Al Gore's Movie

[CygnusX1]

In all fairness... LOTS of politicians do that...

It's the old joke: How can politicians sleep at night?
They lie on both sides.

okai....ya talked me into a dis...

that SO reeks of SLICK WILLY!!! he taught Al well....did you see him (Clinton) go off on the Fox interviewer because of the questions he asked? you'd think he was getting raked over the coals by Michael Moore, but NOOOOOO...dude, he threatened to FIRE his aides if they ever put him in that predicament again....evidently, he didn't want the truth to come out....he belittled the Fox guy....I coulda SWORE someone was getting a knuckle sammich outta the deal.

[ElfDude]

All because he got a question that was a little closer to the kinds of questions the press fire at Bush every day. He's gotten too used to the fluffy questions his fawning media usually asks him:

KING: Now, the purpose of your initiative, overall, is to make the world a better place, right? How's your health? Did you see the Al Gore movie?

VIEIRA: If you had a genie, what wish would you want granted? You have lots of intelligence. When the New York Times recently ran a front-page article about your marriage, do you think that was fair?

VAN SUSTEREN: How's your new best friend, President Bush 41?

RUSSERT: What do you think is the biggest problem confronting our world, the biggest?

OLBERMANN: This was transcendent, these last three days, the number of people that you reached here and the convictions and the generosity. Here's eight more schools in Kenya for me.

That's the stuff they've been asking him for years.

Now he actually gets a question that might hint he was less than perfect in his presidency and he goes nuts. And I have to ask, when was the last time you saw Cheney or Bush or Frist or any leading republican behave that way to a reporter?

[ElfDude]

Since we're on this topic, we might as well look at the truth of what Clinton was yelling. Basically that he tried so hard to kill bin Laden for years but the CIA and the FBI wouldn't let him. And then that the Bush administration did nothing. He tried, while Bush did nothing.

On the CBS Early Show yesterday, the cohost Harry Smith talked to former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer. Again, Scheuer is no fan of the Bush administration, and no fan of the war in Iraq, but he was involved in one of these CIA missions to get bin Laden back in the 90's. Harry Smith, believing he was doing a piece to defend Clinton against this neocon, vast right-wing conspiracy assault asked the following:

SMITH: President Clinton basically laid the blame at the feet of the CIA and the FBI for not being able to certify or verify that bin Laden was responsible for a number of different attacks. Does that ring true with you, Michael Scheuer?"

SCHEUER: No, sir, I don't think so. Former president seems to be able to deny facts with impunity. Bin Laden is alive today because Mr. Clinton, Mr. Sandy Berger and Mr. Richard Clarke refused to kill him. That's the bottom line. And every time he says what he said to Chris Wallace on Fox, he defames the CIA especially, and the men who risked their lives to give his administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden.

SMITH [stunned]: Is the Bush administration any less responsible for not finishing the job in Tora Bora?"

SCHEUER: There's plenty of blame to go around, sir, but the fact of the matter is the Bush administration had one chance that they botched, and the Clinton administration had eight to ten chances that they refused to try. At least at Tora Bora our forces were on the ground. We didn't push the point. But it's just -- it's an incredible kind of situation for the American people over the weekend to hear their former president mislead them.

And that's only the beginning...

[ElfDude]

Can we stand one more? Dick Morris has a piece in The Hill today that sums a few things up pretty well. Remember, Morris is an insider when it comes to Clinton. He was an advisor to Clinton during the 1996 re-election campaign. And earlier, Morris was also a campaign consultant for Clinton?s Arkansas gubernatorial campaigns. Anyway... he knows the guy!

The real Clinton Emerges

From behind the benign fa硤e and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace?s interview on Fox News Channel. There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know ? the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation. Clinton jabbed his finger in Wallace?s face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator?s space.

But beyond noting the ex-president?s non-presidential style, it is important to answer his distortions and misrepresentations. His self-justifications constitute a mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about what the ?definition of ?is? is? could perform.

