<p>Blix and El-Baradei did not have any inspections between 1998 and late December 2002. El-Baradei was intimately familiar with the whole aluminum tube situation. He knew that the enrichment experts, both in Europe and at Oak Ridge dismissed the tubes’ suitability for centrifuges. He also knew exactly what the tube were for, because the inspectors had seen 100,000 of them and the engineering drawings of identical tubes in 1993 and knew that the number ordered in 2000 matched the number Saddam’s documentation showed had been used or discarded. The tubes were for building a reverse-engineered Iraqi version of an Italian air to ground helicopter mounted missle that Iraq had been buying for use against the Iranians.</p>
<p>The UN inspectors knew all of this. It was concealed in Bush’s reporting to the public and to Congress in 2002.</p>
<p>Mini, in 1998, nobody believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Except for those people that were persuaded by Clinton? The UN didn’t believe it? Foreign countries didn’t believe it?</p>
<p>Then why the sanctions those prior years? Why the inspections?</p>
<p>Not in person. CSPAN had video of an event about a month ago when all of the Democratic candidates were questioned on stage by G. Stephanopolis. They all gave their little speeches and then stuck around for a group “hug” on stage. As usual, C-SPAN kept its cameras running. It was quite informal and the candidates were all relaxed and chatting…Biden and Clinton and Dodd and Richardson yukking it up. More just milling and chit chatting than anything else…except Edwards who was striking George Washington-crossing-the-Delaware-in-a-rowboat poses and ignoring anyone who approached him.</p>
<p>The chart prepared by Bush for presentation to Congressional leaders and others compared the specs of the aluminum tubes to several uranium enrichment centrifuge designs. None were a close match. The Italian missle tube WAS an exact match in EVERY specification, but was not included on the chart.</p>
<p>Sorry idad, I know you want to be a believer in the worst way but she subsumed her ambition to his naked ambition. If you think otherwise, you don’t know enough about Billy’s pre-Hillary life or you don’t know a ton of wildly ambitious and successful 40 to 60 year old women. </p>
<p>Hint: We don’t ride into town on our husband’s coat-tails. We don’t agree to move to Little Rock at the start of our illustrious careers. We don’t smile pretty while our husbands are shagging every busty young thing. We are not back seat drivers. We are plenty capable of driving ourselves to our own destinations.</p>
<p>I’ll bet your D will be one of us. Do you think she will be parodying Hillary’s life in any way? Not if you did your job right, she won’t.</p>
<p>As for me, I don’t want a daughter-in-law like Hillary. I’ve got a couple of charmers and the best thing that could happen to them would be a couple of smart, headstrong, adventurous women with big hearts who know their own minds and don’t put up with any nonsense. </p>
<p>Hillary had a few bones tossed her way in the last 6 years and she has made the most of those bones. That I will give her.</p>
<p>Implicit in your argument is that becoming a partner in a law firm is somehow beneath her BECAUSE the firm was in Arkansas and that her interest in marrying someone she loved and raising a child was somehow unworthy. I can’t agree with either of those sentiments.</p>
<p>I don’t have much, if any, interest in the Clinton’s personal relationship. I recognize that Bill Clinton was flawed in his marital infidelity, but I certainly don’t hold his wife responsible for his actions. Similarly, I didn’t hold Michael Dukakis responsible for his wife’s shortcomings. I felt sorry for him that his wife put him through that, just like I feel sorry for Sen. Clinton regarding her husband’s actions. But, in both cases, it’s really not my business how they work it out.</p>
<p>Whatever accomodations the Clintons have made is their business, in my book. If Sen. Clinton were to be elected President, it would be fine with me if Bill is appointed to her Senate seat. It would be fine with me if he has a West Wing office as a senior political advisor. It would be fine with me if he puts on an apron and bakes Christmas cookies. It would be fine with me if he lives in Chappaqua and continues doing what he’s been doing. I don’t really care. Those are not issues that will impact my voting decisions in the upcoming primaries or elections either way.</p>
<p>I can’t recall a wife ever impacting my decision to vote for or against a male candidate (except, of course, my wife telling me who to vote for!) So, it would be a bit of double standard to hold Sen. Clinton responsible for her husband. Just the opposite actually. Sen. Clinton’s eight years of experience and hard lessons learned as a major political advisor in her husbands administration is one of the qualifications that make me suspect she would have a better than average shot at being a decent President. Most first term Presidents have a steep learning curve and make significant mistakes due to naivete and inexperience.</p>
<p>Well, idad, Billy himself agreed with me. That’s why he didn’t ask her to leave her job in Cambridge to join him in Fayetteville after they first graduated. She commuted for a few years.</p>
<p>
Bill Clinton ‘My Life’</p>
<p>Do you realize how extraordinary she must have been to be a big fish in Yale Law school in 1970?? You would have burst your buttons if you were her dad. She must have been a high flyer of the first degree. </p>
<p>But in the end, Billy asks her to stay in Fayetteville anyway. Not even Little Rock! Crikey. Even as he writes about getting married to her he says he never thought he would marry. He was ambivalent about marriage from the get go–and he puts that in his autobiography for posterity. What a chump.</p>
