Bill Clinton interview on Fox News (video)

[kingtas]

Originally posted by: Aimster

Originally posted by: Pabster
Clinton was owned by Chris Wallace.

Nothing but typical lies from Slick. Excuse after excuse for the incompetence of himself and his administration. "But Bush had 8 months!" (Nevermind that I had 8 years!)

My favorite was the viewer who wrote in "Is Bill Clinton lying? Well, are his lips moving?" 😀 😛

He wasnt owned by Wallace.

Clinton is the master of speaking and debates. If anyone is going to beat him it is def. not going to be Wallace.

hehe...he said Clinton is a master debater.

 

[getbush]

I wish I could post this in my sig but it is twice the allowed length. So I will post it here for no good reason.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." - Hermann Goering 4-18-1946

 

[International Machine Consortium]

Originally posted by: getbush
Is your last name 49? What a useless tangent.

Useless Tangent is 49's middle name. 😉

 

[NJDevil]

Originally posted by: shadow9d9

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
It was awesome to see Bill pwn Wallace, Fox and the Republicans :thumbsup: :laugh:

Yeah, it was awesome to see him come in blaming "right wingers" and "Bush's neocons" for all his failures, per usual.

The guy still refuses to admit the mistakes he made and accept responsibility for the incompetence of both himself and those he surrounded himself with (Reno, Berger, et al.)

And if you actually listen, he says "I had no legal authority (1996) to bring him (Bin Laden) to justice. He had committed no crimes..." (Which is not true, of course) yet later he tries to tell us he did everything under the sun to KILL Bin Laden. As usual he is trying to have it both ways. The fact is that Clinton COULD HAVE brought UBL to justice and did not ("I pleaded with the Saudis to take him...").

Not surprisingly Dems are running from this interview. I'm talking those running for election, not the hacks on here. Between the vitriol Clinton displayed and his use of the word "Failure" (which, admittedly, I was shocked to hear) this isn't exactly great campaign material for the party.

Did you watch the interview? He outright admitted the mistakes he made. MULTIPLE TIMES! He even said he wanted the 9/11 commission to publicize it!

He went on and asked for those same questions to be asked to the people in charge now about the first 8 months of Bush's presidency.. and he was right that it was never asked.

Perhaps this interview will get some reporters to question exactly why the Bush administration did nothing once the Cole attack was certified to have been committed by Bin Laden?

 

[RightIsWrong]

Are you guys idiots or was it just perhaps the first time that you've ever seen someone actually tell the truth on an interview? That man is not perfect, but at least he was honest both about his mistakes and his goals. Maybe you guys need to start looking inside of yourselves and really start evaluating whether you subscribe to the same morals or not....

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: TravisT
I think you're dumb if you have different opinions of the way Bush and Clinton handled the situation with al Qaeda prior to 9/11. Neither one did much at all, we realized what the terrorist group was capable of after the attack.

If you don't think Clinton did much, then you need to stop taking everything Limbaugh says as "The Lord's word". Neither one really did anything until the attacks though.

100% right. They both dropped the ball, mainly because I don't think they understood the scope of the war and the determination of al-Qaida to attack us.

Clinton's "I did this this and this" is just an attempt to cover up for the fact that he did hardly nothing.

If he did so much where is the evidence of his success?
The ONLY time we took military action against al-Qaida was two days after he was forced to admit to having an affair with Monica.
Clinton goes on TV and admits to the whole country that he lied about Monica and then launches some missiles at an aspirin factory and some terror camps. Other than that he never took ANY military action against Osama in the 4-5 years between when Osama declared war against us and when he left office.

Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize LA Times

President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.

I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.

From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.

Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.

The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening.

Audio of Clinton admitting that he passed up a chance to bring Osama to US in 1996

TRANSCRIPT: Ex-President Clinton's Remarks on Osama bin Laden Delivered to the Long Island Association's Annual Luncheon Crest Hollow Country Club, Woodbury, NY Feb. 15, 2002
CROSSON: In hindsight, would you have handled the issue of terrorism, and al-Qaeda specifically, in a different way during your administration?

CLINTON: Well, it's interesting now, you know, that I would be asked that question because, at the time, a lot of people thought I was too obsessed with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

And when I bombed his training camp and tried to kill him and his high command in 1998 after the African embassy bombings, some people criticized me for doing it. We just barely missed him by a couple of hours.

