Clinton made an agreement of OF HIS OWN FREE WILL with Wallace to have 50% of the interview on the charity deal and 50% ON ANYTHING ELSE Wallace wanted to ask. Period. If Clinton was frustrated by his treatment on Fox News, or what movie ABC News showed on their network, or what question Wallace did or didn’t ask Rumsfeld in the past, he had no business taking it out on Wallace in that way, personally insulting him and demeaning him, and physically jabbing his knee. (Wallace should have slapped his hand away and yelled at him to back off by the way.)

Clinton basically cheated on the deal. He made a deal to go on air and be okay with getting asked whatever Wallace wanted (within reason of course), and that’s what Wallace did. Wallace held up his end of the bargain, and asked a tough but legitimate question, but certainly no tougher than most questions asked of politicians everywhere everyday. And also topical, due to Clinton making news recently about his displeasure about the 9/11 movie. But Clinton put on a sneaky dishonest act like Wallace was ambushing him and going outside the bounds of their agreement, doing “a conservative hit job” on him.

This is not a way to act towards journalists if you don’t like their questions. The deal in a democracy is that as a politician you answer tough but legitimate question to the best of your ability – after all hard questions are an opportunity to set the record straight and should be actually welcomed. There are ways to answer them without getting all personally insulting and demeaning to the interviewer. I mean, if this is how it’s played, does Chris Wallace then get to rant and rave and jab Clinton in the knee and yell about how Clinton is just a shill for Hillary if Wallace doesn’t like Clinton’s answer? No. That’s not how reasonable adults act, especially ex-Presidents.

Instead Clinton acted more like a street punk than an ex-president. Roger Ailes was right in saying that engaging in personal bullying towards a reporter if you don’t like the question has a chilling affect on journalism, as it is a way of intimidating journalists into being careful about asking the hard questions that need to be asked. I’m very disappointed by Clinton’s behaviour. I guess the new Dems have succeeded finally in brainwashing him as well.

When was the last time that a FOX reporter put a Bush official on the spot for failing to catch bin Laden? God knows sycophants like Brit Hume have had plenty of exclusive interviews. I will go out on a limb and say never.

Sorry, that limb has snapped. I won’t even broaden the question to “a FOX reporter.” I’ll confine it to Chris Wallace!

On Charlie Rose tonight, he read bits of a transcript of a show of his from March 2004. He had Rumsfeld on, and started the interview by questioning him about the lack of commitment to Al Qaeda before 9/11 (it was the week of Richard Clarke’s “I failed you…Your government failed you” speech).

“Now, Clarke took personal responsibility and apologized to the families of the victims of that terrible day…I wondered, do you think it would be appropriate for someone in the administration, from the president on down, to consider making a similar statement to the families?”

“I just want to press this a little bit more to ask you, though. I think what the families said they liked so much; what they were gratified to hear from Clarke was a statement, not just of sorrow but of personal responsibility…Do you think the president should do the same?”

“What do you make of his basic charge that pre-9/11 that this government, the Bush administration largely ignored the threat from al Qaeda?”

Then they put up a quote from the 9/11 Commission:

“He [Rumsfeld] did not recall any particular counterterrorism issue that engaged his attention before 9/11 other than the development of the Predator unmanned aircraft system for possible use against bin Laden. He said the DOD,” the Department of Defense, “before 9/11 was not organized or trained adequately to deal with asymmetric threats.”

Wallace: “Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority.”

Later, this exchange: “But looking back, sir, and I understand this is 20/20 hindsight, it’s more than an individual manhunt. I mean—what you ended up doing in the end was going after al Qaeda where it lived.”

SEC. RUMSFELD: Which is the only way to do it, in my view. I think you simply have to go out—
MR. WALLACE: —pre-9/11 should you have been thinking more about that?

Yeah he did. Eveything you said above points to his lie.

Since the Democrats have long ago forgotten what constitutes a lie, let me remind you that a lie is saying something that you know not to be true. What Wallace said was, “There’s a new book out, I suspect you’ve already read, called The Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said, I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops.”

So what part is the lie? What part of that segment of the question is not true, and Wallace knows it’s not true?

“There’s a new book out called The Looming Tower…” True. The book says that when Clinton pulled the troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said it was a sign of weakness. True.

So where’s the lie again?

