Political Left Beginning to Finger clinton for Terrorists' Success

Charlie Rose, The Sunday Times (U.K.), Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, WSJ,KPFKLA,O'Reilly Factor | Andrew Sullivan et al.

[Mia T]

Political Left Beginning to Finger clinton for Terrorists' Success

clinton through Rose-colored glasses...

On his 9-28-01 show, Charlie Rose asks an ABC News analyst: "Do you believe clinton is to blame for 9-11 terrorist attacks?"

 

Noting an obvious reluctance of his guest to answer the question as posed--and apparently forgetting just where the buck stops--Rose adds: "I don't mean to imply that it's clinton's fault...but what about the FBI and CIA?"

 

With clinton now reduced to a causal cousin once removed, the ABC analyst no longer hesitates to observe that the terrorists succeeded on 9-11 because of a "massive failure" by the executive branch...

Andrew Sullivan: The damage Clinton did

...The September 11 massacre resulted from a fantastic failure on the part of the United States government to protect its citizens from an act of war. This failure is now staring us in the face and, if the errors are to be rectified, it is essential to acknowledge what went wrong.

Two questions come to mind: how was it that the Osama Bin Laden network, known for more than a decade, was still at large and dangerous enough this autumn to inflict such a deadly blow? Who was responsible in the government for such a failure of intelligence, foreign policy and national security? These questions have not been asked directly, for good reasons.

There is a need to avoid recriminations at a time of national crisis. But at the same time, the American lack of preparedness that Tuesday is already slowing the capacity to bring Bin Laden to justice by constricting military and diplomatic options. And with a president just a few months in office, criticism need not extend to the young administration that largely inherited this tattered security apparatus.

Whatever failures of intelligence, security or diplomacy exist, they have roots far deeper than the first nine months of this year. When national disasters of unpreparedness have occurred in other countries...ministers responsible have resigned. Taking responsibility for mistakes in the past is part of the effort not to repeat them. So why have heads not rolled?

The most plausible answer is that nobody has been fired because this attack was so novel and impossible to predict that nothing in America's security apparatus could have prevented it. The only problem with this argument is that it is patently untrue. Throughout the Clinton years, this kind of attack was not only predictable but predicted. Not only had Bin Laden already attacked American embassies and warships, he had done so repeatedly and been completely frank about his war. He had even attempted to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993. Same guy, same building. ...

The decision to get down and dirty with the terrorists, to take their threat seriously and counter them aggressively, was simply never taken. Many bear the blame for this: Warren Christopher, the clueless, stately former secretary of state; Anthony Lake, the tortured intellectual at the National Security Council; General Colin Powell, whose decision to use Delta Force units in Somalia so badly backfired; but, above all, former president Bill Clinton, whose inattention to military and security matters now seems part of the reason why America was so vulnerable to slaughter.

Klein cites this devastating quote from a senior Clinton official: "Clinton spent less concentrated attention on national defence than any other president in recent memory. He could learn an issue very quickly, but he wasn't very interested in getting his hands dirty with detail work. His style was procrastination, seeing where everyone was, before taking action. This was truer in his first term than in the second, but even when he began to pay attention he was constrained by public opinion and his own unwillingness to take risks."It is hard to come up with a more damning description of negligence than that.

 

Clinton even got a second chance. In 1998, after Bin Laden struck again at US embassies in Africa, the president was put on notice that the threat was deadly. He responded with a couple of missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan, some of which missed their targets and none of which seriously impacted on Osama Bin Laden...

If the security manager of a nuclear power plant presides over a massive external attack on it, then it's only right that he should be held responsible, in part, for what happened. More than 6,000 families are now living with the deadly consequences of the negligence of the government of the United States. There is no greater duty for such a government than the maintenance of national security, and the protection of its own citizens.

When a senior Clinton official can say of his own leader that he "spent less concentrated attention on national defence than any other president in recent memory", and when this administration is followed by the most grievous breach of domestic security in American history, it is not unreasonable to demand some accounting...

We thought for a long time that the Clinton years would be seen, in retrospect, as a mixed blessing. He was sleazy and unprincipled, we surmised, but he was also competent, he led an economic recovery, and he conducted a foreign policy of multilateral distinction.

But the further we get away from the Clinton years, the more damning they seem. The narcissistic, feckless, escapist culture of an America absent without leave in the world was fomented from the top. The boom at the end of the decade turned out to include a dangerous bubble that the administration did little to prevent.

The "peace-making" in the Middle East and Ireland merely intensified the conflicts. The sex and money scandals were not just debilitating in themselves - they meant that even the minimal attention that the Clinton presidency paid to strategic military and intelligence work was skimped on.

We were warned. But we were coasting. And the main person primarily entrusted with correcting that delusion, with ensuring America's national security - the president - was part of the problem.

Through the dust clouds of September 11, and during the difficult task ahead, one person hovers over the wreckage - and that is Bill Clinton. His legacy gets darker with each passing day.

 

09-21-01

On O'Reilly Factor: Bill Maher fingers clinton

by Mia T

New York, Sept. 21 -- In an O'Reilly Factor interview immediately following President Bush's address to Congress tonight, Bill Maher, loyal clinton lackey, correctly fingered bill clinton as the proximate cause of the 9-11 terrorist attack on New York and Washington. Maher specifically implicated clinton's feckless, cowardly bombing of the terrorists from three miles high, implying that clinton bombed from that distance because he was fearful that casualties would cost him popularity in the polls.

In a fog of delusion and illogic, however, Maher then incorrectly proceeded to place the ultimate blame for the attacks on the American people, arguing that because clinton was "a poll-driven president" he was only following the people's wishes.

Maher does not seem to understand that he has it exactly backwards, that it is a leader's responsibility to shape opinion, that clinton's failure to lead was a symptom of clinton's overriding egomania, cowardice, fecklessness and depravity, that clinton's failure to lead was precisely the first efficient cause of the terrorists' success.

Clinton's Failure to Confront Iraq

Allan J. Favish

 

 

Iraqi Complicity in the World Trade Center Bombing and

Beyond by Laurie Mylroie, which was published in June of this year and discusses the 1993 bombing of the WTC.

