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A lie worse than Clinton's

http://slate.msn.com/id/2107847/

This to be appalling. Yes, even worse than Clinton's lie (which which was pathetic). This was a lie to gain political advantage.

This was not a 'reactive' lie. This was planned and carried out for political and personal gain. You may think that Clinton's lie was worse, we could disagree perhaps. But please don't tell me this lie by the current administration is ok.

By the way, where is the "liberal" media's hue and cry outrage to being used like this? Perhaps they don't really mind... which makes them, oh, not liberal?

Quote:

You Call That a Major Policy Address?
In a week of devastating revelations about his Iraq policies, Bush has nothing new to say.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004, at 1:57 PM PT

Better at shadowboxing

Did CNN and MSNBC get hoodwinked this morning? Yesterday, the White House announced that President Bush would be delivering a "major policy address" on terrorism today. The cable news networks broadcast it live and in full. Yet the "address" turned out to be a standard campaign stump speech before a Pennsylvania crowd that seemed pumped on peyote, cheering, screaming, or whooping at every sentence.

The president announced no new policy, uttered not one new word about terrorism, foreign policy, or anything else. He did all the things he wanted to do in last Thursday's debate—accuse his opponent of weakness, bad judgment, vacillation, and other forms of flip-floppery—though this time without a moderator to hush the audience, much less an opponent to bite back. And Bush loved it, smiling, smirking, raising his eyebrows, as if to say, "How 'bout that zinger?"

In short, the cable networks were lured into airing an hourlong free campaign ad for George W. Bush. (CNN's spokeswoman did not return my calls inquiring if the producers felt used. The secretary to MSNBC President Rick Kaplan—no relation—connected me to a "viewer relations" line, where I could leave a message if I wished. I called again to clarify that I had a press question, not a consumer complaint. She connected me to the same line again. When I tried a third, fourth, and fifth time, she didn't even pick up the phone; no doubt seeing my number pop up on the Caller ID screen, she routed my call to the prerecorded announcement.)

It's hard to blame either network for taking the White House's bait. Most presidents would want to deliver, right about now, a major address on the war against terror and the war in Iraq. In the last few days, one blow after another has struck the very foundations of Bush's policies. The fact that, under the circumstances, Bush didn't deliver a major policy address after all, despite his advance word, should embarrass not only CNN and MSNBC but, still more, President Bush.

The week's most stunning development may have been the revelation in L. Paul Bremer's remarks, before a group of insurance agents at DePauw University, that we never had enough troops in Iraq, either to secure the country's borders or to provide the stability needed for reconstruction. "The single most important change, the one thing that would have improved the situation," Bremer said, "would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout."

Bremer, of course, was the Bush-appointed head of the U.S.-led occupation authority, so his words on such matters carry weight. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (and Rummy's neocon secretariat) have all insisted—before, during, and after the battlefield phase of the war—that they sent enough troops to accomplish the mission. It is worth recalling that when Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, told Congress that successful occupation would require a few hundred thousand troops, he was pushed into early retirement. Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called his estimate "wildly off the mark."

Now we learn that Bremer agreed with Shinseki—and that he said as much to the White House and Pentagon chiefs at the time (a claim corroborated, to the Washington Post, by administration officials).

But Bremer's disclosure slams himself no less than Team Bush. Bremer, after all, was the man who ordered the disbanding of the old Iraqi army. This decision is commonly seen in retrospect as the administration's first—and perhaps most—disastrous move after the fall of Baghdad. If Bremer thought there weren't enough U.S. troops on the ground, why did he call for the demobilization of Iraqi troops (many of whom had not been loyal to Saddam—they didn't, after all, fight for him)? This is one of the war's great remaining mysteries. (Another is why we went to war in the first place, but that's another story.) Bremer almost certainly didn't make this decision himself; it had to come from higher up. But from where? My guess is that, ultimately, Ahmad Chalabi was a big influence. He was still counting on taking the reins of power in the new Iraq (he had the support of the White House and the Pentagon at the time), and he hoped to install his own militia, the Free Iraqi Forces, as the new Iraqi army. The old, Baathist-dominated army would have been in the way; it had to go. Whatever the actual story, if Bremer truly thought at the time that there weren't enough troops, he should have resigned rather than carry out the order.

The second blow to the war's legitimacy came Monday, when Rumsfeld—increasingly a loose cannon—appeared before the Council on Foreign Relations and, during the question-and-answer period, acknowledged that he had seen no evidence showing a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. The Pentagon later released a statement, claiming that Rumsfeld had been "misunderstood." He did not mean to deny the existence of "ties" between the two. However, as has been discussed in this space before, "ties" is a term that is so broad as to be (deliberately) meaningless.

Then came news reports of a CIA analysis—ordered by Cheney—showing that Rumsfeld hadn't been misunderstood at all. The analysis concluded that there probably was no working relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Musab Zarqawi. This is significant in two ways. First, in the lead up to the war last year, the only physical evidence of a Saddam-al-Qaida tie was the presence of Zarqawi's training camp in northern Iraq. The camp was in Kurdish-controlled territory—an awkward caveat, but Bush officials at the time issued other, though looser, material suggesting a possible connection to Saddam himself.

