Clinton In Red-Faced Rage Over Suggestion He Spared Bin Ladin

Wow.

The man simply lies. It is a breathtakingly stupid and mendacious claim that rightwingers, as he calls us, actually opposed his weak single effort to get bin Ladin. Throughout the late nineties, I was apopleptic we weren't doing anything at all about bin Ladin. We wanted more action. Not less.

The pretext for this lie is that rightwingers, myself included, did in fact "question the timing" of his one attempt to kill bin Ladin. It occurred, coindentally enough, during the Lewinsky furor. On the eve of some testimony; can't remember which, and it really doesn't matter.

Conservatives did not object to this attack. We were enraged, however, that the man refused to attack bin Ladin at all until he was motivated to action by a threat to his own political safety. We were not angry he'd attacked bin Ladin; we were angry he hadn't attacked bin Ladin before (or after, actually; anyone remember a subsequent attack?).

We were angry that the man had let bin Ladin attack us with impunity for years until he saw it as a good move politically to finally launch a poorly-timed cruise missile at bin Ladin. He was animated to action not to save American lives, but to save his own fucking political life.

We strongly suspected he had any number of chances to kill bin Ladin before this. It turns out we were one-hundred percent right:

Mr. Clinton‘s administration had far more chances to kill Osama bin Laden than Mr. Bush has until this day… [W]e had at least eight to 10 chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999. And the government on all occasions decided that the information was not good enough to act…

It is absurd to even suggest that Republicans' beef with Clinton's feckless and vascillating anti-Al Qaeda efforts was that we craved even more fecklessness and vascillation.

Who the hell does this narcisstic sociopath think he's fooling? Does he really imagine he can sell the American people on the proposition that Republicans were actually less committed to dropping bombs on "brown people" than he was?

Let's say hypothetically this lying bastard is telling the truth. Let's say the Republicans really did want his candyass efforts to kill bin Ladin to be even more candyassed. What the hell is the Commander in Chief, then, doing bowing to political pressure to let a sworn enemy of the United States and mass-murderer of (then) hundreds of American lives live his life unmolested?

Is Clinton really claiming he let bin Ladin go on to murder three thousand people because he was afraid what Tom DeLay might say about him?

True fact: Clinton fought the Serbian War without an authorization for the use of military force from Congress and furthermore in direct violation of the War Powers Act. (Which is a law I think should usually be ignored; I point this out just to note Clinton knew how to go to war unilaterally when he wanted to.)

He can do all that to defend KLA terrorists in Serbia but he can't lift a finger to kill bin Ladin for fear of Rush Limbaugh mocking him?

Fact: Clinton didn't take any action against bin Ladin -- and I include that jackassed cruise missile strike, delayed to make sure all people were out of the target at the time of detonation, so as to make sure no innocent lives (or any lives, for that matter) where taken -- because he knew that such action could cause unrest in the Middle East, which could drive up the price of oil, which would dampen the US economy, which would, finally, lower his approval rating, the only thing the selfish sonofabitch ever gave a good goddamn about.

Either that, or he's the peace-at-any-cost bong-smoking hippie pussy we always suspected he was.

The man let bin Ladin go. The man let bin Ladin plot and scheme and recruit and ultimately murder 3000 innocent civilians. And he blames his negligence and malfeasance on the Republicans?

I didn't realize that Tom DeLay's position as House Majority Whip also made him Commander in Chief. I'll have to make that notation in my Con Law books for future reference.

And The Horse You Rode In On, Chief: Video of Osama bin Ladin caught in a Predator's camera.

The Predator was not armed, as most are now. But there was always the chance to arrange a quick missile attack.

Too bad Clinton wasn't in any legal jeopardy when this footage was taken (the Fall of 2000). Had he been in legal trouble, who knows, he might have actually have given the code to fire on bin Ladin and saved 3000 people.

I guess the real lesson of the nineties is that we didn't impeach Clinton frequently enough.

Watch that whole video. Clinton's rules? The CIA was not authorized to kill bin Ladin. Only to attempt to capture him.

As we have no Tomahawk missiles equipped with big butterfly nets, bin Ladin was let free, unharmed and alive, to continue plotting the murders of 3000.

PS: The whole interview is running this Sunday on FoxNews Sunday.

I wonder if Chris Wallace finally confronted him with the tape of the speech in which he confessed turning down Sudan's offer to extradite bin Ladin due to the fact we hadn't indicted him yet. Something spurred that anger. Maybe that was the trigger.

Update: Link to a transcript of his remarks -- and an actual audio recording -- here.

I think I remember him being asked once -- once! -- about this stunning admission. I think he just said he'd been misunderstood, and the very professional, very hard-hitting MSM interviewer took that as answering all possible questions.

Misunderstood? Well, say no more. Let's MoveOn.org, then.

posted by Ace at 07:38 PM

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