Bill Clinton interview on Larry King

[gotterdamerung]

Clinton agreed with most of the current Bush doctrine in a public interview during a political year. All politics and public opinion aside, this is an important statement from an intelligent former president. I understand his tenure was based on economics and I enjoyed some of that prosperity myself. I think hindsight is giving him the opportunity to galvanize Americans to face up to the current realities of our geopolitical status. I do not believe that Kerry is the man we need in office. We need strong forceful leadership with a popular base in the American population. If Bush gets reelected he needs to understand that the American population deserves better from himself and his arrogant cabinet of neoconservatives.

[Fairweather]

Don't forget, G!... Bill and Hillary DON'T want to see Kerry in The White House. They want GW to win so Hillary can run in '08, and a Kerry win this season would set them back at least 8 years.

 

Even now, Bill's thinking politics/strategy. He just can't help himself.

[cj001f]

Even now, Bill's thinking politics/strategy. He just can't help himself.

the Hysteria over the Clinton permanent campaign, with a whitehouse that shames even the Clinton's in politicking is priceless

[Fairweather]

Think about it , Cj. Why else would Bill Clinton provide a defense (albeit tepid) of Bush administration Iraq policy?? He's not jumping on the GWB-bashing bandwagon....can you think of a valid explanation?

[iain]

Hillary would never win the white house.

[cj001f]

He's not jumping on the GWB-bashing bandwagon....can you think of a valid explanation?

There's always the obvious Bush defense: He saw the same intelligence as Bush and perceives the threats to be the same

[dberdinka]

If Bush gets reelected he needs to understand that the American population deserves better from himself and his arrogant cabinet of neoconservatives.

 

Good luck with that one

[JoshK]

I can sort of see fairweather's point. I disagree, iain, I could see hillary winning, esp. considering women make up the majority of votes.

[gotterdamerung]

Nonetheless, putting Kerry in office will do nothing but obfuscate the issues at hand. The guy is practically a seditionist in the guise of a legitimate politician. If you enjoy seeing your fellow countrymen truly being sacrificed for nothing than by all means put him in office. It's your conscience after all.

[Skeezix]

Kerry ... by all means put him in office

O.K.

[markinore]

It is interesting to contrast Clinton's actions toward Iraq with those of Bush. Clinton enforced a rigid no-fly zone. In the north of Iraq, the Kurdish zone, U.S. and U.K. planes patrolled about one day out of two, nearly always firing missiles or dropping bombs in response to threatening actions by the Iraqis. The larger operation was in southern Iraq, with U.S. planes entering Iraqi airspace an average of 15,000 times a year.

 

In other words, under Clinton, Saddam was kept on an extremely short leash, under close surveillance and unable to mount any sort of air operations. Under Clinton, not a single U.S. pilot was lost.

[sailBOI]

Under Clinton there was one terror act against the US after another ! You don't keep a slippery bastard like Saddam from acting against you by flying over his country/

 

This is an interesting piece from the NZ Herald :

 

Paul Thomas: Focus on Clinton's account of Monica dalliance inevitable

 

28.06.2004

COMMENT

It took $16 million and 957 pages, but now we know: to paraphrase a couple of mountaineers, Bill Clinton knocked off Monica Lewinsky because she was there.

 

I don't suppose many people thought love had much to do with it but it's nice to have these things cleared up.

 

The fact that media interest in Clinton's biblical slab of a memoir has focused predominantly on this dalliance reaffirms what was apparent at the time: there was more to it than a man - albeit the most powerful man on earth - getting caught with his pants down.

 

For cultural conservatives the Lewinsky sleazefest both epitomised and defined the Clinton presidency. Liberal opinion will continue to ridicule the preoccupation with the private and minor indiscretions of an important world figure.

 

Those who categorised the scandal as a mountain made out of a molehill had a point, but they also missed a point. In democratic politics, particularly in the United States, personality matters as much as policy, and few politicians have deployed their personal magnetism as calculatedly and effectively as Clinton.

 

If you charm your way into office, it's likely your opponents will seek to turn that asset into a liability, especially when you do most of the dirty work for them.

 

There were many ways of debating the issue. A common division was between those who believe that in the grand scheme of things - and if anyone on earth resides in the grand scheme of things, it's the US President - a few furtive sexual encounters don't amount to a row of beans, and those who believe public and private morality are inseparable.

 

But the private-public line is increasingly blurred, and a row of beans is often in the eye of the beholder. Recently the boss of a major British bank was forced to resign because he downloaded pornography on his office computer, yet Clinton's defenders argued that it was no one else's business what he and the intern got up to in the Oval Office while his wife and daughter slept upstairs.

 

As his critics pointed out at the time, the President was being held to lower standards of behaviour and accountability than a chief executive or a school principal.