You said the lie was that he was simpifying the Somalia situation in a way that blamed Commander-in-Chief Clinton (and not the out-of-power minority Republicans) for the Somalia pullout. Then you admit that “Clinton is at fault” (although not entirely in your view), but somehow it’s dishonest for a journalist to ask a question about that fault? The technical term for that is “koooky-talk.”

But let’s go with that. If it is Wallace’s duty to be absolutely specific in his questions to Clinton (of course, these rules wouldn’t apply, say, to David Gregory or Helen Thomas asking a question of Bush), then I say we give it another go and Wallace can ask:

“There’s a new book out, I suspect you’ve already read, called The Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you sent US troops back into Somalia in 1993 to be led by the UN, in opposition to the policy of President GHW Bush, and then when your Defense Secretary neglected to approve tank support asked for by the Rangers and approved by Colin Powell for the “Black Hawk Down” mission, and then when that mission turned into a disaster which killed 18 men partly because of that lack of tank support, and then when you announced four days later that you would pull all US troops out in six months, over the objections of some Congressmen from both sides of the aisle who had wanted the soldiers back home prior to the disaster at Moghadishu because their humanitarian mission had already been accomplished, and who wanted them back sooner after the disater which would’ve been avoided had you stuck with Bush’s policy, that pullout of US troops led bin Laden to say, I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops.”

Clinton would’ve loved that, right? Let’s just agree that it behooves Clinton to let simplifications of Somalia just slide.

Mac Buckets Says:

Who was the Commander-in-Chief? Who controlled Congress? I’ve heard so much about “The buck stops here” from you guys in the last couple of years! I thought you really believed it!

Did I say Clinton was absolved of blame? Why do you insist on maing up positions and saying I take them? Clinton is at fault. But he’s not entirely at fault. Everyone in gov’t wanted to get out after that and so we did. The issue is its being rewritten so that Clinton acted like a pussy demcrat president and cut and ran after the first sign of bloodshed and thats why OBL attacked us. Maybe you’re too smart to fall for the bullshit but 95% of the country isn’t that smart and they do believe this shit.

Where was the long list of in-power Democrats saying that we should stay in Somalia after Black Hawk Down, that we couldn’t be frightened off? Well, there weren’t many, if any, Democrats saying that. Why not? Because there was absolutely no reason for US soldiers to be in Somalia at all, and everyone in Washington outside the Oval Office knew it.

No kidding. Does this change in any way what Wallace was doing? He wasn’t asking about everyone in and out of the Oval Office was he? He was being very narrow in focus.

Anyway, the point is really moot. Clinton got his six month pullout, and it still had the effect on bin Laden that Wallace described. So Wallace still didn’t lie.

Yeah he did. Eveything you said above points to his lie. His framing of the question is important. You can’t let the facts of the world get him off the hook for asking a leading question that implies guilt for actions you yourself said weren’t entirely of Clintons doing.

The need to answer these questions is in no way obviated by the fact that some of the president’s harshest critics, from Newt Gingrich to Gary Bauer, rushed to praise the military action.

Your own post bears my point out.

All that cut-and-pasting, Rusty, and all you come up with is the media talking about Wag the Dog (remember, I already told you this was media-driven) and Sen. Dan Coats, who was one of the two Republicans who floated that notion after the attempt on bin Laden, and the only one who held onto the view for more than a day.

Then you have Bush 41, Gingrich, Bauer (we could add dozens more) GOP leaders rejecting Wag the Dog and supporting Bill Clinton.

Devastating.

Wallace is saying Bin Laden saw weakness because we pulled out and he’s implying Clinton is the reason for Bin Laden thinking that. Clinton is the reason for the pullout, not the republicans who screamed for pullout.

Who was the Commander-in-Chief? Who controlled Congress? I’ve heard so much about “The buck stops here” from you guys in the last couple of years! I thought you really believed it!

Of course, you are being dishonest when you say that the Republicans should be blamed. Republicans were out of the Oval Office, they were outnumbered 56-44 in the Senate and 258-176 in the House…but THEY were “the reason for the pullout?” Weak.

Where was the long list of in-power Democrats saying that we should stay in Somalia after Black Hawk Down, that we couldn’t be frightened off? Well, there weren’t many, if any, Democrats saying that. Why not? Because there was absolutely no reason for US soldiers to be in Somalia at all, and everyone in Washington outside the Oval Office knew it.

The bigger sin wasn’t when we got out of Somalia, but why we were there to be humiliated in the first place. The fact that our troops were still there at all was a UN con-job on Clinton by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, that we had to pull out in disgrace at all was due to Clinton and Les Aspin’s infamous bungling and under-support of the troops.