Clinton told Wallace, ?There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down.? Nobody said there was. The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9-11 is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that the precipitous American pullout after Black Hawk Down convinced him that Americans would not stand up to armed resistance.

Clinton said conservatives ?were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day? after the attack which killed American soldiers. But the real question was whether Clinton would honor the military?s request to be allowed to stay and avenge the attack, a request he denied. The debate was not between immediate withdrawal and a six-month delay. (Then-first lady, now-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) favored the first option, by the way). The fight was over whether to attack or pull out eventually without any major offensive operations.

The president told Wallace, ?I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill bin Laden.? But actually, the 9-11 Commission was clear that the plan to kidnap Osama was derailed by Sandy Berger and George Tenet because Clinton had not yet made a finding authorizing his assassination. They were fearful that Osama would die in the kidnapping and the U.S. would be blamed for using assassination as an instrument of policy.

Clinton claims ?the CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there.? But he could replace or direct his employees as he felt. His helplessness was, as usual, self-imposed.

Why didn?t the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Laden?s involvement in terrorism? Because Clinton never took the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center sufficiently seriously. He never visited the site and his only public comment was to caution against ?over-reaction.? In his pre-9/11 memoirs, George Stephanopoulos confirms that he and others on the staff saw it as a ?failed bombing? and noted that it was far from topic A at the White House. Rather than the full-court press that the first terror attack on American soil deserved, Clinton let the investigation be handled by the FBI on location in New York without making it the national emergency it actually was.

In my frequent phone and personal conversations with both Clintons in 1993, there was never a mention, not one, of the World Trade Center attack. It was never a subject of presidential focus.

Failure to grasp the import of the 1993 attack led to a delay in fingering bin Laden and understanding his danger. This, in turn, led to our failure to seize him when Sudan evicted him and also to our failure to carry through with the plot to kidnap him. And, it was responsible for the failure to ?certify? him as the culprit until very late in the Clinton administration.

The former president says, ?I worked hard to try to kill him.? If so, why did he notify Pakistan of our cruise-missile strike in time for them to warn Osama and allow him to escape? Why did he refuse to allow us to fire cruise missiles to kill bin Laden when we had the best chance, by far, in 1999? The answer to the first question ? incompetence; to the second ? he was paralyzed by fear of civilian casualties and by accusations that he was wagging the dog. The 9/11 Commission report also attributes the 1999 failure to the fear that we would be labeled trigger-happy having just bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake.

President Clinton assumes that criticism of his failure to kill bin Laden is a ?nice little conservative hit job on me.? But he has it backwards. It is not because people are right-wingers that they criticize him over the failure to prevent 9/11. It was his failure to catch bin Laden that drove them to the right wing.

The ex-president is fully justified in laying eight months of the blame for the failure to kill or catch bin Laden at the doorstep of George W. Bush. But he should candidly acknowledge that eight years of blame fall on him.

One also has to wonder when the volcanic rage beneath the surface of this would-be statesman will cool. When will the chip on his shoulder finally disappear? When will he feel sufficiently secure in his own legacy and his own skin not to boil over repeatedly in private and occasionally even in public?

[CygnusX1]

Can we stand one more? Dick Morris has a piece in The Hill today that sums a few things up pretty well. Remember, Morris is an insider when it comes to Clinton. He was an advisor to Clinton during the 1996 re-election campaign. And earlier, Morris was also a campaign consultant for Clinton?s Arkansas gubernatorial campaigns. Anyway... he knows the guy!

The real Clinton Emerges

From behind the benign fa硤e and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace?s interview on Fox News Channel. There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know ? the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation. Clinton jabbed his finger in Wallace?s face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator?s space.

But beyond noting the ex-president?s non-presidential style, it is important to answer his distortions and misrepresentations. His self-justifications constitute a mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about what the ?definition of ?is? is? could perform.

Clinton told Wallace, ?There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down.? Nobody said there was. The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9-11 is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that the precipitous American pullout after Black Hawk Down convinced him that Americans would not stand up to armed resistance.