Had the CIA's recent conclusion been reached two years ago, either within the administration or by Congress, the case for going to war would have been greatly weakened. In fact, as NBC News reported last March (and as almost nobody has picked up since), the Bush administration had several opportunities to bomb Zarqawi's camp well before the war. On at least two occasions the U.S. military drew up plans for an attack. But the White House rejected the proposals—mainly because shutting down Zarqawi's operation would have removed a key rationale for invading Iraq. This was a jaw-dropping bit of cynicism: Bush sold, and continues to sell, the war in Iraq as a major campaign in the global war on terrorism, yet he repeatedly passed up the chance to neutralize or kill one of the most dangerous terrorists (Zarqawi has spent much of his time lately chopping off the heads of foreign contractors) for fear of weakening the case for war.

Today comes the long-awaited 900-plus-page report by Charles Duelfer, the CIA's chief weapons inspector, which concludes pretty much what his predecessor, David Kay, figured out—that on the eve of the war Saddam Hussein had neither weapons of mass destruction nor a viable program for producing such weapons; that his capabilities were deteriorating; that his military might was diminishing, not gathering; that, in short, he posed no real threat. Duelfer did find that Saddam intended to reconstitute his programs once sanctions were dropped. Another way of stating this point: The sanctions were working; they were keeping Saddam Hussein in his box.

Finally, on the matter of the Bush administration's efforts to revive Iraq's economy, a report this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies—a conservative Washington-based think tank—finds that for every dollar spent on aid to Iraq, only 27 cents filters down to projects benefiting Iraqis. The rest pays for administrative and management costs. (This is what happens when 85 percent of contracts are awarded to big U.S. or British firms, while just 2 percent go to Iraqi companies.) Add to this the fact that Bush has spent only a small fraction of the $18.5 billion that Congress appropriated for reconstruction, and the verdict can only be that we're doing just slightly more than squat. The evidence is seen in the continued electrical blackouts and the grave shortfall of basic services. The result is that Iraqis who might otherwise have been compliant citizens join the insurgency—or at least let the insurgents pass without turning them in. (For an excellent analysis on the insurgency's composition, click here.)

So, President Bush may well need to deliver a major policy address on all this sometime soon. Today, though, he just told the cheering throngs that he's strong and resolute while his opponent's a flip-flopper.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate.

so this particular internet column writer decides the speech wasn't momentous enough to fit its billing making it worse than a president lying in a sworn testimony... is that it?

i'm voting kerry 04 baby. :hmm:

i would say that lying to the country about war and then fucking it up once it was underway is a whole lot worse than lying about a blowjob...but hey thats just me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by irateplatypus

I would welcome your analysis of what was in that speech that made it a major policy announcement.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0041006-9.html

That's his speech, from a pretty credible website. Please show me how that is anything other than a stump speech. Do you believe that it was momentous enough? I sure don't. So maybe it's just me and some 'internet writer'...

I understand your knee jerk reaction to tear down the source. We have high placed role models for that particular behavior.

But how about you react to the message?

As for lying: yes, it's worse. I condemn the lie under oath. And I condemn lying about intent of a press conference for political gain. As I posted originally, I have no issue disagreeing about which is worse. But you see no problem with lying about having new terrorist policy in order to get on the air?

How partisan have we become? That is worst kind of lie.

Ok, seriously, Clinton lied about a BJ...does that affect me? Does that really affect the country? Oh my god, think of the children...please....

Bush lied about a press conference, lied about reasons for war, etc...does that affect me, the country, everyone?

neither is acceptable, but i'd much rather be at peace with a bj receiving president than having a ton of my friends shipped overseas for a president who wants to be known as a 'war time president'.

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i would say that lying to the country about war and then fucking it up once it was underway is a whole lot worse than lying about a blowjob...but hey thats just me.

Hey, this is the good ol' USA! :thumbsup:

Sex = bad - always (even though almost all of us do it)
Violence = acceptable after 8-9 PM (even though most of us don't do it).

Nuff said ;)

Ummm, anyone ever think about the possibility that there was a major announcement they were going to make but something happened at the last minute causing the timing (or the whole announcement) to be delayed (or fall apart)? Or perhaps the networks read into what was told to them a little too much about the planned speech? Or maybe even the person who told the media about it was just plain wrong? Nahh. Couldn't possibly be the case. I'm sure the only possible reason that this occurred is a plot that goes right up to the President to force the news media to cover a speech which, by your own account, said nothing new in the hope that the American people, hearing the same old stuff one more time, will give him such a tremendous boost in the polls that he will skip merrily to victory almost a full month from now in November. Yep, that's definitely it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by onetime2

Wow. Are you familiar with occam's razor? It suggests that the simplest answer is often the right one. It is true that the things you suggest are possible. Or it's possible the bush campaign is an opportunistic group who will do what they feel like when they feel like it.

Are you saying that that isn't possible? It's utilizing a terrorism tagline, and then using that to instead counter a horrible debate that I find so offensive.

Do I think the president lied? No. Do I think he was party to a lie? Yes. And complicity is enough. It's his show - he sets the tone. When his campaign makes decisions, he is responsible. That's part of how I define leadership. Is that crazy?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paq

I won't go so far as to say they lied about the war. I think they really, really wanted a particular answer, and they let the evidence fit what they wanted to see. They then turned around and oversold that to the world.

That's just bad management. Horrific management, when you consider the stakes. As someone suggested in another thread, Cheney seems like the kind of boss you don't disagree with. That makes finding results your boss wants to find more likely.