I think whoever told us he was going to be there told somebody who told him that our missiles might be there. I think we were ratted out.

We also bombed a chemical facility in Sudan where we were criticized, even in this country, for overreaching. But in the trial in New York City of the al-Qaeda people who bombed the African embassy, they testified in the trial that the Sudanese facility was, in fact, a part of their attempt to stockpile chemical weapons.

So we tried to be quite aggressive with them. We got - uh - well, Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan.

And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again.

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

So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan.

We then put a lot of sanctions on the Afghan government and - but they inter-married, Mullah Omar and bin Laden. So that essentially the Taliban didn't care what we did to them.

Now, if you look back - in the hindsight of history, everybody's got 20/20 vision - the real issue is should we have attacked the al-Qaeda network in 1999 or in 2000 in Afghanistan.

Here's the problem. Before September 11 we would have had no support for it - no allied support and no basing rights. So we actually trained to do this. I actually trained people to do this. We trained people.

There you have it, in his own words he had a chance and he passed it up because of legal reasons.

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: getbush
Well it is truth that he could not get the required certification from the CIA and FBI to finger Afghanistan as a target to get boots on the ground. That was back when republicans did everything they could to take power away from the presidency. They've had a change of heart on that delicate balance since then.

Clinton was the fricken President he could take a piece of paper wrote a note and said here is my ****** certification, now get your asses in gear and do something.

That is the lamest excuse of all time. "Well the CIA and FBI said I couldn't do it" The CIA and FBI work for you!!!! You tell them what they can and can't do, not the other way around. Now if congress passed a law saying that he couldn't kill Osama then it would be a problem, otherwise...

 

[getbush]

I think it's a little easy to look back at 1996, ten years ago, post 9-11, and think gee we should have been more motivated in bringing this guy in. Once he did try to go after him in '98 when the indictment came in with both hands tied behind his back, he was ridiculed by republicans. Bush came into office and in those first 8 months did diddly squat, while intelligence was coming in and stating some very specific stuff about possible future attacks.

Passed up on legal reasons is right I guess. You do remember a time before gitmo and secret CIA prisons right?

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: getbush
Well it is truth that he could not get the required certification from the CIA and FBI to finger Afghanistan as a target to get boots on the ground. That was back when republicans did everything they could to take power away from the presidency. They've had a change of heart on that delicate balance since then.

Clinton was the fricken President he could take a piece of paper write a note and say here is my ****** certification, now get your asses in gear and do something.

That is the lamest excuse of all time. "Well the CIA and FBI said I couldn't do it" The CIA and FBI work for you!!!! You tell them what they can and can't do, not the other way around. Now if congress passed a law saying that he couldn't kill Osama then it would be a problem, otherwise...

You can't do that legally here in the good ole USA.. he needed the sign off to act... independent legal opinion will agree.
You can't simply invade another nation with out having some reason to do it even if catching OBL is in the pudding..
There are some rules that have been enacted to thwart the unilateral use of force by the President... Congress gets to know and they also need his resolution for the War Powers Act..

 

[getbush]

The lamest excuse of all time is his respect for our nation's constitution and legal process!? Jesus fvcking christ I personally will never respond to any of the stupid trash you post ever again. The CIA and FBI do not work for the president, they work for the people. Just as the president is supposed to work for the people. Are you a US citizen? I don't think you could pass the naturalization test. fvcking pathetic. No more prof john.

 

[jmcoreymv]

Originally posted by: getbush
The lamest excuse all time is his respect for our nation's constitution and legal process? Jesus fvcking christ I personally will never respond to any of the stupid trash you post ever again.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: getbush
Passed up on legal reasons is right I guess. You do remember a time before gitmo and secret CIA prisons right?

The problem is that he is trying to have it both ways.

He says he didn't nab UBL in 1996 because he had no legal authority to do so; And claims he "pleaded" with the Saudis to "take him"...

Then, he tries to say he worked harder than any President to kill UBL, ordering the CIA to kill him, hiring outside contractors to kill him, et al.

Do you see the conflict there? If not, you are a real Clinton kool-aid sipper.

 

[NJDevil]

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: getbush
Passed up on legal reasons is right I guess. You do remember a time before gitmo and secret CIA prisons right?

The problem is that he is trying to have it both ways.

He says he didn't nab UBL in 1996 because he had no legal authority to do so; And claims he "pleaded" with the Saudis to "take him"...

