Has Foxnews' Chris Wallace Questioned Bush admin. officials like he did to Clinton? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

host · 09-24-2006, 12:25 PM

Do you think that Clinton is correct when he told Chris Wallace that Bush admin. officials have not been questioned in the aggressive and confrontational manner, by Foxnews.....over the same conflicts in what they said about Bin Laden vs., what they did to pursue and to apprehend him, as Wallace used in his Clinton interview?

Is there a different standard regarding what Clinton has to offer as proof that Clarke was competent in his role anti-terroism chief in at least two administrations, vs. what the current Bush administration has been pressed to offer, by the U.S. press, to justify it's marginalizing and demotion of Clarke?

Has the Bush admin. been asked by Foxnews to explain the shifting focus by that admin. on the priority of "getting Bin Laden", before or after 9/11, as has been asked of the Clinton administration? Has the Bush admin. even been asked why Bin Laden has not even been indicted for any crimes related to the 9/11 attacks, or more recently, or why the decision was made to invade Iraq before Bin Laden or Mullah Omar were apprehended, or why the security in Afgahnistan was allowed to deteriorate to it's present level, why the opium crop was permitted to start from zero in 2001, to record levels, now, or how four terrorists, including the mastermind of the "Bali Bombing", which was featured just a month before the US 2002 mid-term elections....al-Qaeda's "top man in Asia", could have escaped from a US prison in Afghansitan in 2005, and all still be loose, today?

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/in...rssnyt&emc=rss
Qaeda Operative in Southeast Asia Has Fled U.S. Jail in Afghanistan

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: November 3, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 - Omar al-Faruq, a confidant of Osama bin Laden who was one of Al Qaeda's senior operatives in Southeast Asia, escaped from an American military prison in Afghanistan in July, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Military authorities acknowledged in July that four suspected Qaeda terrorists had escaped from the heavily fortified prison at Bagram Air Base, apparently by picking the locks of their cells and slipping past a careless Afghan guard. They remain at large.

Omar al-Faruq was captured in 2002 but escaped this July.
The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage

Mr. Faruq was one of Mr. bin Laden's top lieutenants until he was captured in Indonesia in June 2002 and turned over to the United States. Pentagon officials confirmed that he was one of the fugitives only after the information was disclosed this week in Texas at a military trial of an Army sergeant charged with maltreating detainees in Afghanistan. Mr. Faruq was identified by an alias at the time of the jailbreak.

His disappearance, a major source of embarrassment to American officials at the base, came to light on Tuesday when defense lawyers for Sgt. Alan Driver demanded to know where he was so that he could testify at the trial.

Commanders in Afghanistan said security at the prison had been redoubled after the detainees escaped.

American intelligence officials say that they believe that Mr. Faruq set up the Qaeda network in Southeast Asia in 1998, and that they were convinced at the time he was captured that he knew a great deal about pending attacks. At the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation center at Bagram, Mr. Faruq initially provided little useful information, intelligence officials said.

Most details of his interrogation are unknown, except that the questioning became prolonged, extending to around-the-clock sessions, American officials said. Some interrogation specialists have said he probably was left naked most of the time, with his hands and feet bound.....

More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_escape

Is their a different standard required of Patrick Fitzgerald, to prove that he is conducting a fair, justified, unbiased, non-partisan, and discreet (leak free) investigation of the white house in the Plame CIA leak crime and conspiracy, than there was for the six year long investigation of the Clinton white house by special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr?

I see the same kind of co-ordinated attack against Clinton, renewed recently on the eve of the ABC 9/11 "docudrama", as I see being carried out against Joe Wilson and special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

In the <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=108832">"Is Bin Laden Dead?"</a> and in <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=108084&page=3">"The Plame Affair....."</a> , the same exchanges are repeated. One side posts the spin; "Clinton was offered Bin Laden on a platter, twice, and refused to take him"....and "Armitage confessed that he was the leaker of Plame's CIA employment, so now, "the left" owes Rove, Bush, Cheney, and Libby apologies, and Patrick Fitzgerald is a rogue prosecutor, who has to reported to the OFP at the DOJ"....and the bullshit above is now seen all over the internet and in "the news".

So we're "reduced" to the spectacle, IMO, of "one side" of the argument, being....out of the argument. Repetition and saturation are all that they bring to the argument.....but all of it whithers when placed alongside the facts, the reported record. Yet here it comes....over and over....."the platter", vs. determinations in the 9/11 Commission report, and in the statements of Clinton, Tenet, and Clarke....the same realities that Foxnews' Chris Wallace bumps up against when he launches the "talking points", at Clinton.

"One side" posts and saturates all media with "Plame was not "under cover" or covert, therefore Libby committed "no crime", and "it's Wilson's fault, he's a scumbag", and "Fitzgerald has no case, and he should have dropped the investigation, after Armitage testified that he was the leaker".

The "spin" above is repeated everywhere, but in the next few months, we will see that it is not true. The republican controlled DOJ, agreed that the CIA's complaint about Plame's public exposure, in July, 2003, was enough to launch an FBI investigation, and Fitzgerald has told several courts that revealing Plame's employment was a crime. Libby was indicted for intentionally obstructing justice and misleading the FBI and a grand jury. There are a myriad of reports, including in Fitzgerald's own pleadings to Libby's criminal trail court judge, that administration officials from Ari Fleischer, to Bruce Bartlett, to Karl Rove, Libby, and now Armitage, all told the press to ask them who sent Joe Wilson to Niger.

The Senate Select Intel. committee, the former CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, and Patrick Fitzgerald, all say that "Wilson's CIA wife" did not "send him to Niger", but an entire sizeable segment of the population believes that she did,
and this lie works to Rove's and Cheney's intended effect; to convince people that Wilson was not credible, because he was sent on "a junket", by his "CIA wife".

So it all works....we're polarized because "one side" has been convinced, solely by a repetitive narrowcast of propaganda, that Clinton intentionally failed to "get Bin Laden", that Richard Clarke was not competent or trustworthy, that Foxnews is "fair and balanced", even without Foxnews asking Bush admin. officials why Clarke was demoted, or why

Quote:

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...AB0894DA404482
or http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/trans...ice%20Dept.htm
........But in his Sept. 10 submission to the budget office, Mr. Ashcroft did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators.

Mr. Ashcroft proposed cuts in 14 programs. One proposed $65 million cut was for a program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants for equipment, including radios and decontamination suits and training to localities for counterterrorism preparedness.

Last August, before he proposed cutting the program to $44 million from $109 million, Mr. Ashcroft went to Dayton, Ohio, and watched a preparedness exercise and announced grants totaling $1.8 million to Ohio. He said: "All of these domestic preparedness efforts have one overarching goal: to ensure that those of you at the state and local levels build the critical capacity to adequately respond to domestic terrorism. At the Department of Justice, we recognize that the threat of terrorism here at home is a serious and growing challenge for our nation."

Mr. Ashcroft justified the cut to Mr. Daniels by saying that states had been slow to develop the statewide plans needed to qualify for federal money. Congressional critics of the attorney general said the Justice Department was not really interested in the program and did not help states develop the required plans.

In various listings of priorities for his department issued between May 10 and Aug. 9, made available to The New York Times by Congressional officials critical of Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general did not single out counter-terrorism. ..........

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...400310_pf.html
Bill Clinton Defends bin Laden Handling

By KAREN MATTHEWS
The Associated Press
Sunday, September 24, 2006; 1:55 PM

NEW YORK -- In a combative interview on "Fox News Sunday," former President Clinton defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden, saying he tried to have bin Laden killed and was attacked for his efforts by the same people who now criticize him for not doing enough.

"That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said in the interview. "They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try."

Clinton accused host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job" and asked: "I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, 'Why didn't you do anything about the Cole?' I want to know how many people you asked, 'Why did you fire Dick Clarke?'"

He was referring to the USS Cole, attacked by terrorists in Yemen in 2000, and former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke.

Wallace said Sunday he was surprised by Clinton's "conspiratorial view" of "a very non-confrontational question, 'Did you do enough to connect the dots and go after Al Qaida?'"

"All I did was ask him a question, and I think it was a legitimate news question. I was surprised that he would conjure up that this was a hit job," Wallace said in a telephone interview.

Clinton said he "worked hard" to try to kill bin Laden.

"We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody's gotten since," he said.

He told Wallace, "And you got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever, but I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it, but I did try and I did everything I thought I responsibly could."

The interview was taped Friday during Clinton's three-day Global Initiative conference.

Quote:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/23/fox-clarke-demoted/

Chris Wallace Never Asked A Bush Administration Official Why They Demoted Richard Clarke

During his interview on Fox News, Bill Clinton asked Chris Wallace how many times Wallace asked a Bush administration official, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/clinton-interview">“Why did you fire Dick Clarke?”</a> By all accounts, Clarke was one of the people most concerned about al-Qaeda in any administration. Shortly after taking office, the Bush administration <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2097685/">demoted Clarke, eliminated his staff and removed him from the Principals meeting.</a>

Since 2001, Wallace has interview the top national security officials from the Bush administration — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Hadley — 42 times. According to a Lexis-Nexis database search, he never asked any of them why Clarke was demoted.

The one time he brought up Clarke’s name with a Bush administration official — during a March 28, 2004 interview with Rumsfeld — he repeatedly attempted to smear Clarke as political motivated and untrustworthy. Some excerpts:

Quote:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115436,00.html
FOXNEWS.COM HOME > FNS W/ CHRIS WALLACE
Transcript: U.S. Defense Sec'y Donald Rumsfeld

Monday, March 29, 2004
The following is an excerpt from "FOX News Sunday," March 28, 2004.

