Once a President, always a President. Or, if you prefer, once a celbrity always a celebrity.</p>
<p>As long as Clinton accepts Secret Service protection, and allows himself to be called “Former President Clinton” then he should expect to be quizzed on any subject in the news. If he wasn’t prepared to give a good response, that’s his problem. I would suggest that his aggression would have been put to better use in pursuing terrorists while he was in office. His performance on TV did nothing to increase his esteem in my eyes.</p>
<p>guess Clinton should have given a giggley laugh and ignored the question</p>
<p>Clinton lied about getting BJ…yes he did</p>
<p>Bush, well, what can I say, he didn’t think there would be an insurgency, I would rather a man who denied oral sex, than a guy who is an idiot, who does no reading and has people like Rumsfield leading the battle…</p>
<p>At least Clinton goes ot there unlike Bush who only has “public” meetings where he and his posse control the audience…talk about being a chicken and not wanting to face the tough questions…he just wants to go where people love him…ah, now is that a leaders or a wuss</p>
<p>The ground rules for the interview was that 50% was to be on Clinton’s topic du jour and the other 50% was to be open ended. He came across as a whining little kid who only wants to be told how good he is and can’t stand to deal with reality and blames everyone else as being “mean” to him.</p>
<p>“if KO had a brain, he would be Limbaugh. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t, and he isn’t. You need to have a brain to pull all that bombast off and make it work.”</p>
<p>Driver, Driver, Driver… I think McNabb might disagree with you. </p>
<p>I think you should leave it at their both not the best of what the middle wants to be. When you have to pull out Rush to defend a position? :)</p>
Well, actually, that’s not true. I was impressed with Clinton’s work in raising money for the tsunami and Katrina victims. He really was statesman-like. If he had answered Wallace’s questions with a measured, thoughtful response, I would have thought better of him. He had a chance to show maturity and a greater concern for the safety of this country, and he chose to be belligerant instead.</p>
<p>Not even bad enough to be Dan Rather; Rather at least appeared to believe more in his political opinion then his opinion of himself.</p>
<p>This Trout is, it seems, a bit of a dandy and heartthrob for the middle-aged vixen with a remote in a comfy chair. Still, I agree with HH: I doubt hed be able to take his gaze off himself long enough to know you exist on the other side of the camera or the other side of a table for two. </p>
<p>…sisters gonna have to be doing it for herself: no baby-daddy for you!</p>
<p>Reminds me of Troy McClure of The Simpsons and thats high praise.
He’s his own lampoon.</p>
<p>It really comes down to which morally wrong president do you support? </p>
<p>The questions about the statements made should be the subject of the discussion. It’s become what the morals of the person are. </p>
<p>I keep waiting for some documentation from the WH on what they actually did, rather than hearing Condi respond with little more than “we’ve got spirit…yes we do…we’ve got spirit… how bout you?”</p>
<p>“We did at least as much as the former president did…” Again since alot of you hate the former president for what he did or didn’t do… Is doing as much as the “former” president acceptable? Why? If you think the previous administration did nothing and RC comes out with “we did as much as they did”… isn’t that still nothing? Shouldn’t they have come out with “we did more…” and then show us how they did more? </p>
<p>I would scold my children when confronted over something whenever they “used” this type of arguement. Simply because I expected more from my kids. I would imagine many of you would expect the same from your children. </p>
<p>What do you expect from your President? To be the same as BC? Well you hate BC and what he did/didn’t do. How can you accept the same level from GW? Do you understand my question?</p>
Opie, I don’t agree with you on this, but I like the way you wrote this! Funny!</p>
<p>U.S. interests were attacked at least four times under Bill Clinton: first WTC, Khobar Towers, embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole. We suffered one enormous attack under Bush’s watch (after only 8 months in office) and nothing since. So far, I think GWB at least addressed the threat of terrorism as a military, not legal, matter. That counts for something to me.</p>
<p>To me, the most important thing is to define a problem. You can’t find solutions until you understand the problem. If this is a legal conflict, then we get lawyers. If it’s a war, then we use military and diplomatic resources. </p>
<p>I think it’s always best to negotiate from a position of strength, and that’s where I give GWB credit. He let it be known that you can’t attack this country with impunity. I don’t really blame Clinton for everything – he would have found it difficult to get the country behind this thinking without 9/11. But he should have tried harder.</p>
<p>as for Clinton, he and his staff gave Bush and his staff all kinds of information, which Bush blew off…to ignore what a previous administration gives you is just stupid, and I blame Bush</p>
<p>And remember, Bush didn’t care much about where Bin Laden was AFTER the attack</p>
<p>“We suffered one enormous attack under Bush’s watch (after only 8 months in office)”</p>
<p>But this is what concerns me, the 8 months of inactivity. That’s what was brought in question. Presidential teams change out at a maximum of two terms. There is not a stop/start point, everything is fluid. This is what concerns me. You can’t give the current administration a pass for 8 months to get their feet planted. The world doesn’t wait. The country doesn’t wait. We can’t produce a request to the world and it’s bad people to wait until we’re ready to deal with them. </p>
<p>Condi testimony about a series of notes/suggestions left by the previous admin weren’t acted upon, they were dropped. Bad move. The problems didn’t go away, in fact it could be argued we also gave the terrorists an 8 month pass to get their stuff together. </p>