 

She explains how Bill Clinton intentionally failed to confront Iraq over its complicity in the bombing and other attacks.

 

She supported Clinton in 1992 having been an advisor on Iraq policy to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign, as you can see at

http://admissions.geneseo.edu/cgi-bin/nrap?Roemer98.html

 

Her September 13, 2001 article in the Wall Street Journal on the recent attack is at

http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=95001120

 

In a live interview on Los Angeles radio station KPFK, broadcast around noon today, PST, she stated that Clinton lied about more than sex; he lied about national security.

 

I wish somebody would ask her about whether she thinks the Clinton administration covered up Iraqi involvement in the murder of those aboard TWA 800 and ordered the military not to pursue the attackers.

 

 

From Woodward's book, The Choice - p 65:

 

 

...Clinton held a secret strategy session in the White House with Hillary, Gore, Panetta, Ickes and several cabinet secretaries. clinton asked everybody to keep the discussion private. He said he wanted to recapture winning themes of his 1992 victory, with emphasis on the middle class and traditional party groups such as labor. But it was a mushy meeting, and because some details soon leaked to the media no more such large sessions were held.

 

 

As Clinton continured his search, he lamented that he could not see a big, clear task before him. Part of him yearned for an obvious call to action or even a crisis. He was looking for that extraordinary challenge which he could define and then rally people to the cause. He wanted to find that galvanizing moment.

 

 

"I would have preferred being president during World War II" he said one night in January 1995. "I'm a person out of my time."

 

Washington -- Lucky though he was, Bill Clinton never had his shot at greatness...he never got the opportunity George W. Bush was given this Tuesday: the historic chance to lead.

Chris Matthews: Bush's war

Chris Matthews: Clinton never had shot at greatness/never got opportunity Bush was given Tuesday

   

Bush: "I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt."

Washington and the liberal media may be getting the message: George Bush is for real and he's no Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to war.

Even Newsweek's Howard Fineman, a liberal Bush-basher, has had to do a double take this week.

Writing in his column of an Oval office meeting with four U.S. Senators -- including Hillary Rodham -- Fineman described Bush "relaxed and in control."

Fineman, drawing a comparison with Winston Churchill's defiance during World War II, quoted the president as telling the Senators: "When I take action," he said, "I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."

No doubt, Hillary must have shuddered when she heard that, a clear hit on her husband's eight years of appeasement with terrorists and their backers.

Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[ASIDE: Have you noticed that as of the morning of 9-11-01, hillary clinton's "best memory" informs her--and she is quick to inform us -- that she was not "co-president" after all?]

clinton hunt-and-peck  

 

Q ERTY1

Q ERTY2

Q ERTY3

 

 

 

Chris Matthews: Clinton never had shot at greatness/never got opportunity Bush was given Tuesday

 

Clinton's Failure to Confront Iraq

 

Bush: "I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt."

 

HILLARY "Palestinian State" CLINTON: TERRORIST AIDER AND ABETTOR MAKES STATEMENT ON ATTACK

 

"It's a legitimate end-use," says a Clinton administration official, who asked not to be identified. "Weather forecasting in the United States uses very intensive computing."

'Precedent Shattering': Administration OKs Supercomputer Sale to China

ABCNEWS.com, Published: 12/02/99, Author: David Ruppe

 

The Manchurian Candidate?

Or Being There?

 

by Mia T

 

 

The Republicans' latest talking point is that the breach of national security enabled by clinton-gore must be simple incompetence, that the concept that anyone in government would commit treason is too outrageous even to contemplate.

 

If the Republicans believe what they are saying, then they are morons.

If they don't believe what they are saying, then they are traitors.

 

Outrageousness is an essential element of clinton-gore corruption. The clinton (and gore) crimes -- perjury, obstruction of justice, abuse of power, rape, murder -- and now treason -- are so outrageous that they allow clinton hacks to reasonably brand all clinton accusers clinton-hating neo-Nazi crazies.

 

Yet privately few clintonites would deny that bill clinton facilitated China espionage. Their only question: "Why?"

 

Some call clinton a quisling, a Manchurian Candidate, bought off in Little Rock by Riady and company decades ago (and much too cheaply, according to his Chinese benefactors), trading our national security for his political power. This argument is persuasive but incomplete; clinton, a certifiable megalomaniac, is driven ultimately by his solipsistic, messianic world view and by that which ultimately quashes all else -- his toxic legacy.

 

William J. Broad suggests (Spying Isn't the Only Way to Learn About Nukes, The New York Times, May 30, 1999) that clinton had another reason to empower China and disembowel America. Broad argues that clinton sought to disseminate our atomic secrets proactively in order to implement his counterintuitive, postmodern, quite inane epistemological theory, namely, that, contrary to currently held dogma, knowledge is not power after all -- that, indeed, quite the contrary is the case.

 

Broad writes in part:

 

Since 1993, officials say, the Energy Department's "openness initiative"

has released at least 178 categories of atom secrets. By contrast, the

1980s saw two such actions. The unveilings have included no details of

specific weapons, like the W-88, a compact design Chinese spies are

suspected of having stolen from the weapons lab at Los Alamos, N.M. But

they include a slew of general secrets.

 

Its overview of the disclosures, "Restricted Data Declassification

Decisions," dated January 1999 and more than 140 pages long, lists such

things as how atom bombs can be boosted in power, key steps in making

hydrogen bombs, the minimum amount (8.8 pounds) of plutonium or uranium

fuel needed for an atom bomb and the maximum time it takes an exploding

atomic bomb to ignite an H-bomb's hydrogen fuel (100 millionths of a

second).

 

No grade-B physicist from any university could figure this stuff. It

took decades of experience gained at a cost of more than $400 billion.

 

The release of the secrets started as a high-stakes bet that openness

would lessen, not increase, the world's vulnerability to nuclear arms

and war. John Holum, who heads arms control at the State Department,

told Congress last year that the test ban "essentially eliminates" the

possibility of a renewed international race to develop new kinds of

nuclear arms.

 

And the devaluing of nuclear secrets, highlighted by the rush of atomic

declassifications, was seen as a prerequisite to the ban's achievement.