 

On the other hand, there are many chief executives and school principals in America, none of whom gained their position by winning a national election. If the polls had shown Americans were united in the view that Clinton should resign, he might have done so.

 

Given that sex makes hypocrites of us all, it's interesting to speculate on the reaction had Clinton made a habit of getting quietly trashed on Tennessee whiskey while Hillary and Chelsea were getting their beauty sleep.

 

There are precedents here. The final dent in Richard Nixon's battered reputation was the revelation that he was prone to conducting drunken late-night and one-sided conversations with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. And Winston Churchill's physician, Lord Avebury, caused consternation with his claim that the great man was pie-eyed for much of World War II.

 

There's little doubt that the man often hailed as the greatest figure of the 20th century had a serious booze habit. His biographer William Manchester said of him, "there is always some alcohol in his bloodstream".

 

When told that drinking wasn't permitted in the presence of the King of Saudi Arabia, for whom he was about to host a luncheon, Churchill informed the king's interpreter that his rule of life prescribed "as an absolutely sacred rite the drinking of alcohol before, after and, if need be, during all meals and in the intervals between them".

 

Had Clinton, who also enjoyed a cigar, although he found uses for them that probably never occurred to Churchill, been overly fond of a drink, there would've been calls from the religious right for his removal on grounds of lack of moral fibre and much hand-wringing within the political establishment about an unsteady finger on the nuclear trigger.

 

But is the world a safer place because George W. Bush is teetotal?

 

When Churchill's grandson branded Lord Avebury's claim "vile and malicious", the satirist Auberon Waugh countered that it wasn't a bad advertisement for Churchill so much as a good advertisement for drunkenness. After all, wrote Waugh, "old Winston did actually win the war".

 

Exactly. The catastrophic strategic errors of the war (and the genocide that necessitated it) were perpetrated not by Churchill, who lived on brandy, Pol Roger champagne and Cuban cigars, but by the militantly anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco Adolf Hitler.

[markinore]

Under Clinton there was one terror act against the US after another !

 

That's true. But how many of them were committed by Iraq? None! Not one! Despite the administration's assertions about "ties" and "connections" and "contacts" (Rumsfeld had contacts with Saddam), no American was ever killed by Iraq prior to our invasion there.

[foraker]

Clinton isn't bashing GWB in part because there is a long standing 'tradition' that past presidents don't bash the incumbant, especially their foreign policy. I can't remember where I read this.

[sailBOI]

 

OK, he seems to not be too bright, but he is smart enough to DRIVE THE LIBERALS CRAZY !

 

"New York Post columnist John Podhoretz has equal amounts of love for George W. Bush and scorn for Bush's prominent liberal critics. In this energetic defense of the president, he paints a picture of Bush as being much cagier and politically clever than some of the more well-known voices on the left give him credit for."

 

http://hallnonfiction.com/store/books_0312324723_Bush-Country--How-Dubya-Became-a-Great-President-While-Driving-Liberals-Insane.html

[Fairweather]

markinore said:

 

... no American was ever killed by Iraq prior to our invasion there.

 

I guess you're just too young to remember Gulf War I.?? A few hundred American and coalition troops KIA...or the USS Stark before that??? I believe it was 37 sailors killed by an Iraqi pilot...in a Russian-built Mig....with a French-made Exocet missile.

 

Sorry, but...what a stupid statement!

[murraysovereign]

Gulf War Sr wasn't a terrorist act, though, and I think that's what's being discussed here. It was a war, plain and simple.

 

The USS Stark incident was in all likelihood unintentional, given that the US at the time was quietly supporting and supplying Saddam Hussein in his 7-year-old war with Iran (this is when he first came to possess WMDs - courtesy of Don Rumsfeld et al). Just because you're at each other's throats today doesn't mean it was forever thus.

 

And the Iraqi jet was in fact a Mirage, from France. The Iranians were flying MiGs - that's why France and the US and the rest of NATO were supplying Hussein with weaponry of all kinds - to counter the Soviet Union's and China's support of Khomeini.

[markinore]

markinore said:

 

... no American was ever killed by Iraq prior to our invasion there.

 

I guess you're just too young to remember Gulf War I.?? A few hundred American and coalition troops KIA...or the USS Stark before that??? I believe it was 37 sailors killed by an Iraqi pilot...in a Russian-built Mig....with a French-made Exocet missile.

 

Sorry, but...what a stupid statement!

 

You're right, I should have been more specific. In the context of the discussion of terrorist acts that occurred during Clinton's presidency my statement was absolutely correct.

[Fairweather]

Attempting to assasinate Bush Sr isn't exactly a benign act. That alone would be justification for our invasion, IMO. (Credit to Clinton for at least showing some balls when he retaliated by hitting Baghdad with his trademark 'cruise missile response'.)