Someone remind me again how Clinton was a great president, how the country would be better off with any democrat in the White House, and why liberalism isn't so deeply rooted in dishonesty that you can't trust a single word coming out of a democrat's mouth. Please....

Hundreds upon hundreds of opinions in only the past fifteen, twenty hours about this, and they all say about one thing and one thing only (I'll paraphrase): "STFU."

Clinton could have, would have, might have, coulda maybe, oughta have, thought so, wondered about it, perhaps someday...it's all the same langauge of a very, very irresponsible guy in the White House who appears to have not even had the football, much less dropped it.

The Democrats are really, really trying, also, to pin this latest and undoubtedly far most awful error in judgement on the military, as if that's a surprise (thus, Cindy Sheehan and Tears, by Joe Trippi), but the only last bit of credibility that Clinton might have would be to hone up to this, to just stand up and say he failed, occluded, obfuscated or maybe just hid the information. Err, whatever. Whatever it was, he might as well hone up to the failure or else he's looking tonight like Number 12 responsible for 9/11.

Some reading.

And, some more reading.

Sorry, last link requires subscription...

You mean Clinton was too busy fending off attacks to his private life? Who was attacking him? Was he being attacked over how good a job he was doing running the country?

I seem to remember it was rather pathetic, really. Still, it's really easy to say what someone SHOULD have done, isn't it. With 20/20 hindsight and all...

Hey Nicholas,

Thanks for showing us that most liberals don't think too clearly. This was before we knew about his "private life" as you call it, so clearly there were no "attacks."

But thanks for playing.

He wasn't exactly fending off attacks, he was luring an intern into his office for a game of epiglottal billiards. It wouldn't be nearly so bad if he wasn't still lying about both the billiards and whether or not he'd been given the information. Liberal 20/20 hindisght means attempting to rewrite history. just like you just did, by dishonestly claiming that Clinton was fighting off personal attacks about his private life life. That didn't start until 1998. It's a good thing we write this stuff down, if we didn't the liberals could get away with lying all the time.
From CNN:
Jan. 19, 1998: Lewinsky's name surfaces in an Internet gossip column, the Drudge Report, which mentions rumors that Newsweek had decided to delay publishing a piece on Lewinsky and the alleged affair.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/resources/lewinsky/timeline/

Get yourself a clue Nicholas, that crap will work on a liberal sight, dishonesty gets nailed every time where truth matters.

epiglottal billiards?

LOL

dude...get some head? worry about some super terrorist...let me think about it for a few days...

Correction: That should have said "liberal site" not sight but I have a hard time laughing and typing at the same time.

Well now. Bill Clinton was a pathetic prick, let's be clear enough about that fact.

But geez, is someone here surprised that Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan in 1996, and hello, he was considered dangerous? Are we shock shock shocked to find gambling in this establishment? It is rather uncompelling that some oooo "declassified" document would reveal this to us suddenly, as if we were are born yesterday. We all knew Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan and running terrorist camps, and most of you did a collective yawn about it.

I'm still laughing about, uh, PEOPLE attacking Clinton because he was, um, like, "running the country" so well.

OT - Hi Suzy!

In your link to NRO, I couldn't find the Clinton-related mess, but I did find this: "Intelligent Falling". Oh my, what a wonderful piece of levity in contrast to the gravity of terrorism!

If we all agree gravity is a hoax, we'll soon be levitating :)

Suzy, I found an accessible guest link to your 2nd one, the subscription link, here: Limbaugh 8/16/05 transcript on Clinton/Bin Laden.

Bubba is the poster boy for bullshit:

"...bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

What the New York Magazine article shows is that Bill Clinton is a pathological liar. This man is hellbent on revising his shoddy legacy. Someday the American people will realize that B.J. Clinton and his cohorts in the Democrat Party are nothing but blowhards who talk a good fight -- talk being the operative word.

sounds about right.

Holy Moses, here's something else apparently missing from the 9/11 Commission Report: one of the documents stolen by Samuel Berger!

If one compares this testimony by Ashcroft to the 9/11 Commission, describing the Clinton/Berger NSC's March 2000 "Millennium After Action Review" with these">http://www.etherzone.com/2005/bish060705.shtml">these two descriptions of the 15-page NSC After-Action Report stolen by Samuel Berger from the National Archives, it seems like one and the same.