The symbolism alone was potent, officials say. Openness let them

advertise a dramatic new state of affairs where hidden actions were to

be kept to a minimum, replacing decades of secrecy and paranoia.

 

"The United States must stand as leader," O'Leary told a packed news

conference in December 1993 upon starting the process. "We are

declassifying the largest amount of information in the history of the

department."

 

Critics, however, say the former secrets are extremely valuable to

foreign powers intent on making nuclear headway. Gaffney, the former

Reagan official, disparaged the giveaway as "dangling goodies in front

of people to get them to sign up into our arms-control agenda."

 

Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense

Council in Washington, a private group that has criticized the openness,

said the declassifications had swept away so many secrets that the

combination had laid bare the central mysteries.

 

"In terms of the phenomenology of nuclear weapons," Cochran said, "the

cat is out of the bag."

 

Even before the China scandal broke, experts outside the administration

faulted the openness as promoting the bomb's spread. Last year, a

bipartisan commission of nine military specialists led by former Defense

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the "extensive declassification" of

secrets had inadvertently aided the global spread of deadly weapons.

["inadvertently" ???!!!!]  

 

The ultimate brake on nuclear advances was to be the Comprehensive Test

Ban Treaty, which clinton began to push for as soon as he took office in

1993, hailing it as the hardest-fought, longest-sought prize in the

history of arms control.

 

Broad would have us believe we are watching "Being There" and not "The Manchurian Candidate." His argument is superficially appealing as most reasonable people would conclude that it requires the simplemindedness of a Chauncy Gardener (in "Being There") to reason that instructing China and a motley assortment of terrorist nations on how to beef up their atom bombs and how not to omit the "key steps" when building hydrogen bombs would somehow blunt and not stimulate their appetites for bigger and better bombs and a higher position in the power food chain...(or, alternatively, to fail to understand that the underlying premise of MAD (mutually assured destruction) is the absense of madness.)

 

But it is Broad's failure to fully connect the dots -- clinton 's wholesale release of atomic secrets, decades of Chinese money sluicing into clinton 's campaigns, clinton 's pushing of the test ban treaty, clinton 's concomitant sale of supercomputers, and clinton 's noxious legacy -- that blows his argument to smithereens and reduces his piece to just another desensitizing clinton apologia by The New York Times.

 

But even if clinton is a thoroughgoing (albeit postmodern) fool, China-gate is still treason. The strict liability Gump-ism, "Treason is as treason does"applies.

 

(The idea that an individual can be convicted of the crime of treason only if there is treasonous intent or mens rea runs contrary to the concept of strict liability crimes. That doctrine (Park v United States, (1974) 421 US 658,668) established the principle of 'strict liability' or 'liability without fault' in certain criminal cases, usually involving crimes which endanger the public welfare.)

 

Calling his position on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty "an historic milestone" (if he must say so himself), clinton believed that if he could get China to sign it, he would go down in history as the savior of mankind. This was 11 August 1995.

 

According to James Risen and Jeff Gerth of The New York Times, "the legacy codes and the warhead data that goes with them" [-- apparently stolen from the Los Alamos weapons lab by scientist, Wen Ho Lee aided and abetted by bill clinton , hillary clinton , the late Ron Brown, Sandy Berger, Hazel O'Leary, Janet Reno, Eric Holder and others in the clinton administration (not to mention congressional clinton accomplices Glenn, Daschle, Bumpers, Harkin, Boxer, Feinstein, Lantos, Levin. Lautenberg, Torricelli et al.) --] "could be particularly valuable for a country, like China, that has signed onto the nuclear test ban treaty and relies solely on computer simulations to upgrade and maintain its nuclear arsenal [especially when combined with the supercomputers that clinton sold to China to help them finish the job]. The legacy codes are now used to maintain the American nuclear arsenal through computer simulation.

 

Most of Lee's transfers occurred in 1994 and 1995, just before China signed the test ban treaty in 1996, according to American officials."

 

Few who have observed clinton would argue against the proposition that this legacy-obsessed megalomaniac would trade our legacy codes for a rehabilitated legacy in a Monica minute and to hell with "the children."

 

 

[independentmind]

It's fine with me to examine Clinton's complicity in wrecking our national security. Let's not fool ourselves about the complicity of Republicans,though, particularly when they controlled both houses of Congress. The last time I checked, Congress still had oversight responsibilities.

[Mark]

So, Billy Klinton was NOT your favorite President?(/humor)

Good job, Mia

[OldFriend]

Mia, your posts are so welcome at this time. Thank you

[Coyote]

You really have THAT guys number don't you?

Looking backward, you were not alone, especially here at FR. We really believed that the damage done would turn out to be monumental. Remember ***** THIS ***** piece? It postulated all or nothing with Clinton. In retrospect, it really DID hit the nail on the head.

Now it looks like we're in for years of deep deadly water while we struggle to correct the influence of the Clintons, and the excesses of the spiteful crypto-Marxist left that not only did so much to support and appologize for WJC, but to undermine the very foundation that not only all of us stand on, but also saw off the the VERY tree limb the America-Hating liberal appologists hung their own hats. Looks like a few are waking up to the fact.

[parsifal]

Cool graphics! Love the Magritte!!!! How about doing up a Delvaux in one of these. Fish! parsy.

[Octar]

Nice. Thanks Mia.

[independentmind]

the president had sex and lied about it to keep it secret.

Let's not forget all of the details. He flat out lied to the American public and he,an officer of the court, lied under oath.

Whether Monicagate should have been handled differently is open to debate; but it certainly doesn't have an exonerating effect on President Clinton.

[DreamWeaver]

Bump

For truth !

[colorado tanker]

Nice post. It speaks volumes that the liberal establishment types even ask the question if it's Billy Jeff's fault. And Billy thought he would be remembered just for avoiding impeachment. He got his wish - a legacy!

[Coyote]

Some excerpts from a piece written just after Clinton was acquited by the Senate, and first published here at FR....

