What troubles me is that Clinton has been too quiet for too long. Must have something to do with Hillary's ambitions. Even in his shoutdown of Chris 'the smirk' Wallace, Clinton admitted that he had never criticized the President.....Well, why the hell not!

That's not the way Jimmy Carter sees it. He's stripped George W. naked a number of times (review his comments at Coretta Scott Kings funeralif you need a reminder).....But then again, Rosalynn's not running for President, is she?

I think the brash attempt at rewriting history that was "path to 9/11" might have had something to do with it.

Up to now, the history rewriting has been insidious and almost nebulous. I am amazed that even Liberals are now quoting neocon spin as gospel.

Regency Publishing has been very, very good to the neocons.

Clinton spoke the truth, and anyone with any integrity can check up on him. Those without integrity that want to promote the spin should be corrected and exposed.

Good on Clinton. He's made it easier for those of us who remember.

CSPAN junkies visit http://spannerbackup.ipbhost.com

No disrespect intended towards Professor Gitlin, but "that's how you handle Fox News" is really emotional stand-in for analysis. The problem for progressives in the face of today's overwhelmingly and mind-numbingly conservative media is not that "we" don't "know" how to respond; its that our voices are almost never given what Clinton was able to demand -- full airing of the interview unedited. Moreover, our side rarely even gets to choose who our voice is; usually the most absurdly unrepresentative, supposedly radicaly voice is the one that is used to speak on behalf of progressives or even moderate Democrats.

To wit, yesterday MSNBC found what must be the only elected Democrat in the country who supports Chavez and had him on to speak, presenting only that part of his statement that praised Chavez.

long ago and far away, when 60 minutes served as the forum in which clinton's womanizing was addressed in 1992, i came away impressed with what turned out to be an incredibly significant aspect of clinton's personality: unlike mcgovern, or carter, or mondale, or dukakis, he had iron in his belly. he was not afraid.

i've often wondered whether, had clinton not needed his heart bypass in 2004, his active support for kerry might not have made a difference.

regardless, in this shameful week for american politics, where torture is now being legitimated, the best news i've seen is that clinton wants to get into it. he was great on npr on thursday a.m. for instance on torture, and he was great to wallace. i'm inclined to agree with BettyCrow that the phoniness of the path to 9/11 may well have been the straw, but whatever it was (hell, it could be ambition for hillary for all i know), it's good to see him out there.

An aggressively involved clinton over the next 6 weeks could make a major difference....

Um, that wasn't me. That was workerbee. But yes, I would agree that the "pathways to 9/11" was the catalyst.

You can only go back to the well so many times without the water turning into bile.

----------------------------
No, I just read it somewhere.
- tom stoppard

....What you said! Plus! The National Intelligence Estimate! I have a great idea for an ad:

A wise-appearing older person doing a bed-time type story to his/her grandchild how the US had been threatened on September 11th, 2001 by a fierce attack in New York. Our Democratic president immediately ordered our military to hunt down and capture the master-mind. It was a huge deal, but our CIA and military rose to the challenge, and when they had him trapped in a warren of caves in a place called ToraBora in Afghanistan, they went in and got him.

This brave response sent a message to his small group of terrorists that we meant business, and that we would never tolerate the murdering of our citizens. All the world was on our side!

Several countries, including Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and others, approached us immediately afterwards and requested to meet and settle our differences diplomatically. We then met with our many allies, and developed a world-wide approach to nuclear disarmament, reduction of greenhouse gasses, and a unified approach to solving the genocides in Africa.

The grandchild, sleepily, looks up at Grandma/Grampa and says, "Thanks. I guess I just had a bad dream."

Fade to sunshine! Then have someone say how many thousands of soldiers' lives have been wasted in Iraq' how many billions of dollars thrown away. "Oh, if it really were only a bad dream!"

That's the kind of ad that doesn't just appeal to the converted~!

Jan Knaus

I generally wonder why Dems/Progressives/Moderates/etc. bother to go on Fox. When someone points out the flawed logic or inaccuracies of the Fox News pundits, they immediately change the subject or falsely assert that they are right. People rarely get a chance to respond. I wonder how long Fox News would keep its ratings if all Dems/Progressives boycotted Fox News entirely.

I love the commercial with the bedtime story. I think the notion of Clinton getting out there and telling it like it is couldn't be better. Damned if I want to puncture any balloons. But Clinton and very effective campaign commercials do not leadership make. What we need to keep an eye on is the current, not emeritus, Democratic party leadership. Because they are the ones to whom we want to give power in November. Within a week of a hoped-for November win, we'll be wondering about '08. Will the Dems use that last minute gift of political Viagra to set us up for a successful 2008, or... ?