And yet, the 9/11 Commission only reported these four dates:

"… according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times — Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action."

Why was there no mention of that March 2000 "After Action Review" in the 9/11 Commission Report, despite Ashcroft's April 04 testimony?!

Paul,

Let me see if I got this straight. Hillery was so busy trying to find some papers, that she took her eyes off of Bill, who was being distracted by Monica's lips, and therefore not paying attention to Bin Laden's where-a-bouts. And for this we get 9/11? Damn paperwork!

I seem to remember a claim -- Mansour Ijaz? -- that Sudan actually offered to turn over Bin Laden but the Clintonites said no. Has that ever been verified?

I have a question.

Might the original comments inked on the document "copies" of "drafts" destroyed by Sandy Berger (and hence lost now) be relevant to all this?

(I'm not fishing - I don't know the answer.)

Anyone?

I don't like to make partisan comparisons but a 20 minute blow job in the Oval Office and back to work makes me feel more confident that the President was taking care of our country than a FIVE WEEK vacation while we are in the middle of 2 wars. All of us understand the concept of a coffee break or lunch hour. Clinton may have been hard to satisfy but lets face it he didn't waste the whole day with her. On the other hand, while of us get our coffee breaks and lunch hours -and who wouldn't want to spend it like Clinton- how many of you can walk into your boss in the middle of a life or death crisis and tell her that you are leaving on a FIVE WEEK "working vacation"? Trust me this country needs another Clinton in the White House to clean up the mess this one is leaving. Kind of a deja vu of 1992. The only mess Clinton made walked out on Lewinsky's dress. You can hardly blame him for that!

This 'vacation' stuff is a load of you-know-what. C'mon, who wouldn't rather work from home? Especially if the office is DC in the summer. I loved reading in the paper where they called his ranch in TX his 'vacation home'. Gimme a break, it's his house. Does that make the White House his house? No, no it doesn't. Cripes, it's not like he's doing anything different than he would be in DC as far as work goes, he just does different stuff in his spare time than he would in DC...like get to go outside and stuff. Really, the 'vacation' argument smells pretty ripe.

Jim, if I remember correctly, the National Archives staff did a sting on Berger after they realized he had removed documents. They provided more copies of what he had already stolen, the next time he came in, as bait. He took it again. Which tells me the National Archives still had originals or copies despite what Berger took. I just don't know which particular document that was. We already know some of what was in the margins of these:

The report cites a 1998 meeting between Mr. Berger and the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, at which Mr. Tenet presented a plan to capture Osama bin Laden.

“In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted,” the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, Central Intelligence Agency memo summarizing the weekly meeting between Messrs. Berger and Tenet.

In June of 1999, another plan for action against Mr. bin Laden was on the table. The potential target was a Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms. The commission report released yesterday cites Mr. Berger’s “handwritten notes on the meeting paper” referring to “the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which could mean 60-65 casualties.”According to the Berger notes, “if he responds, we’re blamed.”

On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council’s counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: “In the margin next to Clarke’s suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, ‘no.’ ”

In August of 2000, Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden.This time, the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a “Predator” drone. Reports the commission: “In the memo’s margin,Berger wrote that before considering action, ‘I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.’ ”

In other words, according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times — Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the 2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive today.

***
End of excerpt.

So, if the March 2000 doc's content was so damaging that Berger would risk his future career to steal it in Sept 03, hopefully the Justice Dept knows what's in it and hopefully has a copy. Although Ashcroft testified he had not seen an actual copy, somehow its contents was known by him in April 04 when he testified.

John:
The fact of the matter is that it wasn't a twenty minute break for Clinton, it was an eight year break. The man accomplished absolutely nothing as President.

The key words you miss in your attack on Bush are "working vacation". We have technology these days that lets him be briefed, communicate, do everything he would do in DC from the ranch or wherever he is. Congress is not in session, what would he be doing in DC that is any different from what he is doing in Crawford?

BR -

Thanx!

That helps, I think. I just feared/suspected that Sandy B took stuff BEFORE the staff could ensure they knew what it was, etc. I keep encountering phrasings on the Left and MSM that he took "only copies" while seeing mentions on the Right and blogs that the material he took contained hand-written notes on copies. Notes of that latter sort transmogrify "copies" into "originals".