....But what's worse is that only a remnant recognizes that when we wake up from this long drunk on the collectivist gin of social democracy, we're going to find ourselves in bed with a very bad hangover. We're going to find ourselves with one monumental headache, and hopelessly married to one of the most blood-thirsty, ruthless demons ever to rise from Satan's pit....

[snip]

So I just can't help myself on this one. And my comments go directly to every jerk from Hollywood to Manhattan, from London to Brussels, who insists on shoving the Fascist demon of totalitarian collectivism onto our sons and daughters. To every puffed up power broker who has insisted that he is superior to everyone else, and thereby fit to royally rule his own puppet state. To those that insist that the only good monopoly is a state monopoly, especially if it is controlled by them.

[snip]

And of course everybody, but everybody who's stood up against this executive has been subject to the stealth political weapon of the age: the lawsuit. From Matt Drudge at Drudgereport.com to Jim Robinson at FreeRepublic.com.

[snip]

Meanwhile, Slick's gone skating. And we're all going with him, whether we like it or not. We're all going skating on some of the most dangerously thin political ice since the Civil War. And to all you on the left, from Hollywood to Manhattan, now that you've formally unleashed the hounds of the totalitarian collective, I hope you're satisfied with the current darkness. To you who have insisted on freely fornicating with this syphilitic harlot, this queen of the lie, you who are absolutely convinced that your hypocrisy will protect you, that no accident will ever happen to you.

Well, what can we say? Except...sleep well!

That was from ***** ANOTHER ***** one written by someone apparently cursed with a clear nightmare vision of at least the end result on the Clinton years. He only got part of it right though. Because what we ended up with was not just a serial dictatorship of the totalitarian impulse, but serial terror as well. Still, the midnight vision this guy had was so vivid, and in retrospect, so prophetic, few could remain sane. And as I understand it, the author went completely mad shortly after this piece and hasn't been heard from since. Let's just hope that the rest of his vision never transpires.

[Askel5]

I loved the piece (then and now).

But it bothers me that the left ALSO appears willing to conceded Clinton's solely responsible. I don't think so. It was Republicans who failed to remove him and Republicans who actually were responsible for some of his greatest successes: PNTR for China, passage of the Anti-Terrorism and Transportation omnibus packages and the Schumer Amendment, funding for the NIH's ESCR and Title X abortion monies, to name a few.

(Don't even get me started on the way Bush and Dole sent a message during impeachment advising against actual removal of the Mad Bomber of Sudan or Danforth wiped his bloody Waco blade clean under cover of "election crisis" on November 8th).

Particularly where "Security" and terror are concerned, The Message They're Sending is Essentially the Same Thing.

[Coyote]

It was Republicans who failed to remove him....

You're right. But the Republicans haven't been such since at least the early 1950's, and more realistically, since the early 1920's. The poison has crossed party lines, as you well know. Still, the Republican side has probably a slight percentage on the Democrats in favor of Constitutional liberty. It's residual, and only slight.

And as far as his removal, remember that the Clinton's were absolute masters of the craft of blackmail. They hired Lensner's PR firm to steal 1000 FBI files, which they had for a year and "never looked at". At least they promised they never peeked. I'm sure that there were Republican files in that 1000 that belonged to certain members that voted for his acquital. It's impossible to say how much the black mail influenced the vote, Vs the dilution of the Republican ideals over the years. Probably both.

[wingnuts'nbolts]

The President had sex and lied about it to keep it secret

HOW can you keep chanting the same old mantra? If that's all he's done maybe he'd get cut a break, but that's only the beginning! He is a Liar (underoath) he intimidated witnesses, he has a long list of suicidal friends (who are not longer with us), he accepted money from China for our secrets, he played footsie with Arafat, taking money from the local Muslim hoodlums, raped, plundered and prevaricated his way through an 8 yr. term in office, rented out the Lincoln Bedroom like it was Hotel 6, Raised soft money from the Oval office, stole WH treasures, snorted coke (couldn't figure out how to inhale a roach), corrupted everybody he came in contact with. You are a real idiot."None so blind as those who do not want to see".

Now I see that Atty Goebels,ops, I mean Mr. Kendall is going to defend him in front of SCOTUS. I can't wait. Maybe this time we'll get everybody in Court to tell their facts, Monica, Linda, Wiley, Broderick, et.,al., and maybe some of the evidence emassed against him for the Senate will find it's way to SCOTUS. Like Italy's dictator, upside down from a balcony, side by side would work for me.

[colorado tanker]

Interesting piece. For the umpteenth time, we see again it wasn't "just about sex." It's not possible to "compartmentalize" and be a President who lies under oath and abuses power only when it comes to sex, but be morally courageous as to other issues. In fact the opposite is true - a willingness to do the wrong things about small issues betrays a willingness to do the wrong thing when more is at stake. And I agree Republicans, particlarly Senate Republicans, are not blameless here. Who can blame the terrorists for thinking we wouldn't hold them accountable if we wouldn't even hold our own President accountable, particularly when America did little after Mogadishu, El Khobar, WTCI, the Embassy bombings and the Cole?

[cdw19390]

You are right on the Republicans in power are cowards. Except for a few brave souls in the house. Trent Lott is a blown dry (or is blowed dry) gold plated phoney.

[Askel5]

Still, the Republican side has probably a slight percentage on the Democrats in favor of Constitutional liberty. It's residual, and only slight.

Oh, I don't know, Coyote.

At the risk of being a one-trick pony, I can't help but hearken to the Right to Life and I do this for two reasons:

1. The Right to Life is the FUNDAMENTAL right from which all other rights issue and is therefore the ultimate either/or in divining a person's true stand on human justice and liberty;

2. Abortion has been used LIKE NO OTHER ISSUE to explain away -- time and time and time again -- the compromises, losses, defeats and "no win situations" of our so-called "pro-life" politicians whose rallying cry on this issue consistently ends up: "I'm personally opposed, BUT .."

The facts are incontravertible.

We are supposed to believe that the Democrats (whose constituents are so lame and so stupid as to DEMAND the right to off their own) have run circles around us using the compelling logic that "it's better to be dead than unwanted."