WALLACE: I think a lot of people in Washington are trying to figure out, to understand Richard Clarke, to make sense of what he has said and of apparent contradictions in his story — is he telling the truth, or is he pushing an agenda.

WALLACE: Let’s switch, if we can, to a different aspect of this. There is a move now by congressional Republican leaders to declassify Clarke’s testimony before one of their panels in 2002 to see whether or not it contradicts what he is telling the commission and what he writes in his book now. As I understand it, the Pentagon has to approve any such declassification. Do you think it’s a good idea?

WALLACE: Do you worry at all that, whether it’s the debate over Dick Clarke’s credibility, his charges, whether it’s the fact that we’re in the political season, that the important work you say the commission could do is going to get caught up in partisanship?

After Clinton brought up the issue, Wallace claimed “we asked” and shot back <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/clinton-interview">“Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday, Sir?“</a>

Quote:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215397,00.html
Transcript: William Jefferson Clinton on 'FOX News Sunday'

Sunday, September 24, 2006

WALLACE: Mr. President, welcome to "FOX News Sunday."

BILL CLINTON: Thanks.

WALLACE: In a recent issue of the New Yorker you say, quote, "I'm 60 years old and I damn near died, and I'm worried about how many lives I can save before I do die."
Is that what drives you in your effort to help in these developing countries?

CLINTON: Yes, I really — but I don't mean — that sounds sort of morbid when you say it like that. I mean, I actually ...

WALLACE: That's how you said it.

CLINTON: Yes, but the way I said it, the tone in which I said it was actually almost whimsical and humorous. That is, this is what I love to do. It is what I think I should do.

That is, I have had a wonderful life. I got to be president. I got to live the life of my dreams. I dodged a bullet with that heart problem. And I really think I should — I think I owe it to my fellow countrymen and people throughout the world to spend time saving lives, solving problems, helping people see the future.

But as it happens, I love it. I mean, I feel it's a great gift. So, it's a rewarding way to spend my life.

WALLACE: Someone asked you — and I don't want to, again, be too morbid, but this is what you said. He asked you if you could wind up doing more good as a former president than as a president, and you said, "Only if I live a long time."

CLINTON: Yes, that's true.

WALLACE: How do you rate, compare the powers of being in office as president and what you can do out of office as a former president?

CLINTON: Well, when you are president, you can operate on a much broader scope. So, for example, you can simultaneously be trying to stop a genocide in Kosovo and, you know, make peace in the Middle East, pass a budget that gives millions of kids a chance to have afterschool programs and has a huge increase in college aid at home. In other words, you've got a lot of different moving parts, and you can move them all at once.

But you're also more at the mercy of events. That is, President Bush did not run for president to deal with 9/11, but once it happened it wasn't as if he had an option.

Once I looked at the economic — I'll give you a much more mundane example. Once I looked at the economic data, the new data after I won the election, I realized that I would have to work much harder to reduce the deficit, and therefore I would have less money in my first year to invest in things I wanted to invest in.

WALLACE: So what is it that you can do as a former president?

CLINTON: So what you can do as a former president is — you don't have the wide range of power, so you have to concentrate on fewer things. But you are less at the mercy of unfolding events.

So if I say, look, we're going to work on the economic empowerment of poor people, on fighting AIDS and other diseases, on trying to bridge the religious and political differences between people, and on trying to, you know, avoid the worst calamities of climate change and help to revitalize the economy in the process, I can actually do that.

I mean, because tomorrow when I get up, if there's a bad headline in the paper, it's President Bush's responsibility, not mine. That's the joy of being a former president. And it is true that if you live long enough and you really have great discipline in the way you do this, like this CGI, you might be able to affect as many lives, or more, for the good as you did as president.

WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on "Fox News Sunday," I got a lot of e-mail from viewers. And I've got to say, I was surprised. Most of them wanted me to ask you this question: Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president?

There's a new book out, I suspect you've already read, called "The Looming Tower." And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said, "I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops." Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the Cole.

CLINTON: OK, let's just go through that.

WALLACE: Let me — let me — may I just finish the question, sir?

And after the attack, the book says that bin Laden separated his leaders, spread them around, because he expected an attack, and there was no response.

I understand that hindsight is always 20/20. ...

CLINTON: No, let's talk about it.

WALLACE: ... but the question is, why didn't you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

CLINTON: OK, let's talk about it. Now, I will answer all those things on the merits, but first I want to talk about the context in which this arises.

I'm being asked this on the FOX network. ABC just had a right- wing conservative run in their little "Pathway to 9/11," falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report.

And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn't do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush's neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much — same people.

They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in "Black Hawk down," and I refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.

OK, now let's look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Usama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al Qaeda was a growing concern in October of '93.

WALLACE: I understand, and I ...

CLINTON: No, wait. No, wait. Don't tell me this — you asked me why didn't I do more to bin Laden. There was not a living soul. All the people who now criticize me wanted to leave the next day.

You brought this up, so you'll get an answer, but you can't ...

WALLACE: I'm perfectly happy to.

CLINTON: All right, secondly ...

WALLACE: Bin Laden says ...

CLINTON: Bin Laden may have said ...

WALLACE: ... bin Laden says that it showed the weakness of the United States.

CLINTON: But it would've shown the weakness if we'd left right away, but he wasn't involved in that. That's just a bunch of bull. That was about Mohammed Adid, a Muslim warlord, murdering 22 Pakistani Muslim troops. We were all there on a humanitarian mission. We had no mission, none, to establish a certain kind of Somali government or to keep anybody out.

He was not a religious fanatic ...

WALLACE: But, Mr. President ...

CLINTON: ... there was no Al Qaeda ...

WALLACE: ... with respect, if I may, instead of going through '93 and ...

CLINTON: No, no. You asked it. You brought it up. You brought it up.

WALLACE: May I ask a general question and then you can answer?

CLINTON: Yes.

WALLACE: The 9/11 Commission, which you've talk about — and this is what they did say, not what ABC pretended they said ...

CLINTON: Yes, what did they say?

WALLACE: ... they said about you and President Bush, and I quote, "The U.S. government took the threat seriously, but not in the sense of mustering anything like the kind of effort that would be gathered to confront an enemy of the first, second or even third rank."

CLINTON: First of all, that's not true with us and bin Laden.

WALLACE: Well, I'm telling you that's what the 9/11 Commission says.

CLINTON: All right. Let's look at what Richard Clarke said. Do you think Richard Clarke has a vigorous attitude about bin Laden?

WALLACE: Yes, I do.

CLINTON: You do, don't you?

WALLACE: I think he has a variety of opinions and loyalties, but yes, he has a vigorous ...

CLINTON: He has a variety of opinion and loyalties now, but let's look at the facts: He worked for Ronald Reagan; he was loyal to him. He worked for George H. W. Bush; he was loyal to him. He worked for me, and he was loyal to me. He worked for President Bush; he was loyal to him.

They downgraded him and the terrorist operation.

Now, look what he said, read his book and read his factual assertions — not opinions — assertions. He said we took vigorous action after the African embassies. We probably nearly got bin Laden.

WALLACE: But ...

CLINTON: No, wait a minute.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: ... cruise missiles.

CLINTON: No, no. I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him.

The CIA, which was run by George Tenet, that President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to, he said, "He did a good job setting up all these counterterrorism things."

The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until I came there.

Now, if you want to criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for this: After the Cole, I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full-scale attack search for bin Laden.

But we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan, which we got after 9/11.

The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible while I was there. They refused to certify. So that meant I would've had to send a few hundred Special Forces in helicopters and refuel at night.

Even the 9/11 Commission didn't do that. Now, the 9/11 Commission was a political document, too. All I'm asking is, anybody who wants to say I didn't do enough, you read Richard Clarke's book.

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn't get him.

WALLACE: Right.

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried.

So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.

So you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me. What I want to know is ...

WALLACE: Well, wait a minute, sir.

CLINTON: No, wait. No, no ...

WALLACE: I want to ask a question. You don't think that's a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of.

I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, "Why didn't you do anything about the Cole?"

I want to know how many you asked, "Why did you fire Dick Clarke?"

I want to know how many people you asked ...

WALLACE: We asked — we asked ...

CLINTON: I don't ...

WALLACE: Do you ever watch "FOX News Sunday," sir?

CLINTON: I don't believe you asked them that.

WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of ...

CLINTON: You didn't ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: About the USS Cole?

CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there's plenty of stuff to ask.

CLINTON: Did you ever ask that?

You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch's supporting my work on climate change.

And you came here under false pretenses and said that you'd spend half the time talking about — you said you'd spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7-billion-plus in three days from 215 different commitments. And you don't care.

WALLACE: But, President Clinton, if you look at the questions here, you'll see half the questions are about that. I didn't think this was going to set you off on such a tear.

CLINTON: You launched it — it set me off on a tear because you didn't formulate it in an honest way and because you people ask me questions you don't ask the other side.

WALLACE: That's not true. Sir, that is not true.

CLINTON: And Richard Clarke made it clear in his testimony...

WALLACE: Would you like to talk about the Clinton Global Initiative?

CLINTON: No, I want to finish this now.

WALLACE: All right. Well, after you.

CLINTON: All I'm saying is, you falsely accused me of giving aid and comfort to bin Laden because of what happened in Somalia. No one knew Al Qaeda existed then. And ...

WALLACE: But did they know in 1996 when he declared war on the U.S.? Did they know in 1998 ...

CLINTON: Absolutely, they did.

WALLACE: ... when he bombed the two embassies?

CLINTON: And who talked about ...

WALLACE: Did they know in 2000 when he hit the Cole?

CLINTON: What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we'd have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him.