In retrospect, the correct answer was found in the fact that Congress was drawing up Resolutions about withdrawing from Somalia entirely before Moghadishu, because the mission had been completed, whereby we could’ve saved ourselves the humiliation that encouraged bin Laden.

Anyway, the point is really moot. Clinton got his six month pullout, and it still had the effect on bin Laden that Wallace described. So Wallace still didn’t lie.

You argue like Hitchens.

Hmmm. Indeed he does. The arrogance, the weak arguments, the narcissism…if we could smell the stench of whisky mingled with poor hygiene through the internet, one might even go so far as to say he is Hitchens.

Thankfully, we can not.

The first is—and I think this is an amazing figure—36 percent of Americans believe that the Monica Lewinsky scandal had something to do with the president’s action to strike in Afghanistan and the—the Sudan. That is an amazingly high percentage.

What’s really amazing is that that percentage hasn’t changed at all. The rabid Bush lovers of today are still the rabid Clinton haters of yesterday—they haven’t budged, but no one else in America will buy their bullshit, either.

Really, boo fucking hoo

Tim must be riled…he usually doesn’t stoop to the kind of language we in the peanut gallery use.

Washington Times
October 5, 1998

Former President George Bush said yesterday that scandal distracting the Clinton presidency is hurting America’s ability to deal effectively with foreign crises that threaten U.S. security.

“It’s hard to separate the two crises,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Washington Times.

.....

It’s the speculation about Mr. Clinton’s motives that hurts U.S. interests, he said.

“For example, after the [Aug. 20] counterterrorism action that was taken against camps in Afghanistan and the building in the Sudan, there was this ‘Wag the Dog’ reference,” Mr. Bush said, citing the movie in which a U.S. president, portrayed by Dustin Hoffman, creates a phony war to distract public attention from a sex scandal enveloping his administration.

“I don’t happen to agree with that,” Mr. Bush said of “Wag the Dog” comparisons. “I don’t see how the Defense Department and the Joint Chiefs and others would go along with such a thing.”

....

“But the very fact that it is debated sends a message to some of these other countries that is counterproductive for the United States. I’m not buying into that scenario personally, but my point is that [the Lewinsky scandal] caused that kind of question to be raised. That is not good for us.”

Washington Post
August 23, 1998
Andrew Krepinevich

While the president’s decision to retaliate against terrorism is clearly justified based upon the evidence at hand, the propriety of this course of action is undermined by doubts as to the motives for the strikes, coming so close to the president’s Monday night scandal speech, and the continuing scandal coverage on the front pages of the national press.

It has been noted that after the antiterrorist military strikes, the president did not shy away from using the opportunity to appear “presidential,” giving two speeches on the matter, one after flying back dramatically to Washington from his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. These actions may have been appropriate. Yet a president who lacks credibility must be careful not to present even the appearance that he may be acting out of a personal, rather than a public, interest.

Washington Times
August 21, 1998
Wesley Pruden

A few politicians, privately contemptuous, ran for the nearest camera to make cheap and insincere rah-rah for the lobbing of a few missiles, as if this were the morning after Pearl Harbor or Omaha Beach, to attempt to burnish their bona fides. One who didn’t was Arlen Specter, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, who was careful but honest. “Let’s give the president the benefit of the doubt,” he said. Then he gave Mr. Clinton the benefit of his doubts.

“I think we have to raise certain concerns and look for evidence because those questions will be raised around the world. They’re being raised around the world as we speak.”

Yes, they are. Bill Clinton insisted on taking enough rope to hang himself, and yesterday he was in full flight from the gallows.

O’Reilly Factor
October 17, 1998

eased Segment – Missile Attack. Was the missile attack on the factory in the Sudan last August a botched mission?
Graphic – Botched Mission. Some journalists are saying yes.
Studio Interview – Sheryl McCarthy, “Newsday” Columnist, said the missile attack on the factory in the Sudan appears like a botched mission. McCarthy said there was evidence brought by the Human Right’s Group that it was a bogus attack. McCarthy said if you’ve watched “Wag The Dog”, and “Primary Colors” it is hard not to make that connection.
Visual – Bombed Factory In Sudan. McCarthy said the factory was bombed on the pretense that it was making chemical weapons, and as it turned out, it was a pharmaceutical plant that was making medicine for TB and veterinarian medicines. One person was killed, and several others injured. McCarthy said it was done on flimsy evidence.