The ugly truth, however, is that it is the GOP who not only recognizes but mandates that "Abortion is VITAL to the solution" of population control at home and abroad. This is very clearly set forth in Kissinger's NSSM-200 (signed by him for Nixon and signed by Scowcroft -- as NSDM-314 -- for Ford).

As a Bloodhound and "no holds barred" defender of human life, I find the conclusions to be drawn therefrom horrifying and irrefutable.

It was George H. Bush who most clearly exposed (in debate and in discussion) Title X and the "War on Poverty" for the War on the Poor it truly was.

It is the GOP who confected, waged and perpetuated our War on Drugs and -- having outfitted the likes of Clinton with the federal police force necessary to mow down Davidians -- not only looked the other way but wiped his hands clean.

It is the GOP again at the helm now that we are poised to launch a third war on the American people, their civil liberties and personal freedoms under the guise of the "War on Terrorism" our AG of "Justice" Ashcroft wishes to model on the oh-so-successful Drug War.

Drug War Redux - The attorney general's misguided model for the War Against Terrorism

Ashcroft, Seeking Broad Powers, Says Congress Must Act Quickly

Truly, it was the Blood Trail and the human life digging that finally brought the Escher drawing into focus for me. GOP's top dog. The Dems -- including Howdy Doody Clinton -- are just a clown car used to distract the crowds from whatever the ringmaster's readying centerstage.

[sweetliberty]

Could it be that this worm has finally started to turn. I hate to say it in these troubled times, but this just makes me giddy. What goes around comes. How's it feel bubba boy? Great post.

[Coyote]

Truly, it was the Blood Trail and the human life digging that finally brought the Escher drawing into focus for me. GOP's top dog. The Dems -- including Howdy Doody Clinton -- are just a clown car used to distract the crowds from whatever the ringmaster's readying centerstage.

Well, I have to admit, your notion really at least appears to have credibility. So you think that the elite honchos use the GOP to run the show, allowing Dems to get elected (in the case of Clinton, actually going out of their way through Ross Perot) in order to weaken and distract us while they prepare for the next wave to thrust us into their long term plans? You may be right. Actually, it makes sense. There's no question in my mind that they control both parties. Really disheartening. Oh well, as I said, it's enough to drive a person mad. I think that writer ACE once postulated that they were using Clinton to set up Cold War II. Looks liked it turned hot with the perfect excuse. You probably remember that quote by D. Rockefeller, something along the lines (paraphrasing), "The only thing left to take America into the NWO is one more crisis." Something like that. At any rate, you probably know what that means, and the implications are just too much for me to handle right now.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Blow-dried.

[AKA Elena]

Again, a wonderfully talented "ensemble" to digest, Mia T!

[Aedammair]

You're right of course but in defense of the indefensible; look how impossible it was to get the electorate excited over articles of impeachment: perjury, subornation of pejury, and abuse of power? Trying to convince them that Clinton was a foreign policy catastrophe waiting to happen, and then linking this fact to amorphous characters possibly committing acts of terrorism on our turf. I ask you, what chance did they possibly stand? Americans' little grey cells are activated only by pictures, I'm afraid.

[boltfromblue]

Clearly clinton had no idea how to or inclination to lead, which was one reason why he was always taking polls.

Interesting that in Woodward's book, The Choice, clinton fantasizes about having a big issue to define him, such as a war, "I would have preferred being president during World War II" he said one night in January 1995. "I'm a person out of my time." How ghastly to contemplate THAT scenario. ! Yet he is blind to what he should have done about the repeated acts of terrorism against us.

And we have the absurd Chris Matthews bemoaning that clinton did not have the chance he actually HAD. Note: I only cap real people.

[StealthChild]

It's fine with me to examine Clinton's complicity in wrecking our national security. Let's not fool ourselves about the complicity of Republicans,though, particularly when they controlled both houses of Congress.

Slick was in on this too. It's called blackmail. Uncle Wee-Wee's first move as president was to silence the Republicans by stealing any FBI files he could find on them. As for the Republicans...Wonderful, ain't it, that we have such castrated paragons of virtue in Congress, that the American people go unprotected? Your tax dollars at work...

We need a thorough housecleaning in Washington. For a start, I recommend a government based upon a separation of money and state. Pull the money plug...i.e. end taxation, and you won't find any pigs at the trough because there won't be one.

[StealthChild]

As Clinton continured his search, he lamented that he could not see a big, clear task before him. Part of him yearned for an obvious call to action or even a crisis. He was looking for that extraordinary challenge which he could define and then rally people to the cause. He wanted to find that galvanizing moment.

He WAS the crisis.

[river rat]

Atta Girl!
It's been awhile since you fired upon the bastard.
Semper Fi

[Askel5]

Yeah ... it is enough to drive one to despair but, given the fact there are folks like Ace about, I remain hopeful.

Actually, I do tend to think the "Tom Landry" types call the plays wherein Clintonesque quarterbacks run the ball in the muck for them. I have yet to find anything else that makes Sense.

Part of my problem stems from a Frontline episode, actually, wherein I realized for the first time that -- back in the late sixties -- a little "gathering of eagles" in some backwater polysci professor's home in Arkansas consisted of the next two Democratic presidents and a handful of Bob Dole type Also-Rans.

It struck me as sorta odd that such tight groups (both of "our guys" already IN the White House, the CIA, the hallowed halls of power and "Their Guys") wouldn't have some passing familiarity with each other somehow ... particularly given the Intelligence background of and Maotais among "our guys".

Heard on the C Street

[FReethesheeples]

Interesting compliation.

Kudos.

However, Andrew Sullivan (about the first article, above) is not himself from the political left.

BTW, "Pro-Terrorist ersatz Pacifist Krypto-Nazi Camel Butt Traitors Demand America Surrender to Terrorists."

[FlyVet]

I think that writer ACE once postulated that they were using Clinton to set up Cold War II.

I've had that same scary thought running through my mind for years. In the past decade, we've literally bent over backwards to turn China into a military/technological powerhouse. And, for some reason, I just don't think China has our best interests at heart. They have a ways to go, of course. They don't even have a navy, yet. At the same time, we kowtow to them on the Taiwan issue, the free Chinese. It just ain't right...