This, however, is pretty plain to me. I recognize I'm tilting at windmills here. No one in the media seems to care. It will never be a big issue. And that's part of what riles me about this.

Partisan politics has come so far, that the office of the president, and the campaign of the president are the same thing. That's sad.

And I hope I'm enough of a person that in 4 years when 'my' candidate does the same crap, I'm credible enough to say so.

Well, let's put a positive spin on this shall we?

Bush is probably pretty desperate right now. If he screws up the next debate like he did the last one he's going to be in very hot water.

Quote:

Originally Posted by boatin

That explanation is in no way the simplest. The simplest would probably be that there was miscommunication between the White House and the press.

I never said it wasn't possible. But please feel free to explain why the administration strategists would think that repeating the "same old information" one more time would give the President a significant advantage at the risk of alienating the networks and press corps.

Your last paragraph clearly communicates why you think the big conspiracy theory in this case is the "simplest".

Hey, Clinton got one. B-B-B-Bush is one.

onetime2 - yeah, I'm sure Bush was devastated when he couldn't deliver his momentous speech on TV despite having told all the major cable news networks to cover it. I imagine his conversation went something like this:

Bush: "Damn it! Why did this something happen at the last minute causing the timing (or the whole announcement) to be delayed (or fall apart)?"

Rove: "I know. I totally wanted this major policy shift on the most important topic facing the nation to come out today."

Bush: "Especially since we have less than a month until the election. Say, how about instead of telling the networks that my speech will be my stump speech verbatim, we continue allowing them to THINK that something important is about to happen, so they wind up giving me free, well-advertised air time to broadcast my reelection message to the country?"

Rove: "Hmm, why, that's so crazy it just might work!"

Bush: "Yes Karl, it is. And the best part, old chum, is how Kerry won't get this opportunity. God bless this something that happened at the last minute causing the timing (or the whole announcement) to be delayed (or fall apart)!"

onetime2 - I'll bet this is EXACTLY how it went down.

Edited for grammar.

What could possibly be worse than a lie about a blowjob? Oh, wait pretty much everything.

Apparently,Clinton lied about more than a blowjob. It seems to me, if I remember correctly, he also lied about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. Of course we all know now there was no such thing.

"And I hope I'm enough of a person that in 4 years when 'my' candidate does the same crap, I'm credible enough to say so."

...considering it's been what, 8 years, since your candidate lied under oath, shaking his first looking at the entire country, and in every sense of the word "lied" to you, and to this day you're still trying to minimize, justify, or put into perspective i'm gonna have to go with "no, no you probably won't be crediible enough to say so"

Haha, people are such hypocrites.

Clinton didn't lie to the american people in the sense you think he did. He could've eaten a pop-tart and said, "I ate cereal" and people would say, "omg, liar!!!"

Lying or trying to justify a war made on false intelligence is a LOT worse than admitting to the ENTIRE public shit about your *PERSONAL* life.

You would do the exact same thing in that situation, so anyone who calls Clinton a liar because of it is just blowing steam for no apparent reason. Go ahead, get on national TV and admit you cheated on your wife/girlfriend. Go on live TV and admit you masturbate 3 times a day.

He lied, yes, but it was about something that wasn't really important, so it doesn't really matter either way.

That does justify the lie because the lie had no effect on you, me, or anyone else in this country other than the people who want to try and make the president look bad. War affects everyone.

Some people think that Clinton brought down the character of the office of President, and think that is worse than misreading something and acting on it. This war can not be blamed on Bush if both sides agreed on it. Even Clinton had bombing runs in Iraq, while he was president.

So, both sides need to relax, if either one gets elected nothing will change. Just like in Vietnam neither party did a damn thing to get us out, they both sent more troops and prolonged the war. Even when they said they would pull out to get elected.

Classic campaign strategy from struggling incumbents - when you just got dealt a big defeat (like Bush a week ago), get yourself some free airtime by billing your campaign speech as a major new address on terrorism. BAM, free airtime on the news stations. That sure kicks it up a notch.

It's becomning increasingly clear to me that the media isn't liberal or conservative, but rather that the media will jump on anything remotely relevant and hype it (the guy who shows the "Fox News Alert" animation/sound is very button-happy example of this) in order to get people to watch their news, and therefore, watch ads between news clips.

All right, I'm about tired of all this. Clinton lied in a grand jury hearing. That's perjury. He broke the law. Yes it was over a ridiculous subject, but he still broke the law.
To call Bush a liar about Iraq is ridiculous. He was given intelligence, and he had to interpret it. Although the Senate didn't have much time to look at that intelligence, they agreed with the president that Houssein had WMD. That was wrong. But he was wrong with Kerry, Edwards, and just about everyone else in Congress.

As for Bush's stump speech, he's been changing the content of his speech pretty commonly lately, but it does seem like the campaign pulled a fast one.

And if you want to know if the media is liberal, read this:
http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.21338...ews_detail.asp

"Actual economic data explains much about the headlines--but far from everything. We found that the incidence of positive coverage during Republican presidencies was fairly steady--but economic news under President Clinton received by far the most positive coverage. This partisan gap or bias (the difference in positive headlines between Republicans and Democrats for the same underlying economic news) consistently implied that Democrats got between 10 and 20 percentage points more positive headlines."

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthew330

What an... amazing post. Did you read what I actually wrote? That I condemn Clinton's lie? "Pathetic" was a word I used, as well. Not really feeling the tfp love in your post.

