“No, Mr. Oreilly, we both really DON’T know that…”
“Now you’re spinning the conversation Mr. Clinton.”
“2+2 is 4”
“That’s just liberal eeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeology, Mr. Clinton. I will use that phrase in subsequent retorts to what you say so as to diminish its credibility and make it seem meaningless. I can get away with this because my viewers actually do believe I am moderate (credible) because sometimes I lean a little towards the left on miniscule issues. However, they like to believe that the conservatives are always right, so if I call you a liberal you will be wrong. Instantly. End of argument, Mr. Clinton. We both know that! I’ll let you have the last word.”
“We both know that.”
I can’t believe anybody of any political alignment can watch him and go “OH, yes!” But they do…
I did not see the entire interview, but I did read the first quote section from it. The only thing I have a problem with what I had seen was when Clinton said he was vigorously trying to kill Bin Laden and all this anti terrorist stuff he did. If I am not mistaken, every time something happened, Clinton seemed preoccupied with some scandal he was wrapped up in, and really did not do much of anything, just launched a few missiles and said “look I took care of it”. Didn’t they have Bin Laden in custody a few times under Clinton but he let him go saying he was not a threat? Also, the “black hawk down” incident, Clinton sent poorly armed forces into a known hostile suburban area to find a warlord. When the troops asked for more supplies and better munitions because they were getting their asses kicked, he refused stating it was a “peace mission”, leading to the deaths of many American soldiers. Oh, and this happened durring one of his little scandels. From what I have read so far it seems as though Clinton is almost trying to pas the blame to Bush for many incidents, even though things happened under the Clinton administration. When he said the CIA and FBI “refused” to certify, does he mean they just would not do it, or would not say they were 100% sure? He is the President, he says jump they say how high.
They want us to chime in so they can rip us apart telling us how we are stupid and uneducated blah blah blah. Basically a Liberal gang bang on those with
conservative views.
I just wish Clinton would have tried this with Tim Russert, because there’s a guy who actually knows how to do his homework for an interview. Maybe then, instead of cowering and letting Clinton turn the interview into another slick willy spin speech, he might have brought this up:
In the fall of 2000, in Afghanistan, unmanned, unarmed spy planes called Predators flew over known al-Qaida training camps. The pictures that were transmitted live to CIA headquarters show al-Qaida terrorists firing at targets, conducting military drills and then scattering on cue through the desert.
Also, that fall, the Predator captured even more extraordinary pictures — a tall figure in flowing white robes. Many intelligence analysts believed then and now it is bin Laden.
But, as much as I’m not a Bill Clinton fan, I have no doubt he would have done more to get Bin Laden had he had some magical power to see what was going to happen on 9/11. There has been way too much monday morning quarterbacking when it comes to 9/11, from both sides, but that’s politics.
As for this interview, it simply doesn’t impress me. A better interviewer would have been better prepared and Clinton wouldn’t have been able to spin things so easily.
Agreed, it’s just that Clinton was the master of doing it on the fly. At least with Bush you get the truth in one on one interviews, because he doesn’t have someone pre-spinning it for him, and is incapable of doing it on the fly like Clinton.
Clinton strikes me as a really sharp guy. He doesn’t need to pre-game to come up with something, he just does it on the fly. I don’t think there was any pre-spinning of the question that set Billy off. Who knows.
Good or bad, W says the first thing that pops into his head if he wasn’t properly prepared for the question.
No, I am thinking that the President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of all the armed forces, FBI and CIA. He is the boss. It is his responsability to tell them what to do and when. Believe it or not, the President is not just a political head figure like the Queen. He actually has power over ALL government sanctions.
Oh, and Clinton was a lawyer for many years. It was his job to convince people to believe him. So ofcorse he is a sharp guy…he had to be for his job.
now from what I can remember during hte clinton era they did have a possible Osama sighting…the problem then was that they were unarmed predator drones at the time and did not have the ability to strike then and there. By the time they had planes in the area strike the area, he was out of the area.
edit: ever hear of checks and balances jeg? and im not talking about your adventures to HSBC
I know what the checks and balances system is thank you. But when the President tells a government agentcy to do something, they do not just say “no I dont have to, you’re not my boss” like a child. He IS the boss. Oh, and I dont have an account with HSBC :P.
If you read the link I posted, you’ll see that in 2000 they were flying unarmed predators over him, watching him on video. They couldn’t do anything because Clinton had not authorized the CIA to have the cruise missles ready. This is the type of thing a good interviewer would bring up when Clinton says “I did everything I could to kill him”. It’s the type of thing Tim Russert would have had ready to quote, with the source, long before Willy got off on his rant.
But again… woulda, coulda, shoulda… it’s easy to do after the fact.
Clinton refused the handover of bin Laden because – he said in taped remarks on Feb. 15, 2002 – “(bin Laden) had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him.”
