Whiner in Chief

It was embarrassing. There was a former Unites States president acting like a petulant child on national TV. I know it wasn’t the first time for this former president, but his sad performance was so over the top that one couldn’t see it without being embarrassed for the office of the presidency. He's turning into Jimmy Carter, for heaven's sake.

It was so unseemly that I was going to let it go. Just forget it. But then one of my good friends and readers, Rose, wrote: “Bill, where are you? I have been dying to hear your take on Slick Willie’s melt down. He is lying again!!!!!!”

So duty calls. I decided to take a look at what the commentators were saying.
Noel Sheppard of RealClearPolitics described the event this way:

“Last week, former president Bill Clinton took some time out of his busy dating schedule to have a not so friendly chat with Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday. Given his rabidity, Mr. Clinton might consider taking a few milligrams of Valium the next time he allows himself to face "fair and balanced" questions.

The fireworks started as soon as Wallace brought up historically factual statements made in a new book, The Looming Tower. In it, author Lawrence Wright addressed how Osama Bin Laden had indicated that when American troops pulled out of Somalia in 1993, he and his al Qaeda buddies saw this as an indication of American weakness.”

Upset by this well known account, Mr. Clinton “lashed out in a fury akin to a president that had just been accused of having sexual relations with an intern.”

I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn't do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush's neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn't have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn't do enough said that I did too much.

It appears that Mr. Clinton’s mind has once again failed him, since memory and LexusNexus reveal that virtually every high ranking Republican in and out of Washington was highly supportive of Clinton's efforts, feeble though they were.

Recall that in August 1998 bin Laden operatives bombed the U.S. embassy in Africa. Clinton was knee-deep in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and it was the New York Times that accused him of “Wagging the Dog” by making attacks on Afghanistan in an effort to take the public attention off his extra-marital affairs.

On the other hand, Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said the following:

“Well, I think the United States did exactly the right thing. We cannot allow a terrorist group to attack American embassies and do nothing.”

In the Senate, Republican majority leader Trent Lott said:

"Despite the current controversy, this Congress will vigorously support the president in full defense of America's interests throughout the world."

And Republican "neocon" Richard Perle wrote in the Sunday Times:

“For the first time since taking office in 1993, the Clinton administration has responded with some measure of seriousness to an act of terror against the United States. This has undoubtedly come as a surprise to Osama Bin Laden.”

Another Clinton lie was the absurd claim: “I worked hard to try and kill him (Bin Laden). I tried. I tried and failed.”

Eleven times he referenced former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and his book Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror. “All you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s findings,” Clinton said over and over.

But Clarke’s book says, in fact, that Clinton tried to convince U.S. military and intelligence agencies to kill bin Laden, and when those agencies refused to act, Clinton gave up. Quite the commander-in-chief!

Clarke describes a meeting of the National Security Council just after al Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole in late 2000. Neither the FBI nor the CIA would say that al Qaeda was behind the bombing. Clarke quotes the State Department’s Mike Sheehan saying in frustration, “What’s it going to take, Dick? Who the shit do they think attacked the Cole, fuckin’ Martians? The Pentagon brass won’t let Delta go get bin Laden. Hell they won’t even let the Air Force carpet bomb the place. Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?”

Recall that the Defense Department was under the control of Colin Powell and Madeline Albright ran the State Department. National Review’s Byron York sums it up this way:

“The bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the will to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the will to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror.”

Good blogging buddy Fetching Jen gets the last word:

“Where are the Clinton Lied, people died bumper stickers?”