Clinton said conservatives ?were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day? after the attack which killed American soldiers. But the real question was whether Clinton would honor the military?s request to be allowed to stay and avenge the attack, a request he denied. The debate was not between immediate withdrawal and a six-month delay. (Then-first lady, now-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) favored the first option, by the way). The fight was over whether to attack or pull out eventually without any major offensive operations.

The president told Wallace, ?I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill bin Laden.? But actually, the 9-11 Commission was clear that the plan to kidnap Osama was derailed by Sandy Berger and George Tenet because Clinton had not yet made a finding authorizing his assassination. They were fearful that Osama would die in the kidnapping and the U.S. would be blamed for using assassination as an instrument of policy.

Clinton claims ?the CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there.? But he could replace or direct his employees as he felt. His helplessness was, as usual, self-imposed.

Why didn?t the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Laden?s involvement in terrorism? Because Clinton never took the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center sufficiently seriously. He never visited the site and his only public comment was to caution against ?over-reaction.? In his pre-9/11 memoirs, George Stephanopoulos confirms that he and others on the staff saw it as a ?failed bombing? and noted that it was far from topic A at the White House. Rather than the full-court press that the first terror attack on American soil deserved, Clinton let the investigation be handled by the FBI on location in New York without making it the national emergency it actually was.

In my frequent phone and personal conversations with both Clintons in 1993, there was never a mention, not one, of the World Trade Center attack. It was never a subject of presidential focus.

Failure to grasp the import of the 1993 attack led to a delay in fingering bin Laden and understanding his danger. This, in turn, led to our failure to seize him when Sudan evicted him and also to our failure to carry through with the plot to kidnap him. And, it was responsible for the failure to ?certify? him as the culprit until very late in the Clinton administration.

The former president says, ?I worked hard to try to kill him.? If so, why did he notify Pakistan of our cruise-missile strike in time for them to warn Osama and allow him to escape? Why did he refuse to allow us to fire cruise missiles to kill bin Laden when we had the best chance, by far, in 1999? The answer to the first question ? incompetence; to the second ? he was paralyzed by fear of civilian casualties and by accusations that he was wagging the dog. The 9/11 Commission report also attributes the 1999 failure to the fear that we would be labeled trigger-happy having just bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake.

President Clinton assumes that criticism of his failure to kill bin Laden is a ?nice little conservative hit job on me.? But he has it backwards. It is not because people are right-wingers that they criticize him over the failure to prevent 9/11. It was his failure to catch bin Laden that drove them to the right wing.

The ex-president is fully justified in laying eight months of the blame for the failure to kill or catch bin Laden at the doorstep of George W. Bush. But he should candidly acknowledge that eight years of blame fall on him.

One also has to wonder when the volcanic rage beneath the surface of this would-be statesman will cool. When will the chip on his shoulder finally disappear? When will he feel sufficiently secure in his own legacy and his own skin not to boil over repeatedly in private and occasionally even in public?

THANKYEEEEEEEW Elfie....exactly the interview I speak of. But alas, there's no mention of the continued rage AFTER the interview, wherein he threatened to fire his staff if it happened again. What a guy.

[ElfDude]

I've got to admit, I was surprised to hear an insider describe him as "the man those who have worked for him have come to know ? the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully".

[CygnusX1]

I've got to admit, I was surprised to hear an insider describe him as "the man those who have worked for him have come to know ? the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully".

You sure they weren't describing HILLARY??? huh? whaaaaaaat? lol

[ElfDude]

Now this is interesting! At least to me it is...
Check this out. It's taken from a Byron York article published in 2001. This story that Dick Morris tells (yeah, more from Dick Morris, five years ago) really does explain a few things...

In early August 1996, a few weeks after the Khobar Towers bombing, Clinton had a long conversation with Dick Morris about his place in history. Morris divided presidents into four categories: first tier, second tier, third tier, and the rest. Twenty-two presidents who presided over uneventful administrations fell into the last category. Just five ? Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt ? made Morris?s first tier.