Then, he tries to say he worked harder than any President to kill UBL, ordering the CIA to kill him, hiring outside contractors to kill him, et al.

Do you see the conflict there? If not, you are a real Clinton kool-aid sipper.

Perhaps the threat was not as visible in 1996 as it was after the bombing of the embassies in Africa in 1998. I was quite young at the time, but I do remember republicans claiming wag the dog and trying to restrain Clinton from doing anything to do w/ OBL.

Clinton is talking about the effort to catch him after the threat was clearer. If you're going to bring up Osama's declaration of war, you are truly unaware of the amount of crazies who have done this. To "declare war" on each of them would be quite an interesting policy.

Clinton, unlike George W. Bush admitted his failures. I have to hear about any admission of error from the administration regarding the 8 months beforehand (when OBL's responsibility for the Cole was certified).

 

[getbush]

Hey pabs, 96 is not the same as 98. In 98 a grand jury that had been working for 2 years put out a sealed indictment charging bin laden with crimes against america. See the difference there?

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: Craig234
One other thing to remember, Clinton's FBI director was a republican who was basically at war with the president, and the political situation with the republican congress prevented Clinton from being able to replace him.

BS, Clinton was President, he could have fired him any time he wanted.

He is something interesting from Joe Klein, the guy who wrote "Primary Colors" the book and movie about Clinton's run for office.

Time magazine?s Joe Klein gave credibility to Clinton?s claim that but for the Lewinsky scandal Clinton would have fired FBI Director Louis Freeh, who had proven incompetent in the battle against terrorism. Klein suggested ?we might have had a better shot at rolling up those al-Qaeda cells if Bill Clinton had been free to fire Freeh.?
On Meet the Press, recalling Time?s interview conducted last week with Clinton, upon the release of his lengthy tome, My Life, Klein picked up on a finding of the 9-11 Commission about Freeh?s supposed poor job on counter-terrorism and expounded, during a roundtable segment:
?One of the other things that Clinton told us was that he would have fired Louis Freeh as FBI Director if it hadn't been for the media and for the fact that we would have associated that firing with the investigation of the Lewinsky scandal. Now, that is incredibly damning because from what I can understand, the FBI was entirely incompetent, not doing anything in terms of counter-terrorism over those years. And so in some ways, you could say that we might have had a better shot at rolling up those al-Qaeda cells if Bill Clinton had been free to fire Freeh.?

So in other words if Clinton had not gotten himself into so much trouble by having a relationship with an intern and then lying about it he could have fired Freeh and saved us all from 9-11.

Clinton's own words on why he never fired Freeh
Time Magazine 2004 interview

If I had known that when we tripled the counterterrorism funds none of it was put into improving the data processing and interconnecting with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, if I had known that the Executive Order I signed fairly early in my Administration ordering the CIA and the FBI to exchange high-level people and cooperate more hadn't been done, I might have done so.

But since the FBI chief gets a presumptive 10-year term, I didn't feel what I thought was outrageous treatment of us, particularly by him personally, was worth replacing him, because all of you [in the media] would have said, Well, he's doing it because he's got something to hide, and I didn't have anything to hide. I knew there was nothing to Whitewater, I knew there was nothing to the Paula Jones case--Ken Starr could have as many FBI agents as he wanted doing whatever they wanted to do.

Yet more proof that had Clinton not been in so much trouble for his personal problems 9-11 could have been averted. hmmmmm no wonder he is so defensive.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: getbush
Hey pabs, 96 is not the same as 98. In 98 a grand jury that had been working for 2 years put out a sealed indictment charging bin laden with crimes against america. See the difference there?

Nice obfuscation job.

Slick says he recognized the threat, knew UBL was trouble, and "did everything he possibly could" to bring him to justice. The record, however, does not support him.

PS you might want to check pre-1998. UBL's involvement in plots against Americans and our interests abroad were well known as early as 1993!

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: getbush
Hey pabs, 96 is not the same as 98. In 98 a grand jury that had been working for 2 years put out a sealed indictment charging bin laden with crimes against america. See the difference there?

Nice obfuscation job.

Slick says he recognized the threat, knew UBL was trouble, and "did everything he possibly could" to bring him to justice. The record, however, does not support him.

PS you might want to check pre-1998. UBL's involvement in plots against Americans and our interests abroad were well known as early as 1993!