Why so agressive? Did I claim Clinton as "mine"? Did I justify anything? Or are you so partisan that seeing Clinton's name makes you a rabid dog?

Just as a suggestion, something like: "I hope you are, too" would probably have served... :D

This whole thread is sure interesting to me. Perhaps I didn't serve my intended purpose be bring Clinton's name into things. But I sure see a good demonstration of how subtleties are lost, how we would rather talk bjs than the topic at hand, and how rabid the Clinton name makes people.

I suggested that I would understand if people disagreed with which situation was worse, but that I saw them as both bad. Had a couple of instant defenses of what Bush did, and even an attack on me. And I thought I couldn't be shocked.

I'm of the belief that it's ok to be partisan. But that it's better to recognize that I am, and let that knowledge temper my responses. I'm for Kerry in this election. I think 'my' side is 2 and 0 in the debates. But I see the glasses through which I'm looking. And I that helps me understand how many could see a Cheney victory. I'm still trying to figure out how anyone could see a Bush victory...

But I really question whether many even see their own bias. And that's a shame, too.

Although lying about a policy speech to get free airtime is a bigger shame :D

Vast right wing conspiracy

Clinton had the bad luck to have a vast right wing conspiracy against him. If this sounds crazy to you are unfamiliar with the Heritage Foundation, check out their highly financed opinion making machine including magazine articles and books tailored to their views(Spin Sisters; a book on how women in media are making women dissatisfied comes to mind but there are many more less openly ludicrous works) In the future I think this will be seen as the point when democracy jumped the tracks. The Republican party has become so self serving they can no longer have a dialogue, just endless talking points, the results of this endless self-protectionism?, it has become all-spin, all the time, perhaps to match the 24 hour news media.

I'm sorry but this post proves my point:

Quote:

originaly posted by onetime2
Ummm, anyone ever think about the possibility that there was a major announcement they were going to make but something happened at the last minute causing the timing (or the whole announcement) to be delayed (or fall apart)? Or perhaps the networks read into what was told to them a little too much about the planned speech? Or maybe even the person who told the media about it was just plain wrong? Nahh. Couldn't possibly be the case. I'm sure the only possible reason that this occurred is a plot that goes right up to the President to force the news media to cover a speech which, by your own account, said nothing new in the hope that the American people, hearing the same old stuff one more time, will give him such a tremendous boost in the polls that he will skip merrily to victory almost a full month from now in November. Yep, that's definitely it.

ok
at first, i thought...nah, it was probably a speech about some policy, etc...but i was listening to the daily show and wow....

NOTHING BUT A FREAKING STUMP SPEECH!!!!! AN HOUR ON EACH FREAKING NEWS NETWORK FOR A FREAKING SPEECH HE"S BEING SAYING FOR THE PAST TWO MONTHS!!!

hell, he talked about kerry more than himself during that speech...WTF?!?!!??

so yea, now i'm aggravated about it...

Quote:

Originally Posted by quicksteal

I'll concede that Clinton and Bush used similiar strategy in covering for their untruths. Clinton retreated to a distinction in his mind between oral sex and "sex." Bush has attempted to change the context and purpose of his prewar rhetoric through an ever-changing rational for invasion. But I'm sorry, Bush did cherrypick facts, distort evidence, exaggerate, and flat out lie to the American public. So you need to ask yourself which lie had more consequence. While it's true that Clinton's lie led to impeachment and, it could be argued, weakened our faith in our government, it was still a lie about his personal sex life, a blowjob. Bush's lies on the other had, which were systemic through his regime led to the deaths of over 1000 Americans, tens of thousands Iraqis, gave motivation to a new generation of terrorists, destabilized the middle east, and detrimentally weakened our standing in the world. I'll take a fib about a blowjob over that any day.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paq

Maybe if Clinton hadn't been so busy being blown, he would have been informed enough not to turn down Osama bin Laden when OBL was offered to him on a platter (twice).

And they claim Bush is an idiot!

Quote:

Originally Posted by sob

Quite right, sob. Bush inherited the terrorism problem, he also inherited the bad economy (the recession officialy started Dec. of 2000). Old Slick Willy sat in office for 8 years smiling and saying "everything is great, look what a great job I"m doing" and he just got lucky to miss the sh*t storm by 6 months that he did nothing to prevent (even though I doubt any president could have avoided the collapse of the economy after 9/11).

In his four years Bush has done everything that he thinks is right to bring this country back from a major blow, and used the best intelligence he had to try to keep YOUR family from getting killed. Everyone believed the intelligence, and given the situation any president would have gone into Iraq.

"But he should have taken the international community with him" the left always says. Well not getting into the obvious fact that we had a lot of countries with us, do we really need France and Germany to take out Saddam? Besides the fact that Saddam was paying off France, Germany, and Russia with the oil for food program, and pressureing them to lift the sanctions, in the end we took out Saddam in 3 weeks without Chirac.

After the take over was complete, and with U.S., British, and other countries having soldiers killed, were we just to start handing out contracts to other countries that didn't contribute? Hell no.

IMO-Making an informed decision based on the information provided to you and then having the information not pan out is NOT a LIE. It is a breakdown in intelligence gathering or presentation of the information gathered. If the intelligence was enough to get the vote through congress, the generals to plan a war, and allies to buy in, then it could not be a lie. It was a decision based on current conditions at the time.

