FOX Clinton Interview

[CAwireman]

Off Topic, If you missed it, might want to check it out.

 

Link

[PerryChase]

Here’s the link on youtube.com.
It’s was brave of Clinton to go on Fox.
Interesting that Rupert Murdock is donating money to the Clintons.

One thing I remember well from the 2000 election out of the Republican candidate’s mouth is “no nation building.”

Link for video on youtube

[bgates]

Clinton’s as brave for going on Fox as Bush is for going on ABC/NBC/CBS/NPR, ie not very. He gets tough questions. Big deal. A bigger deal is how dishonest his answers were (besides the ad hominem of trying to claim that the questions were suspect because they were asked on Fox). For instance, “And I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden.”
-that last is a tiny bit less ad hominem as it purports to be a factual claim, but it’s wrong. See transcript of noted rightwing news outlet PBS quoting Republican reaction to the 1998 bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan coincident with the Lewinsky scandal:
JIM LEHRER: Sen. Kyl, the right thing to do?
SEN. JOHN KYL, (R) Arizona: Yes, I support the president’s action, both because of the connection of Osama bin Laden to past terrorist activities, as well as the threats that he has made against Americans around the world in the future.
JIM LEHRER: Sen. Grams, how do you feel about it?
SEN. ROD GRAMS, (R) Minnesota: Well, I agree as well, and I think we needed to send a very strong and very clear message to terrorists around the world that Americans will not stand for this type of terrorist activity or terrorist threats, either the ones on the embassies in Africa recently, or any planned threats in the future. So I very strongly support this, and I think these raids were carried out, I hope, very successfully.
Likewise cnn reported that
House Speaker Newt Gingrich quickly sided with the adminstration, saying the president “did the right thing” by ordering the simultaneous attacks against facilities believed linked to terrorists suspected in the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa.
“Just a few days ago in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, we saw what happens when people who hate America and hate freedom decide to kill Americans,” Gingrich said. “They did so in a way in which we have to respond.”
“We have every reason to believe that this terrorist organization will try to hurt other Americans,” Gingrich said.
Other key members of Congress also quickly voiced their approval for the decisive military action, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), and Sens. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
…
Clinton’s 2006 claim about Somalia was “They [all the conservative Republicans] were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk down, and I refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.”
The truth reported by RW Apple of the New York Times was
“On Capitol Hill, such senior figures as Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, expressed support for the President’s policy [‘in the aftermath of heavy American losses in a United Nations military operation in Mogadishu’]. But there was also sharp criticism, with Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, calling for an immediate end to “these fatal cops-and-robbers operations,” and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who sits on the Armed Services Committee, stating bluntly, “Clinton’s got to bring them home.”
Is McCain the winger, or is it Byrd?

Perry, you are right that Bush was opposed to nation building in 2000. Does the fact that he changed his mind in response to events disturb your caricature of the rigid unchanging Republican?

[PD]

Bgates, once again, thank you for the meaty post! 🙂

[bub]

Does anyone else long for the days when ex-presidents
kept their mouths shut when it came to current politics?

Oh wait I guess Republicans still do.

[salo_t]

How refreshing to see a President that can actually articulate a thought into a sentence. Republicans hated Clinton because he is smart and popular and stuck up for the common man and not just big business but conservatives finally got to him with the sorry ass bj scandal. Meanwhile we have a dysfunctional administration that cant seem to tell the truth concerning anything they have done or are currently up to. Its no wonder people don’t trust bush and constantly bad mouth him.

As for that interview, I loved it. Clinton finally got to have some ass and defend himself. Fox news is still going after him. The more Bush screws up the more they try to somehow pin it in Clinton.
I loved the way Chris came out all arrogant then after having his ass handed to him by someone way out of his league he quickly decides to try ad go back to the topic. So freaking typical. end of rant…

[LA_Renter]

Love him or hate him, nobody said slick Willie isn’t entertaining. Fox News tried to sandbag him, that should be no surprise. Some of the points he made were true and some were questionable but what I enjoyed was the body language between the two. Mike Wallace looked like one of those little drop kick dogs that pissed off a pit bull. You could see his tail sticking in between his legs wishing he were somewhere else. If Fox was trying to score some conservative talking points, it backfired. This thing is all over the left blogosphere as a rallying cry. This is all good theater for the mid-term elections. I’m sure we will see some amazing sliders and curveballs from Karl Rove before this is over. It’s just the nature of the beast.