If they were well-known then you should have no problem providing us with links to such articles.

After the 1993 WTC attack (planned during Bush Sr's tenure as President), bin Laden known only as "the financier". Far from being any kind of terrorist mastermind.


And what is this "record" of which you speak that supposedly doesn't support Clinton's efforts to fight terrorism?

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Clinton's own words on why he never fired Freeh
Time Magazine 2004 interview

If I had known that when we tripled the counterterrorism funds none of it was put into improving the data processing and interconnecting with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, if I had known that the Executive Order I signed fairly early in my Administration ordering the CIA and the FBI to exchange high-level people and cooperate more hadn't been done, I might have done so.

But since the FBI chief gets a presumptive 10-year term, I didn't feel what I thought was outrageous treatment of us, particularly by him personally, was worth replacing him, because all of you [in the media] would have said, Well, he's doing it because he's got something to hide, and I didn't have anything to hide. I knew there was nothing to Whitewater, I knew there was nothing to the Paula Jones case--Ken Starr could have as many FBI agents as he wanted doing whatever they wanted to do.

Yet more proof that had Clinton not been in so much trouble for his personal problems 9-11 could have been averted. hmmmmm no wonder he is so defensive.

Good lord. That's about the greatest leap of logic ever attempted up here.

What's sad is you don't realize you just made Clinton's words truer than true.

 

[getbush]

I have much more productive things to be working on right now so I will just drop these classics for giggles and tears.

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."
- G.W. Bush, 9/13/01

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

"I am truly not that concerned about him."
- G.W. Bush, repsonding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts
3/13/02

 

[daniel49]

Originally posted by: getbush

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
It was awesome to see Bill pwn Wallace, Fox and the Republicans :thumbsup: :laugh:

Yeah, it was awesome to see him come in blaming "right wingers" and "Bush's neocons" for all his failures, per usual.

The guy still refuses to admit the mistakes he made and accept responsibility for the incompetence of both himself and those he surrounded himself with (Reno, Berger, et al.)

And if you actually listen, he says "I had no legal authority (1996) to bring him (Bin Laden) to justice. He had committed no crimes..." (Which is not true, of course) yet later he tries to tell us he did everything under the sun to KILL Bin Laden. As usual he is trying to have it both ways. The fact is that Clinton COULD HAVE brought UBL to justice and did not ("I pleaded with the Saudis to take him...").

Not surprisingly Dems are running from this interview. I'm talking those running for election, not the hacks on here. Between the vitriol Clinton displayed and his use of the word "Failure" (which, admittedly, I was shocked to hear) this isn't exactly great campaign material for the party.

1. Share the blame. It was a republican congress fighting with the democrat president. They wanted nothing but him out of office. He could have done more, people on the right could have put stuff aside and done less to stop it. They were more worried about Lewinsky than bin laden. He blames them for everything? How many times did he say "I failed". Repeat it with me, "I failed". You could hold one of Ws failed grammar test from grade school up to his face and he still wouldn't admit to it. Bush & co. want to blame it all on Clinton, but what about those crucial 8 months leading up to the attack? "We had multiple meetings" the right says. Probably to decide who got what frivoulous title in the organization more or less. WTC 1993 happened 38 days after Bush Senior left office. Did Clinton blame senior?

2. bin Laden was virtually unknown to the public until the embassy bombings in '98. The prior attacks could not be pinned on himvwith certainty. An american grand jury was quietly started in '96 to investigate bin Laden. They didn't reach a conclusion and release a sealed indictment of bin laden until '98, then the cruise missiles started launching, b/c Clinton couldn't get certification to put troops on the ground in Afghanistan. You see, the republican congress fought to reduce the power of the presidency in those days. Their attitude on that subject has flipped since then.

3. I'm a hack, you're a hack, we're all hacks pabster. I've never seen any great campaign material from your party. Most people who think for themselves and don't care if gays get married and suffer like the rest of us don't 🙂 . Republicans: tough on terror* and ****** on everything else

4. Clinton is a smart man. He is one of the smartest presidents we've had. Bush is little more than a script reading (and repeating ad nauseum) puppet and figure head for the GOP propaganda machine. He is a moron, and a terrible president, and I'm ashamed of him as an american.