Now, I've never criticized President Bush, and I don't think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq.

And you ask me about terror and Al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive thing? When all you have to do is read Richard Clarke's book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror.

And you've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could.

The entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaeda was responsible while I was president.

And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time. They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that's strange.

WALLACE: Can I ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative?

CLINTON: You can.

WALLACE: I always intended to, sir.

CLINTON: No, you intended, though, to move your bones by doing this first, which is perfectly fine. But I don't mind people asking me — I actually talked to the 9/11 Commission for four hours, Chris, and I told them the mistakes I thought I made. And I urged them to make those mistakes public, because I thought none of us had been perfect.

But instead of anybody talking about those things, I always get these clever little political yields (ph), where they ask me one-sided questions. And the other guys notice that. And it always comes from one source. And so ...

WALLACE: And ...

CLINTON: And so ...

WALLACE: I just want to ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative, but what's the source? I mean, you seem upset, and I ...

CLINTON: I am upset because ...

WALLACE: And all I can say is, I'm asking you this in good faith because it's on people's minds, sir. And I wasn't ...

CLINTON: Well, there's a reason it's on people's minds. That's the point I'm trying to make. There's a reason it's on people's minds: Because there's been a serious disinformation campaign to create that impression.

This country only has one person who's worked on this terror. From the terrorist incidents under Reagan to the terrorist incidents from 9/11, only one: Richard Clarke.

And all I can say to anybody is, you want to know what we did wrong or right, or anybody else did? Read his book.

The people on my political right who say I didn't do enough spent the whole time I was president saying, "Why is he so obsessed with bin Laden? That was "wag the dog" when he tried to kill him."

My Republican secretary of defense — and I think I'm the only president since World War II to have a secretary of defense of the opposite party — Richard Clarke and all the intelligence people said that I ordered a vigorous attempt to get bin Laden and came closer, apparently, than anybody has since.

WALLACE: All right.

CLINTON: And you guys try to create the opposite impression, when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke's findings and you know it's not true. It's just not true.

And all this business about Somalia — the same people who criticized me about Somalia were demanding I leave the next day. The same exact crowd.

WALLACE: One of the ...

CLINTON: And so, if you're going to do this, for God's sake, follow the same standards for everybody ...

WALLACE: I think we do, sir.

CLINTON: ... and be flat — and fair.

WALLACE: I think we do. ...

kutulu · 09-25-2006, 09:38 AM

That transcript was great. Wallace got owned by Clinton. It was really nice to see him fire back like that. Wallace got a lot more than he was looking for and kept trying to bail out.

Paq · 09-25-2006, 11:50 AM

no kidding

clinton just proved why he was more of a president than bush will ever dream of being.

Way to go

ratbastid · 09-25-2006, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paq

no kidding

clinton just proved why he was more of a president than bush will ever dream of being.

Way to go

Yep. It's getting spun as "He lost his cool! What a nut job!", but anybody who actually watches the thing saw a canny rhetorician defending himself from a clear attempted hatchet job.

Paq · 09-25-2006, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Yep. It's getting spun as "He lost his cool! What a nut job!", but anybody who actually watches the thing saw a canny rhetorician defending himself from a clear attempted hatchet job.

Yeah, when i first read the headline on some board, it read as "CLINTON LOSES HIS COOL AND GOES OFF THE DEEP END" so i was expecting the worst..and when i saw the clip they posted, which was fox news' 10 second clip of clinton saying that the bush admin didn't try with OBL...

So i had to find the full clip...and to my, admittedly biased, eyes, it looks like a well reasoned response to what wallace was trying to do. Admittedly, at first, it seems a bit more of a response than the question called for, but when you consider the movie that was just released that tries to put the blame solely on clinton, and you consider he is on fox news, so he is going to be a bit more cautious..and when you consider that he expected to talk about his global initiative a good majority of the time..then i could TOTALLY see where he's coming from. He remained more calm than i would have been, thats' for certain

On a related note, all people at work talk about now is how clinton was responsible for 9/11.....

i just don't get it.

kutulu · 09-25-2006, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Yep. It's getting spun as "He lost his cool! What a nut job!", but anybody who actually watches the thing saw a canny rhetorician defending himself from a clear attempted hatchet job.

It's because that's all the right has these days. Everyone opposed either hates America, is crazy, or both (usually both).

Charlatan · 09-25-2006, 02:31 PM

Wow. That was some interview. If the entire clip is found, please post it.

That should just about wrap it up for the "but Clinton" crowd.

To answer, the OP... I don't get the impression that Fox news, and the media in general, are anywhere near as harsh to Bush as they are to Clinton.

Seaver · 09-25-2006, 03:39 PM

I didn't see the clip, but from the transcript Clinton owned. I dont know what really went on, I dont know what the true history in the backrooms were. However, if Clinton is to play the role of cautious military leader he must then answer the obvious question of why troops are perfectly able to be sacrificed in Bosnia and Somolia and not for Al Qaeda. I dont know, none of us will ever truely know.

dc_dux · 09-25-2006, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

Wow. That was some interview. If the entire clip is found, please post it.

That should just about wrap it up for the "but Clinton" crowd.

To answer, the OP... I don't get the impression that Fox news, and the media in general, are anywhere near as harsh to Bush as they are to Clinton.

Media Matters had a study of Sunday talk show guests on the three major networks (Fox was not included) from 1997-2005:

Quote:

Among the study's key findings:

* The balance between Democrats/progressives and Republicans/conservatives was roughly equal during Clinton's second term, with a slight edge toward Republicans/conservatives: 52 percent of the ideologically identifiable guests were from the right, and 48 percent were from the left. But in Bush's first term, Republicans/ conservatives held a dramatic advantage, outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent. In 2005, the figures were an identical 58 percent to 42 percent.
* Counting only elected officials and administration representatives, Democrats had a small advantage during Clinton's second term: 53 percent to 45 percent. In Bush's first term, however, the Republican advantage was 61 percent to 39 percent -- nearly three times as large.
* In both the Clinton and Bush administrations, conservative journalists were far more likely to appear on the Sunday shows than were progressive journalists. In Clinton's second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602140002

A more recent update through the first half of 2006:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607200006

Of course, since Media Matters is considered by some to be a "left wing" propaganda machine and the study doesnt necessarily address how the guests were treated by the moderators, I'm sure many will deny it has any credibility.

Maybe they other studies?

Elphaba · 09-25-2006, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

I didn't see the clip, but from the transcript Clinton owned. I dont know what really went on, I dont know what the true history in the backrooms were. However, if Clinton is to play the role of cautious military leader he must then answer the obvious question of why troops are perfectly able to be sacrificed in Bosnia and Somolia and not for Al Qaeda. I dont know, none of us will ever truely know.

Just a wild ass guess on my part, but it might be due to Al Qaeda not being represented by a single sovereign nation. Clinton was waiting for intelligence confirmation of obl's involvement in the Cole bombing to warrant an attack in Afganistan. That confirmation wasn't made until January, 2001, which was ignored by Bush until after 911. Does that help sort things out for you a bit?

Gilda · 09-25-2006, 03:57 PM

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/fox_fns_clinton_.mov]Here is the first half, in which Clinton defends himself from charges of not going after Bin Laden while Chris Wallace laughs at him during the interview. There was no attempt to even appear neutral in the interview, and Clinton remains in control the whole time.

Ok, it won't link directly to the video, but it's the last one at the bottom.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

I didn't see the clip, but from the transcript Clinton owned. I dont know what really went on, I dont know what the true history in the backrooms were. However, if Clinton is to play the role of cautious military leader he must then answer the obvious question of why troops are perfectly able to be sacrificed in Bosnia and Somolia and not for Al Qaeda. I dont know, none of us will ever truely know.

He says in the clip that one of his objections to how Bush is handling things is that not enough of an effort was made to get Al Qaeda and due to resources being wasted in Iraq, which had nothing to do with Bin Laden or 9/11. He didn't go in during his tenure because there was no certificatiion from the FBI and CIA and they couldn't get staging rights for troops in . . . Kyrgistan, I think it was. All of that changed after 9/11.

He explains it quite clearly. He doesn't object to troops and resources being used against Al Qaeda, just their being wasted in a country entirely unrelated while the one that harbored the terrorists responsible get a fraction of the attention.

Elphaba · 09-25-2006, 04:11 PM

I have found a ten minute Youtube video of the interview, but Clinton is still cut off in mid sentence. I'll keep looking, but this does a good job of it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WYNI5RPOlp4

Ustwo · 09-25-2006, 04:18 PM

61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent.

Its not the 'ideologicall identifiable' journalists which are the problem. Most conservatives don't try to hide what they are. Conservatives to better being themselves ratings wise than liberals, thats why Air America had to be manufactured and hangs on by shoestrings while the pluthera of conservative talking heads made it via market forces.

I don't care about liberal journalists.

I care about liberal journalists slanting stories without their personal agendas being known.

Seaver · 09-25-2006, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Just a wild ass guess on my part, but it might be due to Al Qaeda not being represented by a single sovereign nation. Clinton was waiting for intelligence confirmation of obl's involvement in the Cole bombing to warrant an attack in Afganistan. That confirmation wasn't made until January, 2001, which was ignored by Bush until after 911. Does that help sort things out for you a bit?

They bombed a number of our embassies and the WTC under Clinton, all were linked in time to AQ/OBL.

Elphaba · 09-25-2006, 04:37 PM

Play the video, which is the topic of this thread.

j8ear · 09-25-2006, 05:31 PM

Saw the actual interview on Sunday...start to finish.

Clinton behaved like a childish and pompous ass....somehow entitled to be treated different then other politicians or other felons for that matter.