Clinton may deserve more heat than he is getting for his BJ affair. I wonder how much he personally did to discredit the position of President of the US. I know that during the time he was president, my quality of life, pay, work conditions and general morale went straight to hell.

I gotta say, i was the opposite..great when clinton was in office, shitty after clinton....

Also gotta say, I don't htink any president other than bush and co...the and co bc they were the ones paving the way, have been for 8 yrs, (cheney, rummy, wolfowitz) would have gone from saying, "Ok, so bin laden attacked us....great, let's go after Iraq..." I jsut don't think it would have happened under any other group of people.

saddam was bad..well duh, who isn't, ya know...and maybe we did take out saddam in 3 weeks, but considering our military vs their perceived or real military, i would have been ashamed if it took an act of god to 'liberate iraq'...

as for discrediting the office..the only people concerned were the fundys in america...the rest of the world could not care less about our pres getting a bj...just look at international papers from the time....so i really don't htink you can say, "Well, the last president got a bj in office, so now, no country will trust the current pres, so he wasnt' able to build a coalition..." Logic just doesn't flow there...

What a shock. Bush's people misled the media into hyping a situation that turned out to be far less important then advertised. Well now I've seen everything.

Just shocked.

Quote:

What an... amazing post. Did you read what I actually wrote? That I condemn Clinton's lie? "Pathetic" was a word I used, as well. Not really feeling the tfp love in your post.

Love has never existed in TFP politics; but just to clarify, there was ZERO animosity in my post. But i'll play your game...

What an...amazing thread. Perhaps you didn't serve your intended purpose by bringing Clinton's name into things, but quit no need to play the martyr. You weren't attacked, if there was any sort of "rabid" response, it's the one quoted above. A little reminder...you didn't "just" bring Clinton's name into things, you titled this "a lie worse than Clinton's", and then suggest that not only was the point of this not was not to "justify or put into perspective" what Clinton did, but any mention of a BJ is a "rabid" response.

Just a suggestion, but perhaps a good response to my post would have been "hey, perhaps my title was a bit misleading (and far from a "condemnation"), i can see why you think i was trying to justify Clinton's lie, but i'd really like to hear your perspective on this...."

"Rabid dog" - personal attack
my post - not so much

whew, and you people are worried about Cheney's blood pressure???

My intent of the original post was to say: Clinton got crucified for his lie. No one cares a rip about Bush's lie. Neither lie is right, neither is ok. I do understand the 'under oath' aspect. I just feel an oath shouldn't be what keeps politicians from lying. And as a comparison I think it's fine, because it illustrates two diametrically opposed reactions to lies by politicians (and/or their organizations).

I said that using Clinton's name might not have served my interests because his name is so astonishingly distracting. It distracts from any substantive discussion anyone attempts to have. I still stand by the original question, and naively thought the theory could be discussed. But the rabid response (oh! that word again!) comes from all sides, and certainly overcame my topic. Perhaps someday there will be an internet law around Clinton's name, as there is for that stinkin 30s politician.

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthew330

A little reminder...you didn't "just" bring Clinton's name into things, you titled this "a lie worse than Clinton's", and then suggest that not only was the point of this not was not to "justify or put into perspective" what Clinton did, but any mention of a BJ is a "rabid" response.

What I found rabid was the focus upon the bj, not the topic. And for the record, I didn't point that word at anyone specifically. In fact, it was in a different post than the post I responded to you in. I would suggest that my usage of that word falls into a 'if the shoe fits, wear it' category. I hope my explanation above covers why I called this thread that.

Quote:

Love has never existed in TFP politics; but just to clarify, there was ZERO animosity in my post.

Love sure doesn't. Respect is supposed to. I find zero respect in:

Quote:

...considering it's been what, 8 years, since your candidate lied under oath, shaking his first looking at the entire country, and in every sense of the word "lied" to you, and to this day you're still trying to minimize, justify, or put into perspective i'm gonna have to go with "no, no you probably won't be crediible enough to say so"

Not that I expect you to recant, but I didn't try 'to minimize, justify or put into perspective' anything of Clinton's. I merely compared his action to Bush's.

And for you to say flat out that I won't be credible in 4 years IS an attack. I'm sorry you don't see that. But perhaps I'm just being a martyr again. :rolleyes:

I would still like your opinion on the original issue. Why does no one care about the Bush White House's misuse of official statements? Is a blatant lie for political gain so much better than self serving, cover his ass, reactive lie? Has partisan politics sunk so low that no one on either side will ever condemn his or her candidate when they behave like an opportunistic jackass?

Thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i would say that lying to the country about war and then fucking it up once it was underway is a whole lot worse than lying about a blowjob...but hey thats just me.

IAWTP :thumbsup:

Why hasn't Bush been impeached yet? Is there another agenda going on behind the scenes?

The only reson Bush has not lied under oath is becouse he will never testify onter oath.

Personally, I believe that every politician lies, or rather "Stretches the truth" more than not. They all have skeletons in their closets if you will and to be honest I don't really care, I am a firm believer of what is in the past starys there, but there is a big difference between leing about the past, and leing about the past, present, and future, which Bush has done ever since he was elected. In my opinion he entire presidency was based on lies, and he was a horrible president anyway. Kerry Edwards '04. Sure Kerry has done things in the past, but he has admitted to all of them, unlike Bush who couldn't even answer a question in the second debate about he making bad decisions, he just can't admit when he is wrong, which is not a good quality in a president in my opinion. I'm voting for Edwards, Kerry just happens to benifit from my vote. :P.