<p>I agree with Billy’s assessment though. Her long years in Arkansas as the supportive ‘wife’ did hurt her political career. She was a brilliant, well regarded civil rights activist who was in the thick of the most interesting civil rights episode in America. She gave it up to support him in his run for governor–though she did run a couple of legal clinics at first. I don’t mind that part of the story. Lots of lvoers take a detour. Billy even followed her to California one summer–giving up work on the McGovern campaign. The part I mind is how long she stayed in the back seat. I don’t like how he treated her loyalty and service to his career but I don’t figure that into my analysis of his presidency. As I said, he was very clever about his choices.</p>
<p>I disagree with her profesional choices. Had she put up with him for ‘luv’ but still found her way back to the inner power circles where she started her career, I wouldn’t question her professional credibilty. I don’t care that she stay married to him. I care that she waited so long to step up to the podium to which she was born. I care that she let him make her look stupid over and over and over again. </p>
<p>But hey, I’ve stated my concerns and you’ve stated your preferences. Let’s see who bubbles to the surface after the primaries.</p>
<p>Again. She was elected to the United States Senate from the state of New York at age 53 and is a front-running candidate for President at age 59. She either makes history as the first female President or remains in the Senate in what is essentially a lifetime appointment in New York. She can’t lose.</p>
<p>If her political career has been “hurt”, I’m sure that vast numbers of politicians across the country would gladly feel her pain – so to speak.</p>
<p>If you read David Maraniss’s First in His Class you’ll find that good ol’ Bill didn’t care two figs about Hillary’s career (probably up until her run for the Senate). Hill was Bill’s purposeful choice as a intellectual helpmate and respectable cover for his philandering–which went on even when they were at Yale together, before they were married. This is why I had to kind of laugh at the idea that Hillary was/is in the relationship with Bill for “great sex.” Love and ambition, yes, but not sex. That doesn’t strike me as ever being very important to Hillary–right up until this very day, it seems.</p>
<p>How like Bill to try to rewrite history (a propensity they have in common).</p>
<p>Also, I think women ten years younger than Hillary may have trouble understanding some of her choices compared to women of that era. The majority of Hillary’s Wellesley classmates did not go on to have high-flying careers.</p>
<p>Call me old-fashioned. Not only do I have no interest whatsoever in Pres. and Sen. Clinton’s personal relationship, it is none of my business. I view it as an unwarranted invasion of their privacy. I certainly would not sit in judgement one way or another.</p>
<p>A topic that is fair game is the Nixonian levels the Bush White House went to out Valerie Plame in retaliation for the CIA and her husband reporting no validity to the alleged Niger yellowcake sales. There is a pattern of abuse of power in this White House that we haven’t seen since Watergate. Very disturbing.</p>
<p>It isn’t about Iraq. It’s about Iran. We now have troops on either side, but it would be political suicide in the Middle East to say we are there so we can launch quickly when Iran makes a move. There are many things that the Pres can’t tell us, and sometimes we need to look behind the actions for the reasons.</p>
<p>An invasion of privacy? You’re joking. People have every right to examine our candidates’ personal lives (as we will hear done with Rudy, Newt, etc., ad nauseam, from some of our prominent posters–while suspending judgment, of course). If Hillary is to be seriously in the running for President, I think people would be more than foolish not to take into account the role Bill might play. They are, and always have been, a twofer.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that some of what’s been done by this White House doesn’t surpass Watergate, especially with the recent revelations of illegal wiretaps and illegal use of security letters. The difference seems to be that this administration is better at controlling the message and escaping accountability than the Nixon administration.</p>
<p>I agree with you. In particular, the widespread outing of Valerie Plame, by multiple administration officials to multiple news outlets, suggests strongly that the administration officials knew they were lying to the public about Iraqi WMD programs and were determined to discredit anyone who suggested otherwise.</p>
<p>The outing of Valerie Plame suggests exactly how pressure was applied to the intelligence services to silence analysts who knew that the yellowcake and aluminum tube and mobile weapons labs stories were bogus.</p>
<p>The conclusion is that the administration went to war based on a rationale that they knew to be false. That is really quite disturbing.</p>
<p>On this personal lives issue: Adultery by Bill Clinton, Rudy Guliani, and Newt Gingrich is fair game. But, what is not fair game is to attack Sen. Clinton for her husband’s indiscretions. To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing to suggest impropriety on her part.</p>
<p>Her relationship with her husband after his philandering is none of my business and has no bearing on her professional/public life whatsoever. That’s her personal business.</p>
<p>No one is attacking Hillary for her husband’s indiscretions; however, her choices point to character. According to Maraniss, Bill even cheated on Hillary during their courtship–and she married him anyway. I don’t know any woman–not a single one–who would have put up with from their husbands the humiliation Hillary has endured from Bill (and these are women with far fewer career options and opportunities than Hillary had/has). It is extremely interesting and certainly bears on her character, which in turn bears on her potential role as President–with Bill in tow.</p>
<p>I agree with hereshoping. She should not be commended for staying with a cheating husband. Was she too insecure to go out on her own? She stayed with him to boost her own career. </p>
<p>I do not know how any woman (or man) can actually admire that “quality” of her character. Sorry. I think that is pathetic.</p>