Wallace asked a very reasonable, albiet hard hitting question, and Clinton had a tantrum.

Wallace, was somewhat taken aback, and deer in the headlights like, as Clinton went off the deep end. In this respect, and only this respect, was Wallace "owned." He had trouble getting in a word as Clinton continued to go off on his rant.

To the topic of this thread.....WHO GIVES A CRAP WHAT WALLACE HAS ASKED OF OTHER POLITICIANS. He asked Clinton a very valid, and poignant question Clinton had a melt down. Every PUBLIC OFFICIAL gets challenged, SHOULD BE CHALLENGED, and unfortunately for Clinton, in this case, he blew it...and blew it big time.

Hey at least he admitted that he failed.

-bear

roachboy · 09-25-2006, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Hey at least he admitted that he failed.

more than i have seen anyone from the right do relative to the bush administration, the failures of which have been absolutely epic in comparison with those of the clinton administration.

it is funny that it has become difficult to see the clip of the interview--faux news is apparently forcing them down. copyright issues no doubt.

i did see a clip tho, and i think we must have been watching a different interview, bear: maybe i never got my special conservative reality filters, tho, so i didnt see it properly.

Paq · 09-25-2006, 06:21 PM

yeah, i must have had some weird liberal hippy filter on bc i did not see him acting as a pompous ass or anything. I saw him calling a spade a spade.

And yea, i believe all politicians shoudl be challenged, starting with bush and working the way down...hell, just challenge bush once and watch what happens...

Elphaba · 09-25-2006, 06:44 PM

The same question was asked without the "gotcha" by Couric on ABC. A polite response was given by Clinton. I must have missed the headlines "CLINTON FAILED TO FREAK OUT".

Has Fox answered Clinton's challenge yet? They must have asked this question of responding to the Cole over and over again of Bush and his administration. No? Nothing?

Infinite_Loser · 09-25-2006, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by j8ear

Clinton behaved like a childish and pompous ass....somehow entitled to be treated different then other politicians or other felons for that matter.

Wallace asked a very reasonable, albiet hard hitting question, and Clinton had a tantrum.

Whoa... We must have watched a completely different video, because I've no idea how you came to this conclusion.

shakran · 09-25-2006, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paq

And yea, i believe all politicians shoudl be challenged, starting with bush and working the way down...hell, just challenge bush once and watch what happens...

We've already seen what happens. When Irish journalist Carole Coleman dared to ask tough question of the president, he lodged a complaint with the Irish embassy in Washington, and to "punish" her, refused to let her interview his wife even though it had already been set up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Infinite_loser

Whoa... We must have watched a completely different video, because I've no idea how you came to this conclusion.

Well he's apparently also concluded that receiving a blowjob is a felony, so I'm frankly not gonna put much stock in those conclusions.

Wallace's question would have been reasonable ONLY if he asked the same thing of President Bush, who ignored bin Laden for 8 months before 9/11, and then began ignoring him again as soon as bin Laden's use as an excuse to destroy and take over Iraq.

Clinton had a point. He tried to kill bin Laden. And I believe him when he says he'd have a lot more troops looking for bin Laden than Bush does. But then he'd have a lot more troops to spare since he'd never have been stupid enough to invade Iraq in the first place.

Clinton had another point - running around trying to peg blame on him is stupid. Even if it was 100% his fault (and only a complete mouthbreathing idiot would honestly believe that), it simply doesn't matter at this point. We haven't invented time machines, so it's not like we can go back and change it. He's out of office so it's not like we can vote him out.

Maybe I'm weird but I'm more interested in going forward to clean up the huge mess we're in than I am in finding (the wrong) people to blame for it.

Back to Wallace for a bit, he's biased as hell, but I really don't care. If you wanna be biased, go for it, but for fuck's sake, ADMIT it. Don't run around claiming to be "fair and balanced" when you treat the republicans with kid gloves and try to crucify the democrats. And it's not just Wallace. Look at that horse's ass Cabuto. He doesn't even TRY to hide it. He practically drools over himself when he's interviewing a republican, then turns around and is rude and needlessly argumentative when interviewing anyone else. If he thinks he's fooling anyone but the most vacuous of bandwagoners he's nuts.

And before Ustwo or Marv or someone else gets all up in arms, I'd be saying the same thing if someone tried to pull that on the opposite side of the fence. Olbermann is obviously biased in his commentary but he doesn't try to hide it like the jackasses at Fox.

Ustwo · 09-25-2006, 08:44 PM

On a side note, this was in a thread when it came out a while ago but.....

One side has 'Media Matters'

the other has

UCLA

Quote:

Date: December 14, 2005
Contact: Meg Sullivan ( msullivan@support.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-825-1046

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.

An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.

Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC's "World News Tonight," NBC's "Nightly News," USA Today, NBC's "Today Show," Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR's "Morning Edition," CBS' "Early Show" and The Washington Post.

Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.

Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.

"One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites," said Groseclose. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."

Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.

"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's. If anything, government‑funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8)."

The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.

"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.

The results break new ground.

"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."

-UCLA-

MS580

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

Mmmmmmmm and the irony for all of you...

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

The problem I think is that some of you leftists are so far left you can't see the median anymore. I'm sure for you the press isn't liberal biased since they are not talking about HilterBush and calling for his impeachment on imaginary crimes. For YOU the press isn't liberal is down right conservative. Life must be different from the fringes.

For the voters of America, its biased, and biased to the left.

dc_dux · 09-25-2006, 09:04 PM

UStwo...we can debate the merits of the two studies on another thread if you like.

Suffice it to say, numerous flaws in the methodology and conclusions of the Groseclose/Milyo study have been pointed out...starting with assigning scores to media outets based on the number of times the outlet refers to think tanks and policy groups. There are a number of reasons why a media outlet would refer to a particular think tank/policy group that dont have anything to do with bias...the most obvious being the expertise of the group.

Just one example: if a media outlet referred to the NAACP on a story about race ,it would get a score that would identify it to the "left" because the NAACP is "liberal". No matter that the NAACP is often reffered to in many outlets because of its recognized history and leadership on issues regarding race. (I made the example a bit more simplistic than the actual practices in the study, but it gets at the core problem.)

I wont bore others here with more.

Ustwo · 09-25-2006, 11:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

UStwo...we can debate the merits of the two studies on another thread if you like.

Suffice it to say, numerous flaws in the methodology and conclusions of the Groseclose/Milyo study have been pointed out...starting with assigning scores to media outets based on the number of times the outlet refers to think tanks and policy groups. There are a number of reasons why a media outlet would refer to a particular think tank/policy group that dont have anything to do with bias...the most obvious being the expertise of the group.

Just one example: if a media outlet referred to the NAACP on a story about race ,it would get a score that would identify it to the "left" because the NAACP is "liberal". No matter that the NAACP is often reffered to in many outlets because of its recognized history and leadership on issues regarding race. (I made the example a bit more simplistic than the actual practices in the study, but it gets at the core problem.)

I wont bore others here with more.

The NAACP is known in conservative sectors as the NAALCP for obvious reasons. If you are citing the NAACP as your primary source of information, you can expect that information to be biased. Would you accept the NRA as the permiere authority on gun issues? Or would you accept the CATO institute for tax policy?

host · 09-25-2006, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

On a side note, this was in a thread when it came out a while ago but.....

One side has 'Media Matters'

the other has

UCLA

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

Mmmmmmmm and the irony for all of you...

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

The problem I think is that some of you leftists are so far left you can't see the median anymore. I'm sure for you the press isn't liberal biased since they are not talking about HilterBush and calling for his impeachment on imaginary crimes. For YOU the press isn't liberal is down right conservative. Life must be different from the fringes.

For the voters of America, its biased, and biased to the left.

Ustwo, the "study" that you've reintroduced on this forum, is garbage. That's not just my opinion. It's a fact. The "clowns" who authored your study, quoted the POS who I have spent much time, lately, posting about on threads on this forum. What do you think it says about the authors of an alleged "study" on media "bias", who reinforce their argument that "though bias in the media exists, it is rarely a conscious attempt to distort the news", by quoting, of all people, L Brent Bozell III, the man who attacked the NY Times' editor, Howell Raines, for 9 fucking years, with a falsely contexted quote, which he, himself "doctored" the context and signifigance of, compared to the way it was positioned and intended, by Howell Raines in his 1993 book, so Bozell could falsely make it appear that Raines was dismissive of Reagan's intellectual abilities. I'm only a lay person, Ustwo, and yet, I know that you don't quote a partisan shill like Bozell, in a "real" media bias study. Bozell, the man who said, in a 1992 speech, to [imagine] <a href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/HL380.cfm">a future wherein the media willfully support the foreign policy objectives of the United States.</a> 

The study you tout is flawed and unreliable, just as all of the "research" that Bozell has "distributed", since at least 1987, most especially his "Op" exposed here....to discredit the editor, and thus, the NY Times, is suspect. I know that you visit Bozell's newsbusters.org, and you have cut and pasted material from it, to support a post in your "the Plame Affair" thread. I've urged you to take stock of the extent to which the influence that Bozell's "efforts" of the last 19 years, have affected your own political, and social, POV, and for that matter, the way you "get" your "news". It is a fact that you post the same beliefs, almost verbatim, that Bozell telegraphs. I remind you to confirm whether....or not....this occurs only by coincidence. Bozell's "work" is a cancer on the collective of American conservative political opinion....and your study's authors quote him, to support their contention that the, "bias in the media exists, it is rarely a conscious attempt to distort the news". What a fucking joke....citing "confirmation" from the largest distributor of the false notion of a "liberal media"!