[speaker]

Both Clinton and Bush, Jr. deserve heaps of blame for lettling bin Laden take a walk.

The Clinton administration debated endlessly with the Justice Department and the CIA over whether or not the USA had the legal authority to assinate bin Laden. Good grief….

Bush Jr. let bin Laden sneak out of Tora Bora in 2001 by letting the Afghan warlords conduct the ground fighting with US air support called in by the special forces/CIA rather than the US conduct the ground operations.

Now obviously I wasn’t there and neither were any of us who are posting on the subject but the consensus from those who were there is that Bush really screwed the pooch at Tora Bora.

“End of line.”

[PerryChase]

I admire Clinton for being smart and articulate. He can actually remember details of years ago (22 men he cited in one example). I met Clinton years ago when he gave the commencement address at UCSD and I still have his picture in my living room.

Bush, on the other hand, speaks of good and evil.

Yeah, the right got Clinton on the bj issue. But what’s the big deal? Why is Bush hanging out almost everyday with the Dominatrix, Condi Rice? She’s is not married. She works out everyday and has got a great bod, ha.ha.

Shouldn’t we have fixed the Tabiban problem before creating a new front with Iraq. Quote from NY Times article: “the intelligence estimate, an assessment by America’s 16 intelligence agencies, found that the war in Iraq, rather than stemming the growth of terrorism, had helped fuel its spread across the globe.”

[poorgradstudent]

I can’t imagine there’s anyone at FOX news that can give Bill Clinton a run for his money. The man is just too intelligent, too articulate, and just really knows his stuff.

Every time I see Clinton talk it I can’t help but juxtapose him and Bush, and man, it makes me sad that Clinton is done. Even if the Republicans win in ’08, I really hope there’s a shift towards true conservativism (LOW spending rather than starting wars and running record debts, belief in small government), and less pandering to the religious right.

Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

[bgates]

If Clinton ‘really knows his stuff’, why did he repeatedly lie during the interview? Why does it never bother a Clinton supporter if Clinton lies? I’m not talking about foreign policy actions taken on the basis of flawed intelligence (like Clinton’s bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan), I mean situations like that interview where Clinton had to know the truth, about what Republicans said on the record during his administration, and chose to say the opposite.

Perry, Bush looks at an ideology that has followers who have murdered thousands, including civilians, children, and nuns, and called it evil. You scoff at that. That says more about you than about him.

[Anonymous]

How many thousands of innocent people have died in Iraq thanks to our ill advised invasion? Who is “evil”, us or them? The only reason Bush is concerned with the Middle East is Oil, it has nothing to do with morality. Virtually everbody in the world knows this, only the Rush Limbaguh types insist on burying their heads in the sand.

[bgates]

We are trying to minimize the number of civilians killed. Our enemy is trying to maximize the number of civilians killed. We build schools. Our enemy kills teachers. And students. We imprison soldiers who remove the clothing of captive enemy combatants. Our enemy glorifies those who remove the heads of captives whether combatants or aid workers. We fight to give the Iraqis a chance to build a nation as free as ours. Our enemy fights to impose a totalitarian system where every action must conform to the commands of God – as defined by our enemy.

They are evil, we are not.

If Bush was only concerned with oil, it would have been a simple matter to broker a deal with Saddam the way the French and Russians had done. Failing that, we could have invaded Canada.

[socalarm]

come to think of it…”flawed intelligence” is a good description for the current man in power

bombing an aspirin factory vs. bombing a whole country. where’s the equivalence? is there such a dearth of good arguments that an ex-president’s record needs to be dug up to justify the failures of the current one?

so let’s say howard dean was president and blamed everything on reagan…

[Anonymous]

bgates, apparently you are the expert on deciding who is evil and who is not. Since you feel so strongly about this, why don’t you join the Army and go to Iraq to fight for this cause?

[Author]

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