Sorry but I just can´t see the blow job lie as something that should really be our business. Nobody got killed over it. The money wasted over the entire fiasco (45 million bucks?) pales in comparison to the billions going down the drain at the moment. Clinton fucked up by not saying to the public, "None of your business. It´s between me and my wife." But as a man who has been caught, I know that no matter how red handed you get nailed your first reaction is denial. Maybe the problem is George´s lack of blowjobs. We might be a bit better off if the clown had a coupla beers and a hummer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sob

Right wing spin repeated often enough to be accepted by "mega dittoheads" as the truth":

Quote:

<a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/10/18/column.billpress/">http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/10/18/column.billpress/</a>
Bill Press: Don't blame it on Bill Clinton

October 18, 2001 Posted: 12:24 PM EDT (1624 GMT)

By Bill Press
Tribune Media Services

WASHINGTON (Tribune Media Services) -- Here is one of the first rules of politics: It’s not enough that I do well; I must also destroy my enemy.

Sadly, even in America’s war against terrorism, that rule still drives a lot of Republicans. I see it on the op-ed pages. I get avalanches of it in my e-mail. I hear it in their public statements. For them, it's not enough that most Americans give George W. Bush credit for doing a good job in leading the nation against Osama bin Laden. They're not satisfied unless everybody also holds Bill Clinton responsible for getting us into this mess.

Yet the evidence shows his detractors have more to answer for than he does.

The attacks of September 11 were only a few hours old when conservative Congressman Dana Rohrbacher, R-California, blamed Clinton, not the terrorists: “We had Bill Clinton, backing off, letting the Taliban go, over and over again.”

Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh trumpeted on the pages of the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Clinton can be held culpable for not doing enough when he was commander-in-chief to combat the terrorists who wound up attacking the World Trade Center and Pentagon.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who resigned in disgrace, also chimed in, citing Clinton’s “pathetically weak, ineffective ability to focus and stay focused.”

Don't you love it? Gingrich and company derail the president and the country for two whole years over a minor sex scandal in the White House -- magnifying one act of oral sex into a full time, $50 million Independent Counsel investigation, weeks of House Judiciary Committee hearings, impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial in the Senate -- and then they accuse Clinton of not staying focused on government business!

Have they no shame?

The truth, of course, is just the opposite. Given how distracted he was by the Lewinsky scandal, (which was of his own making, but blown out of proportion by his political enemies), it’s amazing Clinton was able to continue governing at all. And during that time, as The Washington Post reveals, he did a great deal to combat terrorism, much of it behind the scenes.

Clinton’s most public response, of course, were the cruise missile attacks of 1998, directed against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the Sudan, following the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Operating on limited intelligence -- at that time, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tazikistan refused to share information on the terrorists whereabouts inside Afghanistan -- U. S. strikes missed bin Laden by only a couple of hours.

Even so, Clinton was accused of only firing missiles in order to divert media attention from the Lewinsky hearings. A longer campaign would have stirred up even more criticism.

So Clinton tried another tack. He sponsored legislation to freeze the financial assets of international organizations suspected of funneling money to bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network -- identical to orders given by President Bush this month -- but it was killed, on behalf of big banks, by Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas.

Those actions, we knew about. Others, we did not, until recently. Starting in 1998, for example, Clinton gave the CIA a green light to use whatever covert means were necessary to gather information on Osama bin Laden and his followers, and to disrupt and preempt any planned terrorist activities against the United States.

As part of that effort, the CIA, under Clinton, trained and equipped some 60 commandos from Pakistan to enter Afghanistan and capture bin Laden. The operation collapsed when Pakistan experienced a military coup and a new government took over.

In 1998, Clinton also signed a secret agreement with Uzbekistan to begin joint covert operations against Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. U.S. Special Forces have been training there ever since, which is why the Pentagon was immediately able to use Uzbekistan as a staging area for forays into Afghanistan.

Clinton targeted bin Laden even before he moved to Afghanistan. In 1996, his administration brokered an agreement with the government of Sudan to arrest the terrorist leader and turn him over to Saudi Arabia. For 10 weeks, Clinton tried to persuade the Saudis to accept the offer. They refused. With no cooperation from the Saudis, the deal fell apart.

Conclusion: Rohrbacher, Limbaugh, Gingrich are dead wrong when they blame Bill Clinton for September 11. Did Clinton get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive?” No, but he came close, several times -- long before tracking down terrorists became a national priority.

Bush's apologists all regurgitate the same talking points....starting with ventriloquist Karl Rove planting the talking points in dummy Dubya's mouth,
while faxing the script to Limbaugh, Hannity, et al to provide a chorus that
repeat the same, worn out misinformation day in, day out, ad nauseum. No
links to back the comments posted on these forums by the right, they just
KNOW that the garbage they have been forcefed is the truth:

Quote:

U.S. Was Foiled Multiple Times in Efforts To Capture Bin Laden or Have Him Killed <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac3/ContentServer?pagename=article&articleid=A61251-2001Oct2&node=nation/specials/attacked/archive">Sudan's Offer to Arrest Militant Fell Through After Saudis Said No</a>

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 3, 2001; Page A01

The government of Sudan, employing a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.

The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at a Rosslyn hotel on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later. Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts at the time, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture.