Quote:

http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/...dia.Bias.8.htm
....A Measure of Media Bias......

....We also believe that our notion of bias is the one that is more commonly adopted by other authors. For instance, Lott and Hasset (2004) do not assert that one headline in their data set is false (e.g. “GDP Rises 5 Percent”) while another headline is true (e.g. “GDP Growth Less Than Expected”). Rather, the choice of headlines is more a question of taste, or perhaps fairness, than a question of accuracy or honesty. Also, much of Goldberg’s (2002) and Alterman’s (2003) complaints about media bias are that some stories receive scant attention from the press, not that the stories receive inaccurate attention. For instance, Goldberg notes how few stories the media devote to the problems faced by children of dual-career parents. On the opposite side, Alterman notes how few stories the media devote to corporate fraud. Our notion of bias also seems closely aligned to the notion described by Bozell and Baker (1990, 3):

But though bias in the media exists, it is rarely a conscious attempt to distort the news. It stems from the fact that most members of the media elite have little contact with conservatives and make little effort to understand the conservative viewpoint. Their friends are liberals, what they read and hear is written by liberals.[20].......

Quote:

http://www.mediaresearch.org/bozellc...ol20020812.asp
Still Falling for Bill
by L. Brent Bozell III
August 12, 2002

.....But Merida and Fineman are only casual chroniclers of the Clinton "magic" compared to Howell Raines, the executive editor of the New York Times. PBS talk show host Charlie Rose recently asked him how history would judge the 42nd president. "Huge political talent. Huge political vision," Raines began. He said he wouldn't claim to know how the history books would turn out, but he did offer his own: "I think President Clinton's role in modernizing the Democratic Party around a set of economic ideas and also holding onto the principles of social justice, and presiding over the greatest prosperity in human history—those would seem to me to have to be central to his legacy," he gushed.

Every Clinton fan begins the historical review with Clinton's "huge political talent." There’s truth in that statement: he not only defeated an incumbent, and won re-election in a veritable landslide, but also was able to put the Republican Party on the defensive—in fact, on trial—with the American public after being impeached. But the manner in which he did so—lying about anything and everything while shamelessly destroying anyone in his path—is worthy of nothing but disdain from sober political analysts.

And where was this “huge vision”? For Clinton there was no vision, only strategies and tactics on the most basic political levels, and always geared toward self-advancement. I recall only one Clinton “visionary” statement, his State of the Union declaration that the “era of big government is over,” an interesting proposition given that just three years previously he tried to nationalize healthcare which would have socialized one seventh of the U.S. economy.

Perhaps Raines is most ridiculous in crediting Clinton for supervising "the greatest prosperity in human history." He had no space in his historical vision for the Republicans in Congress who foiled that potentially economy-strangling Hillary health nationalization plan and then backed him into welfare reform and balanced budgets.

Raines certainly had no room for Ronald Reagan’s vision after the Gipper left office having triggered the greatest peacetime economic expansion while winning the Cold War. Nine years ago on the same Charlie Rose venue, Raines complained that "The Reagan years oppressed me because of the callousness and the greed and the hard-hearted attitude toward people who have very little in this society." A decade ago, Raines wrote in the book he was plugging on PBS that "Reagan couldn't tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it." Today Raines slobbers over Clinton.

The media no longer dote on Clinton's every word – especially when they're ridiculous, as when the aging draft-evader claims he'd pick up a gun and fight and die for Israel. But the wistful tone of some media Clinton recollections sharply point out the need for vigilant reminders of the Clinton presidency in all its discouraging details......

Quote:

http://www.mediaresearch.org/BozellC...ol20030513.asp
Jayson Blair, Star Pupil
by L. Brent Bozell III
May 13, 2003

.....But the Times isn’t really taking responsibility for the Blair fiasco. Incredibly, publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger argued that only one person was responsible for this metastasizing tumor, this credibility canyon. "The person who did this is Jayson Blair. Let’s not begin to demonize our executives -- either the desk editors, or the executive editor or, dare I say, the publisher."

The captain of this oil-spilling ship is Executive Editor Howell Raines, a partisan best remembered for his arrogant 1994 take on the best president of the last century: "Reagan couldn't tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it." Who looks incompetent now?.......

Then, in 2003, "author" Bernie Goldberg was observed using Bozell's "Reagan's shoelaces", quote, already "worn out", over nine years of spreading it, by Bozell, and later by Brit Hume, to bash Howell Raines and the NY Times:

("Bernie", is the "Goldberg", cited along with Bozell, by our esteemed "media bias study" authors

Quote:

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/CollegeRe...ns/013385.html
UCLA Confirms Media Bias

Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist, has just published a study revealing what most Americans already knew: the mainstream media carries a left-winged bias. And while Bernard Goldberg was the first really make a splashed with this argument (but published two New York Times Bestsellers: "Bias" and "Arrogance"), sometimes it takes a study from an actual university for people to finally take notice.

Give a click to the Seton Hall "college repub's" page, above. It's worth it to view the "other worldly" header referencing "« 71% of Iraqis Say "Life is good" (ABC News thinks otherwise)"
Sometimes, I suspect that Bozell, Goldberg, the college repubs, et al, are representative of a creature with many heads, but only one brain....

Quote:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh111903.shtml
CONTEMPT (PART 3)! Bernie, pretending to quote Howell Raines, showed his contempt for your discourse:

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003

A FISHER OF RUBES: How big a fraud is Bernie Goldberg? Let’s return to that puzzling “quotation” from his new book, Arrogance—the quote we discussed in yesterday’s HOWLER (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/18/03). In his chapter about the New York Times, Bernie Goldberg thunders and rails about liberal demon Howell Raines:

GOLDBERG (page 66): A lot of people—and not just conservatives—think [the Times] hit rock bottom in 2001, when Howell Raines took over as executive editor…

Raines was famously quoted as saying that “the Reagan years oppressed me.” He has also declared that Reagan, a man beloved by millions of his countrymen, “couldn’t tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it.”

In contrast, there was his view of Bill Clinton: “Huge political talent,” declared Raines when Charlie Rose asked how he thought history would regard Clinton.

Raines loved Clinton, and just hated Reagan: It’s a message the talk-show right loves to hear. And Bernie had the perfect quote—a quote that could make readers feel like real victims! Ronald Reagan was loved by millions—but Raines rudely said he couldn’t tie his own shoes! Pseudo-con readers could cry all day long when they read the rude thing Raines had said.

But was the “quotation” actually accurate? Did Raines say that Ronald Reagan “couldn’t tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it?” In yesterday’s HOWLER, we voiced our suspicions about the oddly truncated quote. From Google searches, we knew that Goldberg had taken the quote from the archives of the Media Research Center. And as we noted, the MRC is pathologically dishonest; the influential org holds every world record for pulling “quotations” out of any sane context. We could find no record of the full quote, but we did notice something which made us suspicious. We knew the quote came from Raines’ book, Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis. And, since reviews had said that the book dealt in part with the way different presidents fished and tied flies, we couldn’t help wondering if the truncated quote had to do with Reagan’s skill on a stream. We knew, all too well, how the MRC works. We couldn’t help wondering if the truncated quote might concern the way Reagan tied flies!

And sure enough! Let’s face it, readers—if there’s a way to commit fraud with a “quote,” the MRC will find it. Readers sent us to amazon.com, where you can now search a book’s contents. We called up Fly Fishing, and sure enough! The “shoelaces” quote is on page 84. And yes, it deals with Reagan’s fishing—and it isn’t even Raines who is speaking!

Who actually makes the disturbing statement? Raines is out in the boonies with the late Dick Blalock, a legendary Maryland fishing guide. Blalock has Raines on a fast-running stream—and he talks about fisherman presidents:

RAINES (pages 83-84): Even here in northern Maryland, we were still below the Mason-Dixon line and technically still in the South. More to the point, we were in hillbilly territory. In the nineteenth century, these people tended whiskey stills…Now their descendants still lived back in the hollows of the Catoctins, experienced poachers of deer and turkey and of the fat trout in the fly-fishing-only section of Hunting Creek. In short, Dick Blalock had brought me to one of the northernmost outposts of the Redneck Way.

“See that pool?” said Dick. “That was Jimmy Carter’s favorite pool when he was President. We’re only about a mile from Camp David. The Fish and Wildlife boys kept the stream lousy with big brood fish from the hatcheries when he was up here. I knew a guy who used to slip in and give every big trout in the stream a sore lip whenever he heard Carter was coming. Of course, I liked Carter. Charlie Fox and Ben Schley taught him a lot about fishing, and he ties a good fly. Reagan couldn’t tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it.”

<h3>Amazing, isn’t it? But typical of the way Bernie Goldberg does business. In short, it was Blalock who made the statement, not Raines, as Bernie blusters to her misused, misled readers. And what was Blalock plainly saying? That Reagan didn’t know how to tie flies!</h3> That’s the actual context of the “quote” which the MRC has been flogging for years. And it’s flogged again in Bernie’s fake book, finally reaching a national audience. Bernie Goldberg is a fisher of rubes. And he’s reeling them in with this fakery.......

.....BRENT BOZELL, LYING LIAR: Who’s the Prime Faker behind all this slander? Yes, that’s right, it’s Brent Bozell, whose MRC has been faking “quotations” for years. How does it work at the MRC? Bozell keeps whipping up the rubes, feeding them all this fake, phony chatter. And leading “journalists” cadge from his work. For example, Ann Coulter did lots of cut-and-pasting from the MRC archives for her fake-phony pseudo-book, Slander. And here was inept-or-dishonest Brit Hume, bashing Raines on Special Report:

HUME (5/22/01): And now the most captivating two minutes in television, the latest from The Political Grapevine.

