Saturday, September 23, 2006

Clinton slaps Fox News UPDATED

Sept. 26—This is an update from the post I wrote below. Here is a link provided by Jensen. It will take you to a WSJ editorial written by the person who authored the TV miniseries "The Path to 9/11". It's a pretty good editorial.

As I read more and more about 9/11 I'm convinced that this attention President Clinton is receiving is nothing more than a midterm election diversion. This whole, "It's Clinton's fault" is a way for conservatives who are tired with the Iraq war to displace their feelings on someone other than this current administration.

This website, Media Matters, expresses my sentiment by showing how Fox News has tried to cover up for Mike Wallace. While they are much too far to the left for my taste, they've done some excellent analysis on this subject.

While some dispute the facts behind President Clinton's statements on Sunday's interview, I think only God will know what really happened.

I have never had much love or malice for the former President, I feel that on this issue, he is right—he is being picked on, unfairly.

Well, "boo-hoo" right? Unfortunately, that's politics. Hopefully, folks will see through this smokescreen. Many will fall for this diversion, many won't, but it's never that black and white is it?

Here is a link to the Fox News Sunday broadcast of the interview. I don't know if it was truncated or not, I haven't compared it with the text of the broadcast below. Also, don't trust Fox News when it comes to written transcripts, they have a history of changing their typed transcripts from what was actually broad-casted and said. Here is an example.

Olbermann also adds his two bits to this whole drama. He goes way overboard in a lot of his rhetoric, but his overall point is correct. Here's what he had to say about the Clinton interview.

--------------

Sept. 23—I'll probably get into trouble for having a "positive" post about fmr. President Bill Clinton, but, this is a MUST READ interview.

The text of the interview is still rough and hasn't been cleaned up for spelling.

I was too young (I'm currently 24) to really understand and follow the Clinton administration. I also haven't done much reading on what he has done. However, I am an avid reader on 9/11 events, Iraq and Afghanistan. Whatever mistakes Bill Clinton may have made during his presidency, the trendy headlines asserting that Clinton did not do enough to catch Bin Laden are misleading and unfair.

I cannot help but think whether all of this attention towards Clinton is a political ploy using displacement to drag attention away from current events in Iraq and terrorism.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I found this article, and found it really interesting. I think it has some merit to clear up the idea that the screen write is some right winger.


http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008958

Anonymous said...

Sorry about my spelling.

Anonymous said...

Here's a great article:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215607,00.html

Anonymous said...

Anon,

Your definition of "great" is lacking. I'm not saying that because I disagree with the article, I'm saying it because the article is poorly written.

It's poorly written because it's chalk full of logical fallacies. Just one example of this articles poor logic is the author's complaint that Clinton protested Viet Nam. Clinton's feelings about Viet Nam have little to do with terrorist groups. That's just one example of many.

Beyond that, the author gives no concessions, suggesting that he is completely biased. Olbermann, in his self grandios declarations, at least gives some concessions.

No, give me some facts. This isn't a challenge, it's a request. I'd like see facts for or against Clinton, as to what his relationship with al Qaeda was like. What did he know about them? What was the level of concern then? What did the CIA know?

I've read the 9/11 commission report, and unfortunately that document was rather vague, I blame it on the bipartisan effort.

Cameron said...

Part of me dismisses this as a case of hindsight being 20/20 and actually quite pointless to what the discussion should be about, namely what do we do about terrorism?

However, I think it is good to look at history and try to learn from it. The problem with political history is that everyone involved is more concerned with protecting themselves and hurting the other party than finding the truth and learning from it.

As for President Clinton's response to the interviewer's question, he had little of substance to say other than it was all a political ploy aimed at helping Republicans in November.

One thing he did say was this:

"I’m being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative run in their little Pathway to 9/11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report."


What are those three things?

Anonymous said...

Good question, great comment. I'll try looking into it.

Anonymous said...

I want to learn more about this comprehensive anti-terror strategy Clinton left for Bush.

Anonymous said...

Here is another good article that explains the faults Clinton failed to explain or explained in the interview.

http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/092606.html

Grifter said...

smoke and mirrors.

and oh yes, did i happen to see the angry asian snooping through the corridors of Idaho National Laboratory yesterday? whatever for, i wonder...

Cameron said...

I've been doing a little reading about some of the claims made about President Clinton. One of the major ones is that Sudan offered bin Laden to the US and President Clinton refused. I've found that this issue arose out of a function that President Clinton attended and spoke at in 2002. What he said and what he meant are in dispute. Here is one side of the story as reported by Media Matters. Here is another side as reported by Newsmax. They basically amount to "yes he did" vs "no he didn't". However, the Newsmax link has the transcript of what President Clinton said that day. Here is an excerpt:

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

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

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

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


I have also found a Washington Post article from October 2001 that reports on this issue as well. It agrees with the version of the story that the US was offered bin Laden in 1996.