<p>That is really what we should be asking is what did you folks do during these 8 months? Can you show us? What was left on that “notes” that CR talked about in hearings? Could we see if those “notes” were worth ignoring? Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t? Until the public sees for themselves, we’ll never know. </p>
<p>I would think however, in this political climate, if those notes were garbage they would have been hauled out and disclosed to every pro Bush media source to show what little BC did. That would be logical in this political climate where it is important to paint the other side in as bad a light as possible. However, we don’t see the “notes”, if we reverse roles or timing, would you not wonder with a critical eye, why BC didn’t release the “notes” GW left and what you did in those 8 months prior to the attacks? </p>
<p>I am not “in love” with either party so much that I will divorce logic from a situation. I do not accept the “as much as the other guy” defence either. Show me.</p>
I have to admit, I find this analysis fascinating. I mean - U.S. interests were attacked under Carter, Reagan and Bush I as well: Beirut barracks and embassies bombed, Pan AM flight blown up over Lockerbie, cruise ship Achille Lauro hijacked, and a variety of hijackings and kidnappings. My favorite: Our embassy in Kuwait was bombed by anti-Saddam Hussein “terrorists” in 1983. It’s a complicated world, isn’t it? The World Trade Center bombing was just 5 weeks into Clinton’s first term - does that make it Bush I’s fault?</p>
<p>But now we’ve made it so much more convenient for anyone who’s honked off at America to attack our interests - we have soldiers wandering around Iraq trying to keep the peace and getting blown up for their efforts on a daily basis. And this is an improvement?</p>
<p>I just finished watching this for the second time. Everything Keith Olbermann says is dead on and needed to be said. This is without question the most morally bankrupt administration in our lifetime and that includes Nixon’s. Now all you conservatives and Bush lovers out there can go ahead and ask, “Why do you hate America?” After all, that is the stock response of this administration to any and all discussion of inconvenient truths.</p>
<p>Opie and Kluge, I don’t really give anyone a pass. You’re right – terrorism didn’t just get it’s start in the 90’s. Every President and every appointed intelligence chief prior to 9/11 is accountable. But to me, the Clinton administration had greater knowledge of the risks and still didn’t do enough. The snowball was growing as it rolled downhill, and people didn’t do enough to say, “Look out!” Didn’t Bin Laden actively declare war against the U.S. in 1996 or so?</p>
<p>I don’t know what the Bush WH received regarding terrorism during the transition. But it should have been so important that it should never have been allowed to fall by the wayside. If Clinton’s people were so aware of the risk, why weren’t they shouting from the rooftops? Why would they pass the baton and then sit back and say, “It’s not our problem anymore?” If they felt that the situation was not being given enough attention, couldn’t Richard Clarke, or someone else, leak something to the NY Times?</p>
<p>In fact, I really just blame the terrorists who assaulted this country. We didn’t ask for it, and there is no excuse. </p>
<p>CGM, the attack with impunity I was talking about was 9/11. I never brought up Iraq.</p>
<p>“If Clinton’s people were so aware of the risk, why weren’t they shouting from the rooftops? Why would they pass the baton and then sit back and say, “It’s not our problem anymore?” If they felt that the situation was not being given enough attention, couldn’t Richard Clarke, or someone else, leak something to the NY Times?”</p>
<p>While I would guess it wasn’t from the rooftops I think they did try to get the point accross. It may be the other side was too snobbish to consider the dems pov on the issue and they had to form their own. We as a public won’t know until that list of ideas…jotted down on paper…show up somewhere. If they do, it will either show the previous admin missed the boat completely OR the current admin missed the boat. Since it hasn’t shown up and just about everything else under the sun does, I wonder? </p>
<p>Besides just as the Katrina tapes of the GW briefing that sort of vindicated Brown, GW isn’t really a listener. He’s a decider… </p>
<p>Richard Clarke is the unfortunate gop that got stuck for working with Bill. He was tainted goods, he slept with the otherside after all. Didn’t Regan hire him? Somehow along the way, with this admin, he wasn’t one of them. With this admin you either agree or get along little doggy. While I would be the first to admit it is far easier to govern when everyone agrees with you, it is wiser to encourage dissent in house BEFORE the public sees it. I don’t think that’s happening here and we are underserved by our administration for it.</p>
<p>SJMom - It’s clear that you remember Richard Clarke. Here’s a portion of his testimony to Congress:
A lot has been thrown around about Mr. Clarke - you can’t point out errors by the Bush administration without expecting a bucket of slime forthwith - but there’s no question, from reading the bare documents, that he was trying to get the new administration to focus on al Qaeda from day 1 - and getting nowhere. Not to mention the August, 2001 presidential briefing memo:
The Bush administration has been incredibly skillful at deflecting attention for the bare facts - but do you honestly think you’d be blaming Bush if Clinton had taken office in 2001, instead of the other way around?</p>
<p>As I said, I blame everyone and no one. It really was the terrorists fault. As far as Richard Clarke is concerned, I think he’s one of the few who really saw the danger. But as I tell my kids, trying isn’t good enough. Results count. If a Republican had been in office though the 90’s and done as little as Clinton, I’d hold them equally responsible. For me, it really isn’t about party politics – it’s about people in power who are too busy with their own agendas to do their job. And the number one job of a President is to keep this country safe.</p>
</p>