So, I think your post indicated that the "Sandies" were Clinton/Berger-bad, but did not contain refutation of Clinton's latest USS Cole posturings. Is that right?

RE: john's post (August 17, 2005 10:28 AM)

...Trust me this country needs another Clinton in the White House to clean up the mess this one is leaving. Kind of a deja vu of 1992. The only mess Clinton made walked out on Lewinsky's dress. You can hardly blame him for that!

Oh, brother. Where to begin? Let's just focus on that last part.

Yes, let's play kick the can with national defense while, technically, being on the job. Who, really, is cleaning up whose mess? Clinton had the good fortune of good timing to coast on the post-Reagan peace dividend and temporary success from the Gulf War. Look where his subsequent "leadership" led. While you're at it, why not canvass for J. Carter? I hear he was pretty committed to work too and sported a nice sweater to economize. Maybe that dynamic duo could tag team bin Laden since their successes in the ME were so apparent.

Sarah wrote:
I seem to remember a claim -- Mansour Ijaz? -- that Sudan actually offered to turn over Bin Laden but the Clintonites said no. Has that ever been verified?

Yes it has. Here is an MP3 of Clinton confessing it to a group of businessmen in Long Island in February 2002. Listen for yourself.

Transcript of relevant excerpt:

Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start meeting with them again.

They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here, because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.

So I pleaded with the Saudis to take take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato.

Sorry - I didn't mean to step on anyone's tail. My point was that Clinton's sex life did not cause 9/11 any more than Bush's vacation- this one or the one he took in 2001 caused 9/11. Bin Laden was a bad guy that Clinton didn't get and so far neither has Bush. The world will definitely be a better place when Bin Laden is gone. In the mean time my world will be a better place when my personal friends are home from Afghanistan and Iraq. I will feel much better when my 18, 15 and 11 year old sons are not at risk to spend time there. I fully understand Cindy Sheehan problem How can she reconcile her loss for a war of questionable purpose. Bush made the comment that he is sorry for her but he needs to move on with his life. In Afghanistan it is clear that the risk to our soldiers and the loss of life is an unfortunate but necessary price to stop Bin Laden. I value our soldiers and totally support the military. But, I still don't get why we picked a fight in Iraq. It was a political choice not a security imperative. As such we must weigh the political gain against the loss of our soldiers. Saying it loud, demeaning Cindy Sheehan, changing the message does not give Bush's position political weight. It is sad and confusing. I am sure that its not worth the life of one of my children. Bush certainly wouldn't make Cindy Sheehan's sacrifice. In 100 years we will all be dead and history can judge it more clearly. I look forward to having another Clinton in the White House so we can reset our moral compass.

I look forward to having another Clinton in the White House so we can reset our moral compass.

What can you say to this? I mean really...what possible come back can you resort to when someone has just said that they want someone like Clinton so that we can set our 'moral compass' straight? I mean, I'm not even laughing because it's not really funny. It's sad, but not in a make-you-cry way. I just don't know what to make of such a statement. Do you just shake your head and walk away...do you keep banging your head against the wall explaining how cheating on your wife at the office with the help then lying about it in court is not and never has been 'moral'? How do you respond to such a remark? If made in person, I think my eyes would go wide, I would stutter, and probably walk away talking to myself. There is a language being spoken that I just don't understand, is what I would conclude.

RE: John's post (August 17, 2005 12:07 PM)

My point was that Clinton's sex life did not cause 9/11 any more than Bush's vacation- this one or the one he took in 2001 caused 9/11.

OK. I agree somewhat with that. However, Mr. Clinton's sexual escapades were interfering with his job in that it was a behavior he had to hide, had to worry about concealing, and had to plan for his next fix. I don't know how much it detracted him but it certainly, ultimately, effected his Presidency. At which point it overwhelmed his life is not knowable by us.

Nobody could have predicted 9/11 though some of the information that is coming out now sure is looking like it has a few targets on it from the Clinton era. With the caveat that no one, on the whole, performed perfectly, I think we can dispense with the notion that Bush hasn't done his best to secure this nation in view of past shortcomings. I don't see how anyone can make that claim vís-a-vís the Clinton/Berger/Gorlick reaction to national security and ME policy.

I'll address the "moral compass" of Clinton on some other occasion but I'm sure I'd not trust that needle.