The New York Times has named as its new executive editor Howell Raines, described by the Times’ publisher as being the paper’s, quote, fire-breathing, take-no-prisoners editorial-page editor. Raines now has charge of the newspaper’s news coverage as well.

Presumably, the promotion will make him a happier man than he was during the Reagan years, a period he has said, quote, “oppressed him” because of the, quote, “callousness and the greed of the administration.” As for Reagan himself, Raines said, quote, “He couldn’t tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it.”

As you see, Hume is quite good with the smart-ass remarks. What a shame that he can’t get his facts straight! But then, here was Bozell himself, two years later, slandering Raines for Sean Hannity:

BOZELL (6/5/03): Well, Howell Raines is also the man who said of Ronald Reagan, that he couldn’t tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it and then accuses—

DAVID CORN: Get to the facts I gave you, Brent, please.

BOZELL: David, you asked me if they were liberal. I said a man who says of Ronald Reagan that he couldn’t tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it is a liberal. To deny a liberal ideology when you come from that viewpoint, I think is disingenuous.

CORN: Just tell me—

BOZELL: The problem with Howell Raines is the arrogance of his liberalism, not his liberalism, his arrogance.

Weird, ain’t it? Five months later, here’s Bernie’s book, bearing precisely that title!

Why has this fakery lasted so long? At the end of the week, we might even ask. But how big a clown is Bernie Goldberg? Insect mating? Fishing techniques? Nothing’s so phony that Bernie won’t use it! Bernie just wants to reel in the rubes—and show his contempt for your discourse. ......

So.....what we have in my presentation here.....are the details of the exposure of the UCLA study's authors, using citations of support from Bozell and Goldberg....men who show their contempt for liberal media bias, by falsely and reptitively, over a nine year period, spreading a slanderous, bullshit story, to discredit the NY Times and it's executive editor, on TV, in articles, through Brit Hume, and in Goldberg's book, titled, "Arrogance".....and press the "buttons" of all the folks who share Bozell's dream that Reagan should be named, "man of the century" !

Above, I posted examples of Bozell's "Reagan's shoelaces" attacks, that appear on Bozell's mrc.org, and at townhall.com, and numerous other "conservative" outlets, and in the print media. They were not half heartedly "corrected", on Bozell's site, as this 1994 attack piece was, after dailyhowler exposed Bozell's "handy work". I wonder who "mirrors" Bozell, on "the left", in the minds of conservatives. Is it James Carville....or..?

The truth is, there is no "mirror", just as there is no "liberal media", or "liberal media agenda". I know where I get my "news"....from hundreds of places....as unfiltered as I can possibly find. I try to quote "dot gov" websites in my posts here, as much as possible. I prefer news reports, posted by the reporters who "go out and get the news". I research "period" reporting, from a news archive service of major newspaper articles of the last 40 years.

This is also helpful for obtaining "leads" for further searches:
http://www.google.com/search?q=bozel...e=off&filter=0
(Take out the word "Bozell", and type in your own "news worthy" key word.)

Ustwo, what are some of the sources of your "news" information stream?

Quote:

http://www.mediaresearch.org/notable...94/best4-6.asp
I Still Hate Ronald Reagan Award

First Place
"Then one day in the summer of 1981 I found myself at the L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine. I was a correspondent in the White House in those days, and my work -- which consisted of reporting on President Reagan's success in making life harder for citizens who were not born rich, white, and healthy -- saddened me....My parents raised me to admire generosity and to feel pity. I had arrived in our nation's capital [in 1981] during a historic ascendancy of greed and hard-heartedness....Reagan couldn't tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it."
-- New York Times editorial page editor (and former Washington Bureau Chief) Howell Raines in his book Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis.
[Clarification, November 2003: It has come to our attention that while the sentence, "Reagan couldn’t tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it,” appeared on page 84 of the book by Raines, it came in the midst of a multi-paragraph quote in a chapter in which he favorably recited the comments on things great and small (during a fishing venture to Hunting Creek near Thurmont, Maryland), from his companion on the trip, Dick Blalock. The other quotes attributed in the book to Raines are accurate and reflect his personal views.
The paragraph in full from which the quote came: "'See that pool?' said Dick. 'That was Jimmy Carter's favorite pool when he was President We’re only about a mile from Camp David. The Fish and Wildlife Boys kept the stream lousy with big brood fish from the hatcheries when he was up here. I knew a guy who used to slip in and give every big trout in the stream a sore lip whenever he heard Carter was coming. Of course, I liked Carter. Charlie Fox and Ben Schley taught him a lot about fishing, and he ties a good fly. Reagan couldn't tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it.'"
We regret the confusion.]

Gilda also posted on this thread:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=98972

....in such a persuasive way, so as to make me wonder, even without the further impeachment of your "media bias study" which I've posted above, as to what you hoped to gain, by posting about it on our current thread.
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...3&postcount=32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gilda

First problem with the study: What is the center? If your defined center is actually to the right, then a media outlet that is actually in the center would be defined as to the left. The whole study reports "left" and "right" as if these were in comparison to some objective scale, rather than in comparison to the mean of the US Senate. To establish that this comparison is valid, you'd first have to establish that the mean of the US Senate is the political center, and I see no evidence of that.

Second problem with the study: The person directing it openly criticizes the media outlets being studied:

He begins with a bias agains the media and media scholars.

Third problem with the study, and the biggest one:

There's so much wrong with this methodology that it boggles the mind.

Congressional speeches are openly political propaganda, opinion pieces, yet they're not compared to opinion pieces, which are actively excluded from the study.

Also, it declares a piece to be similar in political ideology to a speech merely for mentioning the same organizations, without reference to what's being said about them. I'd think that what's being said about something is as important as the fact that it's being talked about.

Problems abound here, to such a degree that I don't see how this study can be considered reliable.

Gilda

Leto · 09-26-2006, 04:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kutulu

It's because that's all the right has these days. Everyone opposed either hates America, is crazy, or both (usually both).

well. yeah. Isn't that how McCarthyism got entrenched? Nobody ever remembers their history.

ratbastid · 09-26-2006, 05:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

The problem I think is that some of you leftists are so far left you can't see the median anymore. ... For YOU the press isn't liberal is down right conservative. Life must be different from the fringes.

Amazing. Flip "left" to "right" and I'd say precisely the same thing.

You don't actually think Fox News is anything more than a mouthpiece for the Republican party, do you? Surely you don't actually buy that it's "fair and balanced"? Do you REALLY think its agenda is in line with middle America?

I think you're smarter than that. I think you might claim to believe those things so not to have to admit that your precious "victim of the liberal media" stance is a load of crap. But I don't actually think your head is that deep in the red sand.

dc_dux · 09-26-2006, 05:52 AM

Its interesting how Condi Rice challenges Clinton's claim ...""That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said in the interview. "They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try."

Her defense:

Quote:

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said Monday during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.

....

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false - and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," she said.

Rice took exception to Clinton's statement that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for incoming officials when he left office.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., which also owns Fox News Channel., which also owns Fox News Channel.

http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...D8KCHHOG0.html

So her defense is "we did as much as Clinton". (OK, how abou describing any particular actions of what you and Bush did in 8 months) .....and asserting that Clarke's memo was not a comprehensive strategy. (Semantics....so it may not have been a comprehensive strategy, it was an "urgent" memo with specific "action steps" against al Queda, all of which were implemented later...Its a shame that she was not able to explain why were those actions steps were ignored until after 9/11?)

Ustwo · 09-26-2006, 06:13 AM

Quote:

September 25, 2006 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.

Rice hammered Clinton, who leveled his charges in a contentious weekend interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel, for his claims that the Bush administration "did not try" to kill Osama bin Laden in the eight months they controlled the White House before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false - and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," Rice said during a wide-ranging meeting with Post editors and reporters.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice added.

The secretary of state also sharply disputed Clinton's claim that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for the incoming Bush team during the presidential transition in 2001.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice responded during the hourlong session.

Her strong rebuttal was the Bush administration's first response to Clinton's headline-grabbing interview on Fox on Sunday in which he launched into an over-the-top defense of his handling of terrorism - wagging his finger in the air, leaning forward in his chair and getting red-faced, and even attacking Wallace for improper questioning.

The "Fox News Sunday" show had its best ratings since the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, according to Nielsen Media Research. Two versions of the interview were the two most-watched clips on YouTube yesterday, totaling more than 800,000 views.

After Clinton got angry during the questioning, Wallace said Clinton aide Jay Carson tried to get his producer to stop the interview. Carson said he was concerned that time was running out and that little of the philanthropy efforts of the former president had been addressed.

At The Post, Rice also touched on hot spots around the globe:

* On Iran: "There isn't a particularly good, direct way to neutralize the Iranian threat."
* On Iraq: "You're never going to have a just Sunni-Shia reconciliation if you don't have a political system in which the interests of all can be represented - and that's what Iraq represents."
* On Pakistan: "The future of Pakistan, as [President Pervez] Musharraf and his people fully understand, is to de-radicalize elements of the population."
* On the Middle East conflict: "It would help to have a moderate force in the Palestinian territories and to have the beginnings of rapprochement with Israel and the rest of its neighbors."
* On the Far East: "I would like to see an improvement in Japanese-China relations."

In her pointed rebuttal of Clinton's inflammatory claims about the war on terror, Rice maintained the Bush White House did the best it could to defend against an attack - and expanded on the tools and intelligence it inherited.

"I would just suggest that you go back and read the 9/11 commission report on the efforts of the Bush administration in the eight months - things like working to get an armed Predator [drone] that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important," Rice added.