Meanwhile, there's something we could and should be doing. Not the first time I've said it, but in fact GQMartinez says it this time:

I wonder how long Fox News would keep its ratings if all Dems/Progressives boycotted Fox News entirely.

And its sponsors. I don't think we can go on living the same old same old life and expect everything out there to change in our favor.

The way I heard it was that Monica Lewinski was sent over from DOD to brief President Clinton on Bin Laden and used Pizza to get by the press with appropriate story. Now how any DNA got on any dresses or any of the other stuff is what the news media hounds go for, What Monica (probably MI6) but ssshhhh!!!! I'll never tell, said was what Bill needed to know. And since the Al Queada bunch specifically timed it just so to mess up two administrations is probably exactly what they wanted to do.

I think exactly the wrong message to take is "this is how to deal with Fox News." I mean, yeah, Clinton rocked--but only Clinton or someone else who combines deep knowledge of the issue with great charisma could pull off something like that. Not to mention that he's an ex-President, and Wallace knew better than to interrupt. That combination of intellect, rank, and charisma is rare. If you lack any one of those three features, you wouldn't be able to pull off what Clinton pulled off.

I fully agree with everything you've pointed out with the exception of the "...Wallace knew better than to interrupt."

The stuttering tool attempted to walk all over what Clinton was saying. Tried to change the direction of the discussion quite a few times. But it just doesn't work with Bill. A lesser person would have pulled off his sock and stuffed it in Wallace's pie-hole until he got his sentence completed... But not Bill. He liberally allowed Wallace to exhibit his ill-manners for all to see.

~OGD~

ps: I almost forgot. Americans respect and usually like it when you stand up for yourself and thereby exhibit that you'll standup for them.

You do realize that Bill just vaccinated Hillary from the Chris Wallaces, don't you? Probably not his motive, but he's wounded more than one bird with that stone. And incidentally put Ruppy Murdock on record as a believer - that's like getting Rev. Moon to endorse Social Security or something.....

Wallace was indeed weaselly. Apparently, Fox News had invited Clinton to appear under false premises, to talk about another issue, but Clinton was more than prepared to respond to Wallace's questions. Moreover, and more telling, Clinton was unwilling to let Wallace interrupt him while he was answering the questions. AND, when Clinton asked Wallace whether Faux News had asked similar questions of Republicans, and Wallace tried to weasel out of it, Clinton was unwilling to let him do so.

It was one of the most superb take-downs of a weaselly Faux News commentator (I don't refer to them as journalists) that I have ever seen. At the end, Wallace looked like he had been hit between his eyes with a 2x4.

JohnW1141

Its obvious Wallace tried to sandbag Clinton. The invitation to Clinton said he gets 15 minutes on the Global Initiative and 15 minutes on other questions. Wallace opened with the Global Initiative and less than 4 minutes later he switched to Osama.

Wallace's question was disingenuous, asking why Clinton didn't do more to put al Qaeda and Osama out of business. According to Wallace this question was sent in by FOX viewers. So let me ask a question of George Bush; "Why didn't you do more to put al Qaeda and Osama out of business?" A perfectly legitimate question to ask Clinton and Bush, but its a question you can ask anyone throughout history. Why didn't FDR do more to end WWll earlier? Why didn't Reagan do more to help end the Cold War earlier? Why didn't Bush do more to keep us from falling into recession in 2001?

Wallace referred to a book by reporter Lawrence Wright but ignored the book by the one person that was on the front lines of fighting terrorism since Reagan, Richard Clark.

Wallace was obviously armed with right wing nonsense while knowing little about what went on behind the scenes during the Clinton years regarding terrorism and bin Ladin.

What should be analyzed are Clinton's responses to Wallace which
I found enlightening.

Clinton just had infinitely more impact in his criticism than Carter's because, not in spite of, the fact that the GOP's 21st Century Pravda opened the door for it.  And on the threshold of the most important election since '04.

What needs to be understood, is exactly what is implied with the allegations that Clinton let bin Laden escape. It has great relevance presently, and needs to be thrown right back into the faces of these hypocrites. Clinton did not press for the capture of bin Laden, because he did not have any lawful cause to do so, in absence of any verifiable finding. What is implied by persons claiming that Clinton screwed up is that a president has a right to act on hunch alone, without proof or warrant, This is unlawful both under the constitution and international accords, which is itself a consitutional violation (Article VI; Clause 2).

The US Presisdent is NOT above the law

Excerpts from two Larry King interviews with President Clinton are illuminative:

King: Do you remember what you were thinking, Mr. President? (On 911)

Clinton: Yes.

King: What would go through the mind of the immediate former president watching this?