*if you look past the current and previous NIE terror reports

yawn...more partisan blame game. there's enough blame for slick willy and W both.
Its hilarious that either side wants the high ground.
I at least understand the polarization though, what I do not understand is the morons who think we can just isolate ourselves from the rest of the world and the OBL's will just go away and start carpet shops as they retire from terror..

 

[daniel49]

Originally posted by: International Machine Consortium

Originally posted by: getbush
Is your last name 49? What a useless tangent.

Useless Tangent is 49's middle name. 😉

Its a very simple point although it may escape you. One cannot pretend to be politically objective and have a handle like Getbush.

 

[getbush]

I'm neither a republican or a democrat, and I started that post with "share the blame". And then you quote my post and talk about the blame game and one side clamoring for higher ground. I hope this wasn't the most logical thing you did all day.

And who was talking isolationism?

edit: Why are you hung up on my name? It's been my goddamn name since way before W got in office. It is an old email handle that is basically an abbreviation of "get a hold of or get in contact with Bush" - me And then it became an AT screen name.I told you once but I guess i'll have to break out the paper and crayons for you. You are so fvcking asinine.

Oh and Bush and his administartion are a bunch of asshats. There is my political objectiveness for you. Give me a break.

 

[UberNeuman]

Um, so Clinton didn't do enough about this big threat of OBL - he should have done more....

Begs the question: If OBL was this big a threat to the nation, then why didn't Bush & Company take all the info handed to them and run with it....

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: conjur

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Clinton's own words on why he never fired Freeh
Time Magazine 2004 interview

If I had known that when we tripled the counterterrorism funds none of it was put into improving the data processing and interconnecting with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, if I had known that the Executive Order I signed fairly early in my Administration ordering the CIA and the FBI to exchange high-level people and cooperate more hadn't been done, I might have done so.

But since the FBI chief gets a presumptive 10-year term, I didn't feel what I thought was outrageous treatment of us, particularly by him personally, was worth replacing him, because all of you [in the media] would have said, Well, he's doing it because he's got something to hide, and I didn't have anything to hide. I knew there was nothing to Whitewater, I knew there was nothing to the Paula Jones case--Ken Starr could have as many FBI agents as he wanted doing whatever they wanted to do.

Yet more proof that had Clinton not been in so much trouble for his personal problems 9-11 could have been averted. hmmmmm no wonder he is so defensive.

Good lord. That's about the greatest leap of logic ever attempted up here.

What's sad is you don't realize you just made Clinton's words truer than true.

That wasn't my leap, that was Joe Klein?s leap.
Klein suggested ?we might have had a better shot at rolling up those al-Qaeda cells if Bill Clinton had been free to fire Freeh.?
We know from Clinton himself that he would not fire Freeh because of Monica and Whitewater and the fear of fallout for firing him.

Therefore, had Clinton not had a problem with Monica and Whitewater he could have fired Freeh, says so himself, and as Klein suggests "we might have had a better shot at rolling up those al-Qaeda cells" without Freeh around. Therefore, no Clinton problem + no Freeh= less al-Qaeda.
Maybe saying there would have been no 9-11 is a stretch, but saying that Clinton's own personal problems affected the war on terror is not.

 

[getbush]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: conjur

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Clinton's own words on why he never fired Freeh
Time Magazine 2004 interview

If I had known that when we tripled the counterterrorism funds none of it was put into improving the data processing and interconnecting with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, if I had known that the Executive Order I signed fairly early in my Administration ordering the CIA and the FBI to exchange high-level people and cooperate more hadn't been done, I might have done so.

But since the FBI chief gets a presumptive 10-year term, I didn't feel what I thought was outrageous treatment of us, particularly by him personally, was worth replacing him, because all of you [in the media] would have said, Well, he's doing it because he's got something to hide, and I didn't have anything to hide. I knew there was nothing to Whitewater, I knew there was nothing to the Paula Jones case--Ken Starr could have as many FBI agents as he wanted doing whatever they wanted to do.

Yet more proof that had Clinton not been in so much trouble for his personal problems 9-11 could have been averted. hmmmmm no wonder he is so defensive.

Good lord. That's about the greatest leap of logic ever attempted up here.

What's sad is you don't realize you just made Clinton's words truer than true.

Ok I just quoted that for posterity b/c prof john either just reserved some space while he's trying to put together a logical post (in vain) or he mis-clicked something. I guess I can respond because well, he didn't actually type anything.