[Mia T]

I agree. Always found Andrew to be a not easily classifiable, intellectually honest political admixture. He does, however, cite disaffected clintonoids in his piece...

[Mia T]

 

 

 

Well, with the help of the 100 corrupt and cowardly cullions, clinton

walked. The senators' justification for their acquittal votes requires

the suspension of rational thought (and, in the curious case of Arlen

Specter, national jurisdiction).

--Musings: Senatorial Courtesy Perverted, Mia T

 

THE OTHER NIXON

by Mia T

 

 

Hypocrisy abounds in this Age of clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case of Jefferson, posthumously misappropriated.

 

Shameless pharisees in stark relief crowd the Capitol frieze:

 

Baucus, Biden, Bingaman, Breaux, Bryan, Byrd, Cohen, Conrad, Daschle, Dodd, Gore, Graham, Harkin, Hollings, Inouye, Kennedy, Kerrey, Kerry, Kohl, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Mikulski, Moynihan, Reid, Robb, Rockefeller, Sarbanes, Schumer.

 

These are the 28 sitting Democratic senators, the current Vice President and Secretary of Defense -- clinton defenders all -- who, in 1989, voted to oust U.S. District Judge Walter Nixon for making "false or misleading statements to a grand jury."

 

In 1989 each and every one of these men insisted that perjury was an impeachable offense.

(What a difference a decade and a decadent Democrat make.)

 

Senator Herb Kohl (November 7, 1989):

"But Judge Nixon took an oath to tell the truth and the whole truth. As a grand jury witness, it was not for him to decide what would be material. That was for the grand jury to decide. Of all people, Federal Judge Walter Nixon certainly knew this.

 

"So I am going to vote 'guilty' on articles one and two. Judge Nixon lied to the grand jury. He misled the grand jury. These acts are indisputably criminal and warrant impeachment."

 

 

Senator Tom Daschle (November 3, 1989):

"This morning we impeached a judge from Mississippi for failing to tell the truth. Those decisions are always very difficult and certainly, in this case, it came after a great deal of concern and thoughtful analysis of the facts."

 

 

Congressman Charles Schumer (May 10, 1989):  

"Perjury, of course, is a very difficult, difficult thing to decide; but as we looked and examined all of the records and in fact found many things that were not in the record it became very clear to us that this impeachment was meritorious."

 

 

Senator Carl Levin (November 3, 1989):

"The record amply supports the finding in the criminal trial that Judge Nixon's statements to the grand jury were false and misleading and constituted perjury. Those are the statements cited in articles I and II, and it is on those articles that I vote to convict Judge Nixon and remove him from office."

 

* * * * *

 

"The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself," observed the philosopher Hannah Arendt. "What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."

 

If hypocrisy is the vice of vices, then perjury is the crime of crimes, for

perjury provides the necessary cover for all other crimes.

 

David Lowenthal, professor emeritus of political science at Boston College makes the novel and compelling argument that perjury is "bribery consummate, using false words instead of money or other things of value to pervert the course of justice" and, thus, perjury is a constitutionally enumerated high crime.

 

The Democrats' defense of clinton's perjury -- and their own hypocrisy -- is

three-pronged.

 

ONE:

clinton's perjuries were "just about sex" and therefore "do not rise to the level of an impeachable offense."

 

This argument is spurious. The courts make no distinction between perjuries. Perjury is perjury. Perjury attacks the very essence of democracy. Perjury is bribery consummate.

 

Moreover, (the clinton spinners notwithstanding), clinton's perjury was not "just about sex." clinton's perjury was about clinton denying a citizen justice by lying in a civil rights-sexual harassment case about his sexual history with subordinates.

 

TWO:

Presidents and judges are held to different standards under the Constitution.

 

Because the Constitution stipulates that federal judges, who are appointed for life, "shall hold their offices during good behavior,'' and because there is no similar language concerning the popularly elected, term-limited president, it must have been perfectly agreeable to the Framers, so the (implicit) argument goes, to have a perjurious, justice-obstructing reprobate as president.

 

clinton's defenders ignore Federalist No. 57, and Hillary Rodham's constitutional treatise on impeachable acts -- written in 1974 when she wanted to impeach a president; both mention "bad conduct" as grounds for impeachment.

 

"Impeachment," wrote Rodham, "did not have to be for criminal offenses -- but only for a 'course of conduct' that suggested an abuse of power or a disregard for the office of the President of the United States...A person's 'course of conduct' while not particularly criminal could be of such a nature that it destroys trust, discourages allegiance, and demands action by the Congress...The office of the President is such that it calls for a higher level of conduct than the average citizen in the United States."

 

Hamilton (or Madison) discussed the importance of wisdom and virtue in Federalist 57. "The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

 

(Contrast this with clinton, who recklessly, reflexively and feloniously subordinates the common good to his personal appetites.)

 

Because the Framers did not anticipate the demagogic efficiency of the electronic bully pulpit, they ruled out the possibility of an MTV mis-leader (and impeachment-thwarter!) like clinton. In Federalist No. 64, John Jay said: "There is reason to presume" the president would fall only to those "who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue." He

imagined that the electorate would not "be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle."

 

(If the clinton debacle teaches us anything, it is this: If we are to retain our democracy in this age of the electronic demagogue, we must recalibrate the constitutional balance of power.)

 

THREE:

The president can be prosecuted for his alleged felonies after he leaves office.

(Nota bene ROBERT RAY.)

 

This clinton-created censure contrivance -- borne out of what I have come to call the "Lieberman Paradigm" (clinton is an unfit president; therefore clinton must remain president) -- is nothing less than a postmodern deconstruction in which the Oval Office would serve for two years as a holding cell for the perjurer-obstructor.

 

Such indecorous, dual-purpose architectonics not only threatens the delicate

constitutional framework -- it disturbs the cultural aesthetic. The senators must, therefore, roundly reject this elliptic scheme.

In this postmodern Age of clinton, we may, from time to time, selectively stomach corruption. But we must never abide ugliness. Never.

 

 

 

Schippers, who was hired by House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) as chief investigative counsel for the impeachment, labels the process one of "lies, cowardice, hypocrisy, cynicism, amorality, butt-covering."