Clinton asked Morris where he stood. ?I said that at the moment he was at the top of the unrated category,? Morris recalls. Morris says he told the president that one surprising thing about the ratings was that a president?s standing had little to do with the performance of the economy during his time in office. ?Yeah,? Clinton responded, ?It has so much to do with whether you get re-elected or not, but history kind of forgets it.?

Clinton then asked, ?What do I need to do to be first tier?? ?I said, ?You can?t,?? Morris remembers. ??You have to win a war.?? Clinton then asked what he needed to do to make the second or third tier, and Morris outlined three goals. The first was successful welfare reform. The second was balancing the budget. And the third was an effective battle against terrorism. ?I said the only one of the major goals he had not achieved was a war on terrorism,? Morris says. (This is not a recent recollection; Morris also described the conversation in his 1997 book, Behind the Oval Office.)

But Clinton never began, much less finished, a war on terrorism. Even though Morris?s polling showed the poll-sensitive president that the American people supported tough action, Clinton demurred. Why?

?He had almost an allergy to using people in uniform,? Morris explains. ?He was terrified of incurring casualties; the lessons of Vietnam were ingrained far too deeply in him. He lacked a faith that it would work, and I think he was constantly fearful of reprisals.? But there was more to it than that. ?On another level, I just don?t think it was his thing,? Morris says. ?You could talk to him about income redistribution and he would talk to you for hours and hours. Talk to him about terrorism, and all you?d get was a series of grunts.?

And that is the key to understanding Bill Clinton?s handling of the terrorist threat that grew throughout his two terms in the White House: It just wasn?t his thing.

And he's very concerned that his legacy be something more than a stain on a blue dress. In fact, that conversation about past presidents was well before the Monica scandal. His legacy is deeply important to him and always has been. And that darned Fox network had to bring up something that might put yet another "stain" on his legacy.

[awip2062]

It always makes me wonder when someone goes off on people. It really makes me wonder what is causing so much emotion to come out like that and why they aren't just responding in a normal tone, why they feel they have to poke people, why they feel the need to raise their voice, get in someone's face,...

[CygnusX1]

Now this is interesting! At least to me it is...
Check this out. It's taken from a Byron York article published in 2001. This story that Dick Morris tells (yeah, more from Dick Morris, five years ago) really does explain a few things...

In early August 1996, a few weeks after the Khobar Towers bombing, Clinton had a long conversation with Dick Morris about his place in history. Morris divided presidents into four categories: first tier, second tier, third tier, and the rest. Twenty-two presidents who presided over uneventful administrations fell into the last category. Just five ? Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt ? made Morris?s first tier.

Clinton asked Morris where he stood. ?I said that at the moment he was at the top of the unrated category,? Morris recalls. Morris says he told the president that one surprising thing about the ratings was that a president?s standing had little to do with the performance of the economy during his time in office. ?Yeah,? Clinton responded, ?It has so much to do with whether you get re-elected or not, but history kind of forgets it.?

Clinton then asked, ?What do I need to do to be first tier?? ?I said, ?You can?t,?? Morris remembers. ??You have to win a war.?? Clinton then asked what he needed to do to make the second or third tier, and Morris outlined three goals. The first was successful welfare reform. The second was balancing the budget. And the third was an effective battle against terrorism. ?I said the only one of the major goals he had not achieved was a war on terrorism,? Morris says. (This is not a recent recollection; Morris also described the conversation in his 1997 book, Behind the Oval Office.)

But Clinton never began, much less finished, a war on terrorism. Even though Morris?s polling showed the poll-sensitive president that the American people supported tough action, Clinton demurred. Why?

?He had almost an allergy to using people in uniform,? Morris explains. ?He was terrified of incurring casualties; the lessons of Vietnam were ingrained far too deeply in him. He lacked a faith that it would work, and I think he was constantly fearful of reprisals.? But there was more to it than that. ?On another level, I just don?t think it was his thing,? Morris says. ?You could talk to him about income redistribution and he would talk to you for hours and hours. Talk to him about terrorism, and all you?d get was a series of grunts.?