Sudan expelled bin Laden on May 18, 1996, to Afghanistan. From there, he is thought to have planned and financed the twin embassy bombings of 1998, the near-destruction of the USS Cole a year ago and last month's devastation in New York and Washington.

Bin Laden's good fortune in slipping through U.S. fingers torments some former officials with the thought that the subsequent attacks might have been averted. Though far from the central figure he is now, bin Laden had a high and rising place on the U.S. counterterrorism agenda. Internal State Department talking points at the time described him as "one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world today" and blamed him for planning a failed attempt to blow up the hotel used by U.S. troops in Yemen in 1992.

"Had we been able to roll up bin Laden then, it would have made a significant difference," said a U.S. government official with responsibilities, then and now, in counterterrorism. "We probably never would have seen a September 11th. We would still have had networks of Sunni Islamic extremists of the sort we're dealing with here, and there would still have been terrorist attacks fomented by those folks. But there would not have been as many resources devoted to their activities, and there would not have been a single voice that so effectively articulated grievances and won support for violence."

Clinton administration officials maintain emphatically that they had no such option in 1996. In the legal, political and intelligence environment of the time, they said, there was no choice but to allow bin Laden to depart Sudan unmolested.

"The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time, and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who was deputy national security adviser then.

Three Clinton officials said they hoped -- one described it as "a fantasy" -- that Saudi King Fahd would accept bin Laden and order his swift beheading, as he had done for four conspirators after a June 1995 bombing in Riyadh. But Berger and Steven Simon, then director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, said the White House considered it valuable in itself to force bin Laden out of Sudan, thus tearing him away from his extensive network of businesses, investments and training camps.

"I really cared about one thing, and that was getting him out of Sudan," Simon said. "One can understand why the Saudis didn't want him -- he was a hot potato -- and, frankly, I would have been shocked at the time if the Saudis took him. My calculation was, 'It's going to take him a while to reconstitute, and that screws him up and buys time.' "

Conflicting Agendas

Conflicting policy agendas on three separate fronts contributed to the missed opportunity to capture bin Laden, according to a dozen participants. The Clinton administration was riven by differences on whether to engage Sudan's government or isolate it, which influenced judgments about the sincerity of the offer. In the Saudi-American relationship, policymakers diverged on how much priority to give to counterterrorism over other interests such as support for the ailing Israeli-Palestinian talks. And there were the beginnings of a debate, intensified lately, on whether the United States wanted to indict and try bin Laden or to treat him as a combatant in an underground war.

In 1999, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir referred elliptically to his government's early willingness to send bin Laden to Saudi Arabia. But the role of the U.S. government and the secret channel from Khartoum to Washington had not been disclosed before.

The Sudanese offer had its roots in a dinner at the Khartoum home of Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Othman Taha. It was Feb. 6, 1996 -- Ambassador Timothy M. Carney's last night in the country before evacuating the embassy on orders from Washington.

Paul Quaglia, then the CIA station chief in Khartoum, had led a campaign to pull out all Americans after he and his staff came under aggressive surveillance and twice had to fend off attacks, one with a knife and one with claw hammers. Now Carney was instructed, despite his objections, to withdraw all remaining Americans from the country.

Carney and David Shinn, then chief of the State Department's East Africa desk, considered the security threat "bogus," as Shinn described it. Washington's dominant decision-makers on Sudan had lost interest in engagement, preparing plans to isolate and undermine the regime. The two career diplomats thought that was a mistake, and that Washington was squandering opportunities to enlist Sudan's cooperation against radical Islamic groups.

One factor in Washington's hostility was an intelligence tip that Sudan aimed to assassinate national security adviser Anthony Lake, the most visible administration critic of Khartoum. The Secret Service took it seriously enough to remove Lake from his home, shuffling him among safe houses and conveying him around Washington in a heavily armored car. Most U.S. analysts came to believe later that it had been a false alarm.

Taha, distressed at the deteriorating relations, invited Carney and Shinn to dine with him that Tuesday night. He asked what his country could do to dissuade Washington from the view, expressed not long before by then-United Nations Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright, that Sudan was responsible for "continued sponsorship of international terror."

Carney and Shinn had a long list. Bin Laden, as they both recalled, was near the top. So, too, were three members of Egypt's Gamaat i-Islami, Arabic for Islamic Group, who had fled to Sudan after trying to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Sudan also played host to operatives and training facilities for the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

"It was the first substantive chat with the U.S. government on the subject of terrorism," Carney recalled.

Taha mostly listened. He raised no objection to the request for bin Laden's expulsion, though he did not agree to it that night. His only rejoinders came on Hamas and Hezbollah, which his government, like much of the Arab world, regarded as conducting legitimate resistance to Israeli occupation.

Sudanese President Bashir, struggling for dominance over the fiery cleric Hassan Turabi, had already made overtures to the West. Not long before, he had delivered the accused terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal" to France. Less than a month after Taha's dinner, he sent a trusted aide to Washington.

Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa, then minister of state for defense, arrived unannounced at the Hyatt Arlington on March 3, 1996. Using standard tradecraft, he checked into one room and then walked to another, across Wilson Boulevard from the Rosslyn Metro.

Carney and Shinn were waiting for him, but the meeting was run by covert operatives from the CIA's Africa division. The Washington Post does not identify active members of the clandestine service. Frank Knott, who was Africa division chief in the directorate of operations at the time, declined to be interviewed.