Clinton: I remember exactly what happened. Bruce Lindsey said to me on the phone, my God, a second plane has hit the tower. And I said, bin Laden did this. That's the first thing I said.

He said, how can you be sure?

I said, because only bin Laden and the Iranians could set up a network to do this, and they wouldn't do it, because they have a country in targets -- bin Laden did.

King: Did you also think of the same time where you came pretty close to getting him?

Clinton: Yes. I thought that my virtual obsession with him was well-faced, and I was full of regret that I didn't get him. I mean, I immediately thought that he had done it.

King: You were obsessed with him?

Clinton: Yes I was. Some people thought I was obsessed?

King: Now the current president is obsessed with him.

Clinton: Well, he should be. And I've supported everything he's done in Afghanistan. I think it's very important.

The guy is smart. He's got access to money. He's got a lot of the fanatic supporters around the world, and has to be completely defeated and eradicated.

CNN Larry King Live, "Interview With Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Andrew McKelvey, Dan Rather", CNN News, September 3, 2002

King: Do you ever say, I should have taken out bin Laden? I could have, should have, should -- shoulda, woulda, coulda?

Clinton: No. What I say is I tried like the devil to take him out. I knew how bad he was. Even in my first term we were watching him. And we worked hard on terrorism. We had to.

Keep in mind, we had the first World Trade Center bombing in '93. We had the Oklahoma City bombing in '95. We finally passed the big anti-terrorism legislation I'd been pushing for a year and a half in '96. We averted all the terrorist attacks planned for the millennium, plus earlier attempts to blow up the Holland Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel and the U.N. building in New York, the L.A. airport. Planes flying from the Philippines to the L.A. airport.

King: There were plans to blow up the L.A...

Clinton: Absolutely. All those things.

And after the African embassies were blown up, there was a plan to blow up our embassy in Albania. We did that. There was a plan by many of bin Laden's allies from the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the Afghan War, to take over Bosnia after the Bosnian War and we stopped that.

So we were deeply immersed in this. So what I say all the time is -- and what I told President Bush when we had our little meeting after the Supreme Court decision -- I regret deeply that I didn't get him. I tried everything I knew to get him.

I wish -- the only real regret I have in terms of our efforts is nearly everybody in the world knew that he did the USS Cole in October of 2000. I knew what our options were, I knew what our military options were, I knew what our covert options were. And I felt I couldn't take strong military action against Afghanistan because the FBI and the CIA didn't officially agree that bin Laden had done it until after I left office.

If they had done so when I was in office, I would have taken stronger action -- even as a lame duck president.

King: Do you know why they didn't?

Clinton: I think they just had a process they wanted to go through. And keep in mind, you know, when Oklahoma City happened, which before 9/11 was the worst domestic terrorist incident, a lot of people immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was a Muslim militant terrorist. And I remember standing in the Rose Garden of the White House pleading with the American people not to jump to any conclusions.

So I felt if I launched a full scale attack, violated air space of countries that wouldn't give me permission, had to do the logistics of doing that without basing rights like we had in Uzbekistan and other things we had after 9/11, I would have been on grounds without an approval.

But I don't think -- I don't know of anything that I could have done that I didn't do at the time that would have dramatically increased the chances of getting bin Laden because I wanted to do it and I regretted not doing it.

King: Did you ever let your personal problems affect your political decisions or executive decisions when you're living in the kind of torment that you admit to having lived through?

Clinton: No.

King: You could separate them?

Clinton: I could separate them. And I try to explain in the book that my very difficult or occasionally difficult childhood, living in an alcoholic home which was -- suffered from sporadic violence, where I had to sort of wall off my private life from the life I gave to the world, including my life with my friends and my school, my church my activity, everything.

While it got me into a lot of trouble later on because it was an automatic reflex whenever I felt exhausted or under stress or angry, you know, to sort of start living those lives again, it also made me particularly well suited to endure the years of what we went through with Whitewater, both with the Congress and with Mr. Starr.

I just could deal with it that way. We organized the White House that way and I went to work.

And I believe the 9/11 Commission will publicly say that my political problems had no impact on the decisions I made in fighting terror.

CNN Larry King Live, "Encore Presentation: Interview With Frm. President Bill Clinton", CNN News, June 27, 2004

JohnW1141

The MSM will circle the wagons, one of theirs seems to have been abused. Can we expect any of them to report on Clinton's answers or other comments to Wallace?

They tried to set a trap for Clinton (proved by your point of Wallace being armed with every RW talking point in the book) and much to their dismay they fell into a trap Clinton set for them.  They tried to get him from 1992-2000 and they are still trying, but the results haven't changed...Clinton is waaaaaaay too smart for them, HAHAHAHAHA I love it.

