but I’m baffled by the claims of what a great orator and posesser of charisma he was.
Certainly he is smooth and polished, but he always struck me as leering and disingenuous.
But then again, I’m also baffled by how people get taken in by the fake sincerity of a slick used car salesman, and how some of them still love the guy even after they’ve been screwed.
Clinton just had a better suit and haircut.
Well, this being the Pit it probably is not the place to get caught up in anything that pretends to be a rational analysis of national and international politics, but here we go:
In terms of style, there is little to choose between Clinton’s lip biting and phony piety and Bush’s homey jingoism. Style isn’t the problem.
The problem is the two gentlemen’s differing perception of the world and the limitations of military and economic power. Clinton recognized that there were limits and that any major action required concerted action by the traditional European powers and by the remains of the Soviet Union. Clinton saw that US leadership turned on the willingness of the other nations to be lead. Thus the shipment of US troops into the former Yugoslavia was as part of a NATO/UN force, not as the US going it alone. That action was deplored by the people who are now whispering in Bush’s ear as an open ended do-good project and as one-world nation building. The irony, of course, is that events have forced those same people to engage in an even more problematic nation building project in Afghanistan now that they are in power and are faced with and even bigger project in Iraq if their counsel prevails and there is an armed invasion of that country.
Bush on the other hand seems to regard the world as America’s oyster. During the Presidential campaign there were any number of op-ed pieces to the effect that since the US was the only super power still standing in could do pretty well what ever it wanted and that if other countries, especially the remains of the Soviet Union, didn’t like it they could lump it. It is my recollection that most of this stuff was coming out of The American Enterprise Institute and the thing tank at Stanford University (the Hoover Institute?). Every thing that has happened so far indicates that he President and his inner circle continue to think that the US has the ability to act as it wishes without regard to the views, interests and level of cooperation from other nations. Internal political pressures appear to be forcing the President to deviate from his previously announced position. You will remember that there was a time that the President’s people were taking the position that not only was the consent and assistance of the Gulf Campaign allies not needed, the consent and assistance of Congress was not needed either. The face that the President even found it expedient to speak to the UN is some indication of the shift in reality if not in rhetoric.
As far as the US military campaign in Afghanistan is concerned, before last September there was no political imperative to go after the Taliban government or AlQuida. We seemed to be willing to accept the occasional car and boat bomb as the price of our pre-eminent position. Not even the right wing-nuts were howling for military action in the Khyber Hills. The action that has now been taken in Afghanistan was taken in the face of unquestioned provocation, with the active support of Pakistan and with the moral approval of all of the traditional powers. Now, I am afraid, that the President is in the process of dissipating the reserve of good will and support that accrued in the wake of September 11, in a single minded drive to get rid of Sadam based on old grievances and in the absence of any clear and convincing showing that an action as extreme as a military invasion is the only practical approach available to protect the US.
Stoid’sbasic point in this thread is that Clinton thinks and talks better than Bush. I can only base a conclusion on thinking on how the thinking is expressed. Having said that: where is the surprise? When the President gets off message he does not do a good job of expressing what thoughts he may have. But in the world of clear cut moral choices and absolute national power that exists in the President’s mind there is nothing to debate and no need to persuade. Clinton was big on persuading, Bush, not so much. As some Administration people, notably the Attorney General when he appeared before Congress, have expressed it, anyone who doesn’t buy into the President’s world view is either a fool or a scoundrel. That’s not an approach that wins friends.
pld, of course I would have like Clinton to have prevented Sept 11. However, I honestly (with a straight face) believe that his hands were pretty much tied. Read this article from Salon (a liberal source) written on 20 Aug 1998. Can you imagine what the anti-Clintonians said? Here was Clintons speech at the time. His approval rating from the public were low, and the Lewinski scandal was in full swing, Starr was on his heals, and Wag the Dog had just been released.
He did try proactive steps (from Time “A Pair of Quick Arrests 9/7/98”)
Personally, Clinton was way to smarmy for my liking. I found him to essentially a letch, and an egotist who though that he was so smart that he could pull the wool over the eyes of the public and they would be fooled by his far superior charm and intellect. But I also believe that there is not a president in history who didn’t go through a “woulda, shoulda, coulda” phase after their term and it’s ridiculous on all accounts.