In a document dated March 8, 1996, the Americans spelled out their demands. Titled "Measures Sudan Can Take to Improve Relations with the United States," the two-page memorandum asked for six things. Second on the list -- just after an angry enumeration of attacks on the CIA station in Khartoum -- was Osama bin Laden.

"Provide us with names, dates of arrival, departure and destination and passport data on mujahedin [holy warriors] that Usama Bin Laden has brought into Sudan," the document demanded. The CIA emissaries told Erwa that they knew of about 200 such bin Laden loyalists in Sudan.

During the next several weeks, Erwa raised the stakes. The Sudanese security services, he said, would happily keep close watch on bin Laden for the United States. But if that would not suffice, the government was prepared to place him in custody and hand him over, though to whom was ambiguous. In one formulation, Erwa said Sudan would consider any legitimate proffer of criminal charges against the accused terrorist. Saudi Arabia, he said, was the most logical destination.

Susan Rice, then senior director for Africa on the NSC, remembers being intrigued with but deeply skeptical of the Sudanese offer. And unlike Berger and Simon, she argued that mere expulsion from Sudan was not enough.

"We wanted them to hand him over to a responsible external authority," she said. "We didn't want them to just let him disappear into the ether."

Lake and Secretary of State Warren Christopher were briefed, colleagues said, on efforts launched to persuade the Saudi government to take bin Laden.

The Saudi idea had some logic, since bin Laden had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, denouncing the ruling House of Saud as corrupt. Riyadh had expelled bin Laden in 1991 and stripped him of his citizenship in 1994, but it wanted no part in jailing or executing him.

Saudis Feared a Backlash

Clinton administration officials recalled that the Saudis feared a backlash from the fundamentalist opponents of the regime. Though regarded as a black sheep, bin Laden was nonetheless an heir to one of Saudi Arabia's most influential families. One diplomat familiar with the talks said there was another reason: The Riyadh government was offended that the Sudanese would go to the Americans with the offer.

Some U.S. diplomats said the White House did not press the Saudis very hard. There were many conflicting priorities in the Middle East, notably an intensive effort to save the interim government of Prime Minister Shimon Peres in Israel, which was reeling under its worst spate of Hamas suicide bombings. U.S. military forces also relied heavily on Saudi forward basing to enforce the southern "no fly zone" in Iraq.

Resigned to bin Laden's departure from Sudan, some officials raised the possibility of shooting down his chartered aircraft, but the idea was never seriously pursued because bin Laden had not been linked to a dead American, and it was inconceivable that Clinton would sign the "lethal finding" necessary under the circumstances.

"In the end they said, 'Just ask him to leave the country. Just don't let him go to Somalia,' " Erwa, the Sudanese general, said in an interview. "We said he will go to Afghanistan, and they said, 'Let him.' "

On May 15, 1996, Foreign Minister Taha sent a fax to Carney in Nairobi, giving up on the transfer of custody. His government had asked bin Laden to vacate the country, Taha wrote, and he would be free to go.

Carney faxed back a question: Would bin Laden retain control of the millions of dollars in assets he had built up in Sudan?

Taha gave no reply before bin Laden chartered a plane three days later for his trip to Afghanistan. Subsequent analysis by U.S. intelligence suggests that bin Laden managed to draw down and redirect the Sudanese assets from his new redoubt in Afghanistan.

From the Sudanese point of view, the failed effort to take custody of bin Laden resulted primarily from the Clinton administration's divisions on how to relate to the Khartoum government -- divisions that remain today as President Bush considers what to do with nations with a history of support for terrorist groups.

Washington, Erwa said, never could decide whether to strike out at Khartoum or demand its help.

"I think," he said, "they wanted to do both."

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Right wing spin repeated often enough to be accepted by "mega dittoheads" as the truth":

Bush's apologists all regurgitate the same talking points....starting with ventriloquist Karl Rove planting the talking points in dummy Dubya's mouth,
while faxing the script to Limbaugh, Hannity, et al to provide a chorus that
repeat the same, worn out misinformation day in, day out, ad nauseum. No
links to back the comments posted on these forums by the right, they just
KNOW that the garbage they have been forcefed is the truth:

thanks for the informative post, host.

yet, this:

Quote:

As part of that effort, the CIA, under Clinton, trained and equipped some 60 commandos from Pakistan to enter Afghanistan and capture bin Laden. The operation collapsed when Pakistan experienced a military coup and a new government took over.

gave me a smirk--maybe there was a causal link between the first and second sentence ;)

in any case, why the preoccupation with bin Laden? seems all this animosity has been drummed up toward a specific target that detracts from the larger issue.

these are terrorist cells--the 9-11 attack was likely planned years in advance, not 6 months. bin Laden could have been dead for the past decade and the attack would probably still have occurred.

I just find it odd that people would even attempt to blame that particular incident on one main person, then link it to one particular president. I find it odd in the same way kerry is preoccupied with bin Laden in respect to his criticism of bush, yet I understand his motive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Right wing spin repeated often enough to be accepted by "mega dittoheads" as the truth":

As opposed to the left wing spin regurgitated in your post. It's quite an impressive list of meritless excuses for Clinton's bumbling, though.

By the way, did Clinton get UN approval for launching those missiles?

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Kind of like when your columnists try to blame Clinton's disgrace on oral sex instead of on perjury. Now THERE'S a party line!