And that is the key to understanding Bill Clinton?s handling of the terrorist threat that grew throughout his two terms in the White House: It just wasn?t his thing.

And he's very concerned that his legacy be something more than a stain on a blue dress. In fact, that conversation about past presidents was well before the Monica scandal. His legacy is deeply important to him and always has been. And that darned Fox network had to bring up something that might put yet another "stain" on his legacy.

Don't forget the FIRST WTC attack...that happened on his watch too. Damn that FOX network!!! Indeed. The Dems are in deep kimchee this election....I think Clinton sealed-the-deal on that one.

[Big Blue Owl]

It always makes me wonder when someone goes off on people. It really makes me wonder what is causing so much emotion to come out like that and why they aren't just responding in a normal tone, why they feel they have to poke people, why they feel the need to raise their voice, get in someone's face,...

Good point. The Right has had that market pretty much sewn up until recently. Bush's red-faced tantrums, denials in the face of a mountain of facts (which at this point are mostly on the side of the Left) come quickly to mind, not to mention every Righty radio host, hanging up as soon as they see that the screener has let one of those sonofabitchin Lefties onto the show. I listen to them all - Rush L, Ed Shultz, Hannity, Franken - whoever is on at the time. Lefties let 'em speak and discuss the issues that divide, Righties get pissed, indignant and hang up in . (why can't I type the word "d i s g u s t" without getting a stupid instead?)

It's about time the Left gets more aggressive, direct, lunging at the train-wreck questions and dirty politics of their opponents. After all, you hard Righters want a good fight, right? Where have I heard, "Let us not go gently..." before? Oh yeah

Whichever way it ends up, thanks for the game

[awip2062]

I will agree that "righties" do hang up on "lefties" but I can't agree that they do so as soon as they figure out they are talking to someone who views the world differently from them. I have heard conservative talk show hosts discuss things with liberals, but they tend to be the liberals who "fight fair." I also have to say I have heard liberal talk show hosts hang up as soon as they found out they were talking to a conservative. We have this one who is on our local station at night, the name of the man escapes me now because I don't like to listen to much on our local station, but he is on Coast to Coast, and he hangs up on those who disagree with him.

I think both sides will (1) call a talk show host they disagree with and get nasty and (2) hang up on people they do not agree with.

[CygnusX1]

It always makes me wonder when someone goes off on people. It really makes me wonder what is causing so much emotion to come out like that and why they aren't just responding in a normal tone, why they feel they have to poke people, why they feel the need to raise their voice, get in someone's face,...

Good point. The Right has had that market pretty much sewn up until recently. Bush's red-faced tantrums, denials in the face of a mountain of facts (which at this point are mostly on the side of the Left) come quickly to mind, not to mention every Righty radio host, hanging up as soon as they see that the screener has let one of those sonofabitchin Lefties onto the show. I listen to them all - Rush L, Ed Shultz, Hannity, Franken - whoever is on at the time. Lefties let 'em speak and discuss the issues that divide, Righties get pissed, indignant and hang up in . (why can't I type the word "d i s g u s t" without getting a stupid instead?)

It's about time the Left gets more aggressive, direct, lunging at the train-wreck questions and dirty politics of their opponents. After all, you hard Righters want a good fight, right? Where have I heard, "Let us not go gently..." before? Oh yeah

Whichever way it ends up, thanks for the game

nice....my 10-year-old Nephew has better control of his temper.

[awip2062]

Temper control really is a matter of choice, even though we like to blame our emotions on it, we can choose to flip out or not. I think that most times we don't choose to control ourselves it is because we are afraid or hurt and we let those emotions take over.

[CygnusX1]

Temper control really is a matter of choice, even though we like to blame our emotions on it, we can choose to flip out or not. I think that most times we don't choose to control ourselves it is because we are afraid or hurt and we let those emotions take over.

that's right t....the space between the event and the reaction is critical, and is where most of us drop the ball.