Posted on 09/25/2001 3:25:05 PM PDT by Jean S
Acting like a man who knows he has much to answer for, ex-president Bill Clinton is seeking out anyone and everyone who will listen to explain that the World Trade Center disaster that killed 7,000 Americans wasn't his fault.
After telling Fox News Channel's Brian Kilmeade, NBC's Tom Brokaw and countless private audiences over the last two weeks that he did everything he could to nail prime suspect Osama bin Laden, Clinton has taken to accosting total strangers on the street to offer his excuses.
One such New Yorker is Saul Finkelstein, who says he was corralled by the suddenly guilt-ridden ex-prez Saturday while out for a bike ride with his sons.
For a full 15 minutes the ex-Commander-in-Chief unburdened himself to Finkelstein, who reported the episode to the Washington Post's Lloyd Grove.
"In 1998, the U.S. Navy launched a series of cruise missile attacks," Clinton insisted to the stranger. "We missed him by an hour."
He seemed to want the passerby to understand that if President Bush succeeds where he failed, it won't be because Bush tried any harder.
"The president can't say this," Clinton reportedly explained, "but it will not be that difficult to get bin Laden [today] because unlike in 1998.... the U.S. will have the cooperation of surrounding countries."
By comparison, he said, his task was more difficult because he had to "fight this guy from 1,000 miles away."
The bottom line, Finkelstein said, was that Clinton wanted him to understand that "what happened on Sept. 11 could in no way be traced to some failure on his administration's part."
I have always considered Brian, the sports guy on Fox and Friends, to be a light weight in over his head.
No more. Brian asked TRIMPOTUS if he felt responsible for the WTS disaster because of his failure to fund the agencies. Brian in now my hero. I have never seen a report or a report of a report where the TTIMPOTUS had to wriggle away from being a called failure to his face.
Kudos to Brian
Some few had to hound a howl for justice during his shameful tenure. It fell to us as a sacred trust.
Lest the nation forget, this small forum will always sound the call. As Edmund Burke said of Hastings in his Manager for Impeachment presentation:
Re-read this and know that there are those here that will ever flow with animosity, in the grand tradition of Burke.If it should still be asked why we show sufficient acrimony to exact a suspicion of being in any manner influenced by malice or a desire of revenge, to this, my Lords, I answer, because we should be thought to know our duty, and to have all the world know how resolutely we are resolved to perform it. The Commons of Great Britain are not disposed to quarrel with the Divine Wisdom and Goodness, which has moulded up revenge into the frame and constitution of man. He that has made us what we are has made us at once resentful and reasonable. Instinct tells a man that he ought to revenge an injury; reason tells him that he ought not be a judge in his own cause. From that moment revenge passes from the public to the private hand; but in being transferred it is far from being extinguished. My Lords, it is transferred as a sacred trust to be exercised for the injured, in measure and proportion, by persons, who feeling as he feels, are in a temper to reason better than he can reason. Revenge is taken out of the hands of the original injured proprietor, lest it should be carried beyond the bounds of moderation and justice. But, my Lords, it is in its transfer exposed to a danger of an opposite description. The delegate of vengeance may not feel the wrong sufficiently: He may be cold and languid in the performance of his sacred duty. It is for these reasons that good men are taught to tremble even at the first emotions of anger and resentment for their own particular wrongs; but they are likewise taught, if they are well taught, to give the loosest possible rein to their resentment and indignation, whenever their parents, their friends, their country, or their brethren of the common family of mankind are injured. Those who have not such feelings, under such circumstances, are base and degenerate. These, my Lords, are the sentiments of the Commons of Great Britain.
Lord Bacon has very well said, that "revenge is a kind of wild justice." It is so, and without this wild austere stock there would be no justice in the world. But when, by the skilful hand of morality and wise jurisprudence, a foreign scion, but of the very same species, is grafted upon it, its harsh quality becomes changed, it submits to culture, and, laying aside its savage nature, it bears fruits and flowers, sweet to the world, and not ungrateful even to heaven itself, to which it elevates its exalted head. The fruit of this wild stock is revenge regulated, but not extinguished, -- revenge transferred from the suffering party to the communion and sympathy of mankind. This is the revenge by which we are actuated, and which we should be sorry, if the false, idle, girlish, novel-like morality of the world should extinguish in the breast of us who have a great public duty to perform.
This sympathetic revenge, which is condemned by clamorous imbecility, is so far from being a vice, that it is the greatest of all possible virtues, -- a virtue which the uncorrupted judgement of mankind has in all ages exalted to the rank of heroism. To give up all the repose and pleasures of life, to pass sleepless nights and laborious days, and, what is ten times more irksome to an ingenuous mind, to offer oneself to calumny and all its herd of hissing tongues and poison fangs, in order to free the world from fraudulent prevaricators, from cruel oppressors, from robbers and tyrants, has, I say, the test of heroic virtue, and well deserves such a distinction. The Commons despairing to attain the heights of this virtue, never lose sight of it for a moment. For seventeen years they have, almost without intermission, pursued, by every sort of inquiry, by legislative and by judicial remedy, the cure of this...malady, worse ten thousand times than the leprosy which our forefathers brought from the east. Could they have done this, if they had not been actuated by some strong, some vehement, some perennial passion, which, burning like the Vestal fire chaste and eternal, never suffers generous sympathy to grow cold in maintaining the rights of the injured or in denouncing the crimes of the oppressor?
My Lords, the Managers for the Commons have been actuated by this passion; my Lords, they feel its influence at this moment; and so far from softening either their measures or their tone, they do here, in the presence of their Creator, of this House, and of the world, make this solemn declaration, and nuncupate this deliberate vow: that they will ever flow with the most determined and unextinguishable animosity against tyranny, oppression, and perculation in all, but more particularly as practiced by this man...; that they never will relent, but will pursue and prosecute him and it, till they see corrupt pride prostrate under the feet of justice. We call upon your Lordships to join us; and we have no doubt that you will feel the same sympathy that we feel, or (what I cannot persuade my soul to think or my mouth to utter) you will be identified with the criminal whose crimes you excuse, and rolled with him in all the pollution of ...[this] guilt from generation to generation. Let those who feel with me upon this occasion join with me in this vow: if they will not, I have it all to myself.
By the way, the septic tank line? LMAO!
Clinton is accosting strangers in the street to defend himself because he KNOWS he either screwed up, or did something wrong deliberately. As the terrorists waited until he was out of office to do this, I suspect the latter is the truth.
I noticed that....I was looking for the photo of Bill with his hand over his face breaking down...or holding his breath. But this is the only one I could find for now.
Rush's correction: by 8 years.
dep
He KNOWS his decision to pardon Marc Rich is DEFINITELY going to be tie to this and there is NO WAY OUT for this CREEP!!!
He's a rapist who bombs aspirin factories to turn attention away from his crimes.
No, we are not harsh, we are honest.
BTW, welcome to Free Republic.
Thou dost speak the truth, Mark. It's not about conscience with him. It's about perception and wanting praise, as it has always been. He stands for nothing. He is nothing. His life is about craving adoration and picking up women, nothing more. His wife is pure driven evil.
Keep on telling us how hard you tried, Bubba. Dab at some tears just in case a camera is rolling neary....
I hope Bubba accosts me on the street. I'll tell him to get bent. I hope the guilt drives him and Hitlery insane. Maybe he'll be the first ex-president to die of a drug and alcohol O.D. from the guilt.
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