She also said Clinton's claims that Richard Clarke - the White House anti-terror guru hyped by Clinton as the country's "best guy" - had been demoted by Bush were bogus.

"Richard Clarke was the counterterrorism czar when 9/11 happened. And he left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security, some several months later," she said.

Rice noted that the world changed after 9/11.

"I would make the divide Sept. 11, 2001, when the attack on this country mobilized us to fight the war on terror in a very different way," Rice said.

Rice cited the final 9/11 commission report to substantiate her claims, while Clinton relied on Clarke's book as the basis for many of his rehashing the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I think this is not a very fruitful discussion. We've been through it. The 9/11 commission has turned over every rock and we know exactly what they said," she added.

Transitioning to the global war on terror, an animated Rice questioned, "When are we going to stop blaming ourselves for the rise of terrorism?"

Asked about recently leaked internal U.S. intelligence estimates that claimed the Iraq war was fueling terrorist recruiting, Rice said: "Now that we're fighting back, of course they are fighting back, too."

"I find it just extraordinary that the argument is, all right, so they're using the fact they're being challenged in the Middle East and challenged in Iraq to recruit, therefore you've made the war on terrorism worse.

"It's as if we were in a good place on Sept. 11. Clearly, we weren't," she added.

"These are people who want to fight against us, and they're going to find a reason. And yes, they will recruit, but it doesn't mean you stop pursuing strategies that are ultimately going to stop them," Rice said.

She insisted U.S. forces must finish the job in Iraq and the wider Middle East to wipe out the "root cause" of violent extremism - not just the terror thugs who carry out the attacks.

"It's a longer-term strategy, and it may even have some short-term down side, but if you don't look at the longer term, you're just leaving the problem to somebody else," she said.

She also said Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have a "major educational reform" effort under way to root out propaganda literature and extremist brainwashing.

In Latin America, home to outrageous Venezuelan bomb thrower Hugo Chavez, Rice said the U.S. approach is to "spend as little time possible in talking about Chavez and more time talking about our positive agenda in Latin America," including several trade agreements

Blah blah blah.

Clinton tries to save his soiled legacy, gets pissy with some reporter almost no one has heard of, lies again.

ratbastid · 09-26-2006, 06:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

...and asserting that Clarke's memo was not a comprehensive strategy. (Semantics....so it may not have been a comprehensive strategy, it was an "urgent" memo with specific "action steps" against al Queda, all of which were implemented later...Its a shame that she was not able to explain why were those actions steps were ignored until after 9/11?)

Yeah, remember the congressional testimony just after 9/11 where she was asked about the warnings they'd received?

(I paraphrase: )

"Do you remember the name of the memo?"

*shrug* "I think it was... like, something silly like, "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside United States" or something. I mean, you know, isn't that wacky? Who'd pay attention to anything like that? I mean, who could have known that was meant as a warning?"

All her body language and expression in answering that question told the whole story about how little regard they gave Clarke or his warnings.

dc_dux · 09-26-2006, 06:19 AM

Ustwo....Can you point to anything that Rice said in the article that identifies Bush anti-terrorism activities in the first 8 months? Maybe I missed it.

Quote:

"Rice cited the final 9/11 commission report to substantiate her claims"

The 9/11 Commission Report contradicts Rice’s claims.

On December 4, 1998, for example, the Clinton administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.” Here’s how the Clinton administration reacted, according to the 9/11 Commission report:

The same day, [Counterterrorism Czar Richard] Clarke convened a meeting of his CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] to discuss both the hijacking concern and the antiaircraft missile threat. To address the hijacking warning, the group agreed that New York airports should go to maximum security starting that weekend. They agreed to boost security at other East coast airports. The CIA agreed to distribute versions of the report to the FBI and FAA to pass to the New York Police Department and the airlines. The FAA issued a security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening process, at all three New York area airports. [pg. 128-30]

On August 6, 2001, the Bush administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.” Here’s how the Bush administration reacted, according to the 9/11 Commission report:

President Bush did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so.[p. 260]

We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford, Texas, on August 17 and participated in the PDB briefings of the President between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and September 10. But Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. [p. 262]

shakran · 09-26-2006, 06:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Blah blah blah.

Clinton tries to save his soiled legacy, gets pissy with some reporter almost no one has heard of, lies again.

Your comments have been getting less structured and more petulant as Bush's character becomes more exposed. Used to be you'd at least try to make reasoned comments, but now you're reduced to making vague stabs at any democrat you can find.

Could it be that deep down you are realizing that Bush is not exactly the Republican Party savior the right was hoping for?

ubertuber · 09-26-2006, 08:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Amazing. Flip "left" to "right" and I'd say precisely the same thing.

You don't actually think Fox News is anything more than a mouthpiece for the Republican party, do you? Surely you don't actually buy that it's "fair and balanced"? Do you REALLY think its agenda is in line with middle America?

I also think that part of the issue is the ridiculous notion that the terms political center or middle America are anything other than relativist mumbo-jumbo. After all, is the center the median or the mode of the spectrum of political opinions, and is the range made up of modern American views, or historical ones or contemporary international ones or those of english speaking peoples or what academics can conceive of? Even if you tried to make these definitions, you've got the problem statisticians face all the time: weighting the results so they reflect objective reality and not your expectations. When people start saying "center" and "moderates" I don't know what they're talking about.

filtherton · 09-26-2006, 12:08 PM

Wait, so rice claims that the bush admin did jut as much as clinton. Bush admin supporters seem to think that clinton's inaction caused 9/11. So the implication is that the bush admin, in doing just as much as clinton, was just as responsible for 9/11 as clinton?

Wow, they don't always really think out the implications of the talking points, do they?

Elphaba · 09-26-2006, 12:44 PM

Ustwo, it is customary to provide a link to an article you post. I would appreciate seeing your source material.

host · 09-27-2006, 12:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Quote:

September 25, 2006 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.

Rice hammered Clinton, who leveled his charges in a contentious weekend interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel, for his claims that the Bush administration "did not try" to kill Osama bin Laden in the eight months they controlled the White House before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false - and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," Rice said during a wide-ranging meeting with Post editors and reporters.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice added.....

Blah blah blah.

Clinton tries to save his soiled legacy, gets pissy with some reporter almost no one has heard of, lies again.

Elphaba, since the sources are predictable and limited, it is not difficult to ferret them out....ahhhh....here it is:

Quote:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/26/...ton-terrorism/
Rice Falsely Claims Bush’s Pre-9/11 Anti-Terror Efforts Were ‘At Least As Aggressive’ As Clinton’s

This morning, in the Fox-owned New York Post, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reacts angrily to President Clinton’s criticisms of how the Bush administration approached the terrorist threat during their first eight months in office. (The Post headlines the article <a href="http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/rice_boils_over_at_bubba_nationalnews_ian_bishop____________post_correspondent.htm">“Rice Boils Over Bubba“</a>) An excerpt:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making “flatly false” claims that the Bush administration didn’t lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.

… “What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,” Rice added.

The 9/11 Commission Report contradicts Rice’s claims. On December 4, 1998, for example, the Clinton administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.” Here’s how the Clinton administration reacted, <a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf#search=%229%2F11%20Commission%20Report%22">according to the 9/11 Commission report</a>:

The same day, [Counterterrorism Czar Richard] Clarke convened a meeting of his CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] to discuss both the hijacking concern and the antiaircraft missile threat. To address the hijacking warning, the group agreed that New York airports should go to maximum security starting that weekend. They agreed to boost security at other East coast airports. The CIA agreed to distribute versions of the report to the FBI and FAA to pass to the New York Police Department and the airlines. The FAA issued a security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening process, at all three New York area airports. [pg. 128-30]

On August 6, 2001, the Bush administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.” Here’s how the Bush administration reacted, <a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf#search=%229%2F11%20Commission%20Report%22">according to the 9/11 Commission report</a>:

[President Bush] did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so.[p. 260]

We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford, Texas, on August 17 and participated in the PDB briefings of the President between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and September 10. But Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. [p. 262]

Rice acknowledged that the 9/11 Commission report is the authoratative source on this debate: “I think this is not a very fruitful discussion. We’ve been through it. <a href="http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/rice_boils_over_at_bubba_nationalnews_ian_bishop____________post_correspondent.htm">The 9/11 commission has turned over every rock</a> and we know exactly what they said.”

<a href="http://www.digg.com/political_opinion/Rice_Bush_s_Pre_9_11_Anti_Terror_Efforts_Were_As_Aggressive_As_Clinton">Digg It!</a>

That quote from Rice, near the bottom of the preceding thinkprogress.org, IMO, is pretty amusing:

Quote:

Rice acknowledged that the 9/11 Commission report is the authoratative source on this debate: “I think this is not a very fruitful discussion. We’ve been through it.....

When the history of this time of failed American leadership is written, Ron Suskind's written accounts will certainly be incorporated into it:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061901211.html
The Shadow War, In a Surprising New Light
By Barton Gellman,
a Washington Post staff writer who reports on intelligence and national security
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Page C01

THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE

Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
By Ron Suskind

.....Tenet and his loyalists also settle a few scores with the White House here. The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now." Three months later, with bin Laden holed up in the Afghan mountain redoubt of Tora Bora, the CIA official managing the Afghanistan campaign, Henry A. Crumpton (now the State Department's counterterrorism chief), brought a detailed map to Bush and Cheney. White House accounts have long insisted that Bush had every reason to believe that Pakistan's army and pro-U.S. Afghan militias had bin Laden cornered and that there was no reason to commit large numbers of U.S. troops to get him. But Crumpton's message in the Oval Office, as told through Suskind, was blunt: The surrogate forces were "definitely not" up to the job, and "we're going to lose our prey if we're not careful."