Just the fact that they were so stupid (or hubris-filled?) to try to take on Clinton yet again is a gift from the Heavens.

What's sad is that even though Clinton has reality on his side, and even though he could trash any knucklehead conservative in a one-on-one debate on the subject of which administration is more to blame for 9/11, it is the Republicans who are doing a much better job of getting their "blame Bill" message out into the mainstream media. It's nausiating that the conservatives are trying to blame 9/11 on the Democrats. Truly disguisting. But the voting public cannot help but be swayed by G.O.P. lies when such claims--complete falsehoods though they may be--are essentially unanswered by the Democrats.

I disagree. The problem lies in our party.

The Democrat running for the open Senate seat in Minnesota has not mentioned Iraq and you have to make good use of your scroll bars to find where she's buried her opinion on the subject on her web site.

The game plan for most these days seems to be "maybe if I hide so no reporter can ask me a question and expect me to take a stand, Bush will screw up and they'll elect me by default".

Of course, I can only talk about FDR through recordings, which, while they are the way the electorate heard them, occasionally need a bit of thought to recognize artifacts of their age.

There are several ways in which Presidents were effective communicators -- and some of their communications, ignored at the time, grew in stature. Perhaps the greatest communication ignored at the time were the less than 300 words spoken by Abraham Lincoln at a place called Gettysburg. Of course, they couldn't have been significant compared to the two-hour speech delivered by the professional orator hired for the occasion. No cheating -- without looking it up, does anyone remember his name?

Of more recent Presidents, JFK could excite and challenge. Clinton, Reagan and to some degree Ford shared a critical quality I shall call inclusion, a sense that they were speaking to you. With Truman, you didn't get great oratory, but you were absolutely clear where he stood. Eisenhower said some significant things from time to time, but wasn't a consistently good communicator. Let us not forget Washington and Jefferson.

Is it vaguely Trumanesque that the very fact that Coolidge talked at all made news?

Wandering a bit afield, but it's worth mentioning a few great communicators who were not Presidents (although at least one wanted to be), and one who was an honorary American. Douglas MacArthur. Winston Churchill. Barbara Jordan. Martin Luther King.

George Patton alternated between having a silver tongue and a combat boot in his mouth.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I've often wondered if Murdoch's politics have been exaggerated a bit. Maybe he's more worried about increasing his media holdings, which would make him lean right, and Fox News was more of a unfilled niche he perceived in American Broadcasting. It's damn popular, the truth notwithstanding. Still, look at some of Fox's other broadcast show, and it's hard to find a real American Conservative perspective, at least on the morality end; not to mention O'Reilly's disgusting treatment of female underlings, and bizzare eroticism (paragraph 66).

"Oh my God! The dead have risen and they're voting Republican!" - - Bart Simpson

"Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king." - - Sideshow Bob Roberts

"Ooh! Hiding behind your goons, eh, Bush? Well you are a wimp!" - - Homer Simpson

Any links to that?

On edit:

Hoo ha! I found it on Crooks and Liars.

Must see TV

CSPAN junkies visit http://spannerbackup.ipbhost.com

http://www.crooksandliars.com/category/countdownkeith-olbermann/... to see what else you've been missing. This guy is on a roll that began when the Right Rev. Rumsfeld dipped his toe in the morality pool. Then, on Sept. 11, K.O. knocked one out of the park on how the Bush-league administration exploited a day of solemn memory.... More Rose Garden fun followed...and then the 9/25 show! I love the Daily Show and Colbert Report for entertainment/news, but Olbermann (an ex-ESPN anchor) has been leading the way for months with his bizarre mix of Edward R. Murrow, Will Rogers, and Howard Cosell...

My plan? I was simply making a comment. If one could interpret my comment as a plan, it would be for my party to stop moving farther and farther to the left and come back to a moderate, pro-defense, pro-America view. You know moderate, the Democratic political position of every Democratic President elected in the last half-century!

As far as the war in Iraq, I totally oppose it from day one, and attacking Iran, I don't know what the hell you are talking about there, that's the Republican's game.

All I was trying to say is that in my forty+ years of voting Democrat, I would like to actually vote for more winners for a change! And the cold, hard facts are that when given a choice the American people have proven for over 50 long years that the ONLY Democrat they will elect to the Presidency is a moderate, pro-defense, centrist politician, just like Clinton, Carter, LBJ, Kennedy.

These far-left progressives we try to get elected President are just grist for the mill that keep losing over and over again! In fact, I can recall exactly ZERO hard-left progressive presidents in the history of the United States of America! I would certainly not call progressives evil (those are YOUR words) but I have no problem calling you the "perrenial losers" of my Democratic party.