Schippers Book May Rock Senate

...The House Managers were real heroes. Trent Lott stabbed them in the back. They were not allowed to argue their case or to present any witnesses. Regardless of the final vote, one hundred (100) senators agreed from the start to go along with the bogus rules dreamed up by Lott and Daschle. That ended any possibility of a fair trial based on the evidence. They all broke their oaths of office and their trial oaths by doing this.

--Cicero

Historians will record that Republicans could not muster the necessary sixty-seven vote Senate majority to convict the President at trial.

 

Those same historians should note, if only in a footnote, that not a single senator made the trip to the Ford Building to review documentation of Clinton's "nauseating", "alarming" and "horrific" sexual misconduct; evidence that ultimately made the difference in the impeachment vote.

America's Impeachment Secret

Musings:

Senatorial Courtesy Perverted

by Mia T

 

Well, with the help of the 100 corrupt and cowardly cullions, clinton

walked. The senators' justification for their acquittal votes requires

the suspension of rational thought (and, in the curious case of Arlen

Specter, national jurisdiction).

 

I don't think it's over, though.

 

There are cloakroom whispers of incipient (spiked) charges and imminent

(spike heel) shoe-droppings.

 

And from Drudge:

Broaddrick is talking to WSJ's Dorothy Rabinowitz in Arkansas while 60

MINUTES is "circling" the clinton rape covered wagon.

 

Of course, a clenched-jawed clinton reeks revenge. I suppose the best

take is that, at the very least, his utter degeneracy has been exposed,

no one of any import will ever believe him again, and he is effectively

muzzled and hog-tied for the rest of his tenure.

 

All this while hillary indecorously impales herself on the horns of a

dilemma. (I am finding the farm animal metaphor for this pair especially

cathartic today.) hillary's megalomania pushes her toward a Senate run

in which her opposion will doubtless dredge up her criminality. What to

do?

 

Clinton's acquittal is reducible, I think, to the fact that the

irrational fear of the "right" whipped up by clinton spinners (watch

them spin), has trumped the very rational fear of the pseudo-leftist

psychopath.

 

A final thought (for now):

To spite us all, Arthur Schlesinger will live

to 120 just so he can write the definitive clinton hagiography.

 

 

One more...

Hillary has found that the best refuge for a co-scoundrel is the Senate--where they take very seriously the concept of courtesy.--

--Hillary's Solo Act - Vanity Fair

 

 

 

[Gail Wynand]

For those who would blame 'republicans' for any of the current agony in America, imagine if you will that either Geo. Bush Sr., in 1992, or Sen. Dole, in 1996, had not been cast as aloof and dottering by the media, had not had their support diluted by the machinations of H. Ross Perot, and had won their elections. How likely is it, if they had won, that we would be anywhere near our present state of national distress? The fault, the cause, the responsibility lie squarely with the Commander in chief whose policies and actions were not merely 'negligent', but were recklessly, knowingly and deceitfully contemptuous of the concept of national security. What is outrageous about Clinton, is that his behavior in this regard was obviously and patently predictable before he was elected. He not only had no competence in matters of national security as well as seething disdain for matters military, his shameless and more than evident huckstering left no doubt he had neither the stomach nor the character to make the tough choices required in a serious administration of matters of national security. If there is a second rank, beyond Clinton, to carry fault in our present torment, we should look not at the republican party which to survive has to swim in the sea of public opinion, but to the media, the celebrity elite, and the liberal 'intellectual' effete, all of whom knowingly draped Clinton the candidate, and Clinton the president, in a protective cloak of unreal and delusory admiration while deliriously reveling in their petty arrogance and slander of Bush Sr, of Dole (both combat veterans with long and proven records of public service and national devotion).

[The Raven]

The DEMS and LIBS have a new stategy. They are saying "See we need Big Government after all".

What horse manure. The DEMS - when given the choice of guns or butter.....choose butter 100% of the time.

Conservatives have long preached the main duty of government is protection of the nation. All else is secondary.

[Mia T]

I suspect that, to spite us all,

Arthur Schlesinger will probably live to 120

just so he can write

the definitive clinton hagiography.

--------Mia T, Musings: Senatorial Courtesy Perverted

 

 

What harm can clinton do? He has less than two years left.

--Senator Dale Bumpers

 

A C-SPAN survey of 58 U.S. historians has concluded that Bill Clinton is the president with the lowest 'moral authority' -- beating out Richard Nixon for last place, Monday's NEW YORK TIMES is set report.

----C-SPAN PRESIDENTS POLL: CLINTON JUDGED LOWEST IN MORALS

 

I think history will view this much differently.

-----the First Psychopath, himself

 

 

...[bill clinton], a man who will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents.

-----Al Gore at clinton's post-impeachment rally

 

clinton's ranking will likely get worse over time. Economic issues fade in importance over time. Moral issues presist and grow. (paraphrase)

------Douglas Brinkley, history professor,

on Washington Journal discussing C-SPAN poll

 

 

It is not the strength but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.

-----Nietzsche 

History Lesson

by Mia T

 

Someone--was it Maupassant?--

once called history "that excitable and lying old lady."

The same can be said of historians.

 

Surely it can be said of Doris Kearns Goodwin,

the archetypical pharisaical historian,

not-so-latently clintonoid,

Lieberman-Paradigmatic

(i.e., clinton is an unfit president;

therefore clinton must remain president),

intellectually dishonest,

(habitually doing what the Arthur Schlesingers of this world do:

making history into the proof of their theories).

 

The Forbids 400's argument is shamelessly spurious.

They get all unhinged over the impeachment of clinton,

claiming that it will

"leave the presidency permanently disfigured and diminished,

at the mercy as never before of the caprices of any Congress."

 

Yet they dismiss the real and present--and future!!--danger

to the presidency and the country

of not impeaching and removing

this admittedly unfit, (Goodwin)

"documentably dysfunctional," (NYT)

presidency-diminishing, (Goodwin)

power-abusing,

psychopathic thug.