Suskind's portrait of Tenet, respectful but far from adulatory, depicts a man compromised by "insecurity and gratitude" to a president who chose not to fire him after 9/11. "At that point, George Tenet would do anything his President asked," Suskind writes.

Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

tecoyah · 09-27-2006, 02:18 AM

As it would seem, the Bombing of the U.S.S. Cole is the turning point for serious worry about Bin Laden, and is used as a primary focus by republican pundits to point out inaction by Clinton, I have an observation to make.

The talking point "Clinton had 8 Years, Bush only had 8 months", is rather disengenuous. The Cole was Bombed on Oct, 12th 2000 and Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001.....seems to me Bush had twice as long as Clinton to get Busy.

Its also pointless to " Blame" either one of these people for 9/11....terrorism is to blame, or Bin Laden if you prefer. It is Clear Mr. Clinton took the threat seriously, and attempted to react to it, it is also clear he did not prevent 9/11. What is not clear is the continuation of this " Serious Attention" by the Bush Administration after taking office, not that they would have prevented this disaster either, But they might have had they been paying attention.

Quite simply Put....Clinton was no longer President on 9/11/2001, there was absolutely nothing he could have done. Bush was President on 9/11/2001.

From my reasearch, and Data available to anyone interested in looking it is obvious The Clinton Administration was already at War with Terrorism, though quite limited in scope for many reasons. The War seems to have taken a break until 9/11.

dc_dux · 09-27-2006, 04:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tecoyah

Its also pointless to " Blame" either one of these people for 9/11....terrorism is to blame, or Bin Laden if you prefer. It is Clear Mr. Clinton took the threat seriously, and attempted to react to it, it is also clear he did not prevent 9/11. What is not clear is the continuation of this " Serious Attention" by the Bush Administration after taking office, not that they would have prevented this disaster either, But they might have had they been paying attention.

Quite simply Put....Clinton was no longer President on 9/11/2001, there was absolutely nothing he could have done. Bush was President on 9/11/2001.

From my reasearch, and Data available to anyone interested in looking it is obvious The Clinton Administration was already at War with Terrorism, though quite limited in scope for many reasons. The War seems to have taken a break until 9/11.

.... at which time Bush should be credited for taking the appropriate action and using approproriate force to invade Afghanistan, with the support of nearly all of the American people and most of the world, inlcuding muslim nations.

--- unitil he diverted his attention and US military resources to invade Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11 and as the recent NIE determined, became the ’cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”

For that, there is blame to be placed.

ratbastid · 09-27-2006, 05:57 AM

Watch this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjB9uMUM6xIp

My paraphrase:

Reporter: Clinton claims that you had no meetings on Bin Laden for 9 months after he left office. Is that factually accurate?

Bush: No comment on THAT, but give me free reign to do whatever I want NOW to do whatever I feel like in the name of keeping you saaaaaafe!

Asshole performs back-door election-year hatchet jobs on former presidents and then won't answer a straight question about the very accusation his media-puppets are dropping.

09-25-2006, 11:50 AM	#3 (permalink)
Paq Junkie Location: South Carolina	no kidding clinton just proved why he was more of a president than bush will ever dream of being. Way to go __________________ Live. Chris

09-25-2006, 02:31 PM	#7 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	Wow. That was some interview. If the entire clip is found, please post it. That should just about wrap it up for the "but Clinton" crowd. To answer, the OP... I don't get the impression that Fox news, and the media in general, are anywhere near as harsh to Bush as they are to Clinton. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

09-25-2006, 03:39 PM	#8 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	I didn't see the clip, but from the transcript Clinton owned. I dont know what really went on, I dont know what the true history in the backrooms were. However, if Clinton is to play the role of cautious military leader he must then answer the obvious question of why troops are perfectly able to be sacrificed in Bosnia and Somolia and not for Al Qaeda. I dont know, none of us will ever truely know. __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

09-25-2006, 04:18 PM	#13 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent. Its not the 'ideologicall identifiable' journalists which are the problem. Most conservatives don't try to hide what they are. Conservatives to better being themselves ratings wise than liberals, thats why Air America had to be manufactured and hangs on by shoestrings while the pluthera of conservative talking heads made it via market forces. I don't care about liberal journalists. I care about liberal journalists slanting stories without their personal agendas being known. __________________ Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

09-25-2006, 05:31 PM	#16 (permalink)
j8ear Gentlemen Farmer Location: Middle of nowhere, Jersey	Saw the actual interview on Sunday...start to finish. Clinton behaved like a childish and pompous ass....somehow entitled to be treated different then other politicians or other felons for that matter. Wallace asked a very reasonable, albiet hard hitting question, and Clinton had a tantrum. Wallace, was somewhat taken aback, and deer in the headlights like, as Clinton went off the deep end. In this respect, and only this respect, was Wallace "owned." He had trouble getting in a word as Clinton continued to go off on his rant. To the topic of this thread.....WHO GIVES A CRAP WHAT WALLACE HAS ASKED OF OTHER POLITICIANS. He asked Clinton a very valid, and poignant question Clinton had a melt down. Every PUBLIC OFFICIAL gets challenged, SHOULD BE CHALLENGED, and unfortunately for Clinton, in this case, he blew it...and blew it big time. Hey at least he admitted that he failed. -bear __________________ It's alot easier to ask for forgiveness then it is to ask for permission.

09-25-2006, 09:38 AM	#2 (permalink)
kutulu Junkie	That transcript was great. Wallace got owned by Clinton. It was really nice to see him fire back like that. Wallace got a lot more than he was looking for and kept trying to bail out.

09-25-2006, 04:11 PM	#12 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	I have found a ten minute Youtube video of the interview, but Clinton is still cut off in mid sentence. I'll keep looking, but this does a good job of it. http://youtube.com/watch?v=WYNI5RPOlp4

09-25-2006, 04:37 PM	#15 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	Play the video, which is the topic of this thread.

09-25-2006, 06:21 PM	#18 (permalink)
Paq Junkie Location: South Carolina	yeah, i must have had some weird liberal hippy filter on bc i did not see him acting as a pompous ass or anything. I saw him calling a spade a spade. And yea, i believe all politicians shoudl be challenged, starting with bush and working the way down...hell, just challenge bush once and watch what happens... __________________ Live. Chris

09-25-2006, 06:44 PM	#19 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	The same question was asked without the "gotcha" by Couric on ABC. A polite response was given by Clinton. I must have missed the headlines "CLINTON FAILED TO FREAK OUT". Has Fox answered Clinton's challenge yet? They must have asked this question of responding to the Cole over and over again of Bush and his administration. No? Nothing? Last edited by Elphaba; 09-25-2006 at 06:45 PM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

09-25-2006, 09:04 PM	#23 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	UStwo...we can debate the merits of the two studies on another thread if you like. Suffice it to say, numerous flaws in the methodology and conclusions of the Groseclose/Milyo study have been pointed out...starting with assigning scores to media outets based on the number of times the outlet refers to think tanks and policy groups. There are a number of reasons why a media outlet would refer to a particular think tank/policy group that dont have anything to do with bias...the most obvious being the expertise of the group. Just one example: if a media outlet referred to the NAACP on a story about race ,it would get a score that would identify it to the "left" because the NAACP is "liberal". No matter that the NAACP is often reffered to in many outlets because of its recognized history and leadership on issues regarding race. (I made the example a bit more simplistic than the actual practices in the study, but it gets at the core problem.) I wont bore others here with more. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 09-25-2006 at 09:47 PM..

09-26-2006, 12:08 PM	#34 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	Wait, so rice claims that the bush admin did jut as much as clinton. Bush admin supporters seem to think that clinton's inaction caused 9/11. So the implication is that the bush admin, in doing just as much as clinton, was just as responsible for 9/11 as clinton? Wow, they don't always really think out the implications of the talking points, do they?

09-26-2006, 12:44 PM	#35 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	Ustwo, it is customary to provide a link to an article you post. I would appreciate seeing your source material.

09-27-2006, 02:18 AM	#37 (permalink)
tecoyah Illusionary	As it would seem, the Bombing of the U.S.S. Cole is the turning point for serious worry about Bin Laden, and is used as a primary focus by republican pundits to point out inaction by Clinton, I have an observation to make. The talking point "Clinton had 8 Years, Bush only had 8 months", is rather disengenuous. The Cole was Bombed on Oct, 12th 2000 and Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001.....seems to me Bush had twice as long as Clinton to get Busy. Its also pointless to " Blame" either one of these people for 9/11....terrorism is to blame, or Bin Laden if you prefer. It is Clear Mr. Clinton took the threat seriously, and attempted to react to it, it is also clear he did not prevent 9/11. What is not clear is the continuation of this " Serious Attention" by the Bush Administration after taking office, not that they would have prevented this disaster either, But they might have had they been paying attention. Quite simply Put....Clinton was no longer President on 9/11/2001, there was absolutely nothing he could have done. Bush was President on 9/11/2001. From my reasearch, and Data available to anyone interested in looking it is obvious The Clinton Administration was already at War with Terrorism, though quite limited in scope for many reasons. The War seems to have taken a break until 9/11.

09-27-2006, 05:57 AM	#39 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	Watch this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjB9uMUM6xIp My paraphrase: Reporter: Clinton claims that you had no meetings on Bin Laden for 9 months after he left office. Is that factually accurate? Bush: No comment on THAT, but give me free reign to do whatever I want NOW to do whatever I feel like in the name of keeping you saaaaaafe! Asshole performs back-door election-year hatchet jobs on former presidents and then won't answer a straight question about the very accusation his media-puppets are dropping.