 

Doris Kearns Goodwin and those 400 other

hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton,

retrograde-obsessing historiographers

are a supercilious, power-hungry,

egomaniacal lot in their own right.

 

For them, clinton validates

what Ogden Nash merely hypothesized:

Any buffoon can make history,

but only a great man can write it.

 

 

[f.Christian]

I want to see the gothics with something about bin laden in there...

oh yeah bill shaking hands with castro---doing his heavy lifting--carrying his water for the camels/revolution!

[Mia T]

 

400 hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton retrograde-obsessing historiographers BUMP  

 

Q ERTY1

Q ERTY2

Q ERTY3

[Mia T]

 

Don't lose

Your head

To gain a minute

You need your head

Your brains are in it.

--an old roadside ad, Pushme-Pullyou

 

 

 

 

[f.Christian]

I did see the PBS documentary---William Jefferson James Madison2 Clinton...

"I was purposely impeached to defend the Constitution---to save the Republic too."

They had his profile(ugh shot)...the one they are going to put on the new dollar bill---in dogpatch...lil abner/daisy mae!

[f.Christian]

bttt

[Brasky]

Youre better than any "journalist" in the media today. And, I love that art.
Wow. You really do have your ducks in row.
I salute and bump you. :-)

[hattend]

BTTT

[aculeus]

Excellent!

[f.Christian]

bttt

[Mia T]

Silence becomes him

Paul Greenberg (back to story)

October 4, 2001

 

It was good to see George W. Bush's predecessor rallying with the rest of America to support the commander-in-chief in these tense times, but we do wish Bill Clinton would avoid discussing issues of national security. Loose lips still sink ships, and they can also down airplanes and destroy tall buildings.

When the former president was asked about a report that he'd authorized an attempt to take out Osama bin Laden after American embassies were destroyed in Kenya and Tanzania back in 1998, Mr. Clinton not only confirmed the report, but couldn't resist the temptation to present his administration's record in the best light.

It's a record he might not want to shine too much light on. Because as president, he mainly only talked against terrorism. ("America will never tolerate terrorism. ... Defeating these organized forces of destruction is one of the most important challenges our country faces.") The talk was never matched by policy -- at least not a determined, focused, consistent policy. To call it a weak policy would be to overstate its strength; it was showy but pitiful.

To quote Paul Bremer, who chaired the National Commission on Terrorism back in the '90s, "The Clinton administration basically had a very episodic approach to fighting terrorism. And then it acted essentially in a feckless fashion, particularly in 1998 when Clinton used words about a long war and his action was to send a couple of cruise missiles to destroy a couple of mud huts in Afghanistan." He also blew up an empty factory in Khartoum. The plant was supposed to be connected with Osama bin Laden, but in the end the Clinton administration didn't even contest the owner's claims when he came for his assets in court.

As The New York Times' Michael Gordon pointed out, there was no risk to American personnel in this kind of long-distance war against terrorism, but there was little risk to the terrorists, either.

"We did what we thought we could," Bill Clinton now tells NBC. "I made it clear that we should take all necessary action to try to apprehend (Osama bin Laden) and get him. We never had another chance where the intelligence was as reliable to justify military action."

Rather than make excuses, a simple No Comment would have sufficed. Indeed, it would have shown an appropriate modesty on the part of a president who, when it comes to terrorism, has much to be modest about. Which becomes clear when one reviews the low points of the Clinton administration's war on terrorism, which wasn't much of one. The Clinton crew dropped the ball from the beginning, when one of its first decisions was to downgrade the State Department's office of counter-terrorism.

The Clinton administration also responded to Saddam Hussein's attempt to assassinate President George Bush with a barrage of cruise missiles. They hit the headquarters of Saddam's intelligence agency -- in the middle of the night. (When it came to bombing terrorists, this commander-in-chief was Hell on empty buildings.)

Barred from running for president again, Bill Clinton seems to be running for ex-president, burnishing his record whenever he can and sometimes just inventing it. He would do better to follow Jimmy Carter's example by simply doing good deeds; Mr. Carter has been so exemplary at it that a lot of us have just about forgotten his failed presidency.

Let it be noted that Congress did pass some strong and needed legislation against terrorist organizations during the '90s, but often enough over the Clinton administration's opposition. Unfortunately, that administration then failed to enforce those laws with anything like consistent rigor. It played up to terrorist regimes like Iran's and made excuses for Yasser Arafat even after the Palestinian leader had unleashed his bomb-throwers. A month after Camp David had collapsed, the Pollyannas in the Clinton White House were still looking for ways to appease the man who had resurrected terrorism as an instrument of policy in the Middle East.

But the most telling action Bill Clinton took against terrorists, or rather for them, was to offer clemency to 16 convicted Puerto Rican bombers, part of the group that had waged a nine-year war in Puerto Rico and on the mainland. Their toll: six killed and 70 wounded in more than 70 bombings. In offering these terrorists clemency, Bill Clinton overruled the recommendations of his FBI director (which he did with some regularity) and various law enforcement officers.

That he chose to confer clemency on this homicidal bunch while his spouse was angling for Puerto Rican votes in New York's Senate race only added to the injury -- and insult.

George W. Bush can also be criticized for the state of the country's defenses against terrorism during his brief months in the Oval Office before September 11, 2001. But he doesn't ask for it by trying to defend his record. Since September 11th, he's had other things to do, and has been doing them rather well. He's been too busy and too focused to make excuses for what went before -- an omission that would become another president just now. Save it for your memoirs, Bill.

 

 

 

©2001 Tribune Media Services

[blackbart1]

Ditto, ditto, ditto...to your #15 post. I sure can't figure out some of these people who just don't want to see the truth!

[backhoe]

Index-

[jws3sticks]

Mia,

The thought of someone 'fingering' BillieBlobSlick is more than I can take following a lovely Sunday supper.

Accordingly, I snapped a shot of my close friend hurling his cookies, just to make everybody else just as sick.

Please no email on the picture. I do limit it's usage to only the 'as needed' basis. Now is such a time. Close your eyeballs, should you not like it.

My identical twin brother, first seen atop the WTC, agrees with everything I type, sort of my human truth syrum.

Slop lecker!