Hardball
August 21, 1998

Professor LARRY SABATO (University of Virginia; “Dirty Little Secrets”): Yeah, Chris, two things strike me about it. The first is—and I think this is an amazing figure—36 percent of Americans believe that the Monica Lewinsky scandal had something to do with the president’s action to strike in Afghanistan and the—the Sudan. That is an amazingly high percentage. That’s a product of cynicism, and it’s cynicism that Bill Clinton has helped to create and to stoke. He is, after all, a self-certified liar now.

The Hill
September 23, 1998
David Silverberg

“Wag the Dog” is now more than a fictional movie depicting a president facing a sex scandal ordering trumped-up military moves in an effort to divert attention from his political troubles. It has become a veritable syndrome. The necessity of any military move in a time of political troubles will be suspect, particularly from a president who has been proven to be an emphatic, direct liar.

This could already be seen in the wake of August’s Tomahawk missile attacks against sites in Afghanstan and Sudan. Though the initial attacks on American embassies that prompted the cruise missile response were well-documented and irrefutable, numberous questions were raised about the political motivations of the counter-attack, so much so that intelligence officials went to extraordinary lengths to reveal the evidence that led them to pick those particular targets.

New York Post
September 21, 1998
editorial

Well, the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan to destroy international terrorism didn’t manage to hold off the growing list of critics calling for Bill Clinton’s removal from office. Nor, apparently, did his irresponsible declaration of a world economic crisis. Or his bewildering offhand warning of a humanitarian crisis in Kosovo.

Is there another dog left for this president to wag? You bet!
New York Post
Andrea Peyser
August 22, 1998

And so, the burning question will always remain: On the day Monica Lewinsky was testifying before a grand jury, did the president of the United States send innocent people into harm’s way for the ugly purpose of changing the subject of national discourse from oral sex and semen-stained dresses to battle scars and blood-stained uniforms?

New York Post
Deborah Orin
August 23, 1998

ONLY DEMS TRUST BILL’S MOTIVES: POLL

Only a majority of Democrats believe President Clinton launched missile strikes primarily to act against terrorism – while everyone else is more likely to suspect a case of “the tail wagging the dog,” a new Post Poll shows.

New York Post
Arianna Huffington
August 25, 1998

FORTY percent of Americans surveyed by Newsweek felt that the U.S. military attacks against terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan were a diversion. Whether or not they were, this is a staggering vote of no confidence in the Commander in Chief.

There are many questions President Clinton must answer before the nation can unequivocally accept the wisdom of these particular strikes against these particular targets on that particular day. The need to answer these questions is in no way obviated by the fact that some of the president’s harshest critics, from Newt Gingrich to Gary Bauer, rushed to praise the military action.
New York Post
August 24, 1998
letters to the editor
BOMBING THE TERRORISTS -STRONG STANCE OR CLEVER DANCE?

Just when you thought that Kenneth Starr’s four-year investigation was a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money, comes the payoff – an uncharacteristically swift and decisive bombing of suspected terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan. The connection is unmistakable.

But if this is what it took to finally get Clinton to do something that remotely resembles executing his presidential duties, my hat’s off to the cast and crew of “The Monica Lewinsky Story.”Josh GreenbergerBrooklyn

So, what else is new? Bill Clinton is desperate. Didn’t many of us know that when Clinton hit the lowest point of his depravity, he’d attack one of these terrorist countries, to suit his own agenda?

If Americans accept this as an act of patriotism on the part of this president, this once great country deserves the worst of what is yet to come.Sal PediEastchester (via e-mail)

I am absolutely outraged that Bill Clinton is dropping bombs in order to deflect attention from the bombs being dropped about him the same day by Monica Lewinsky.

He is as dangerous as a cornered dog and will stop at nothing to save his own skin. We must throw this liar out of the White House before he gets us into a global war the next time he needs a distraction from his disgusting behavior.Mara KurtzManhattan

(around 20 other emails and letters published in that article mostly attacking Clinton)

Cal Thomas
August 25, 1998

Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., was one of the few brave enough to say what others were thinking. Coats said he thought about the cruise-missile attack “long and hard,” and he concluded that “once the president has deceived the American people and broken the bond of trust, one wonders about his motives.”

That is the point made by a number of America’s critics around the world. How can this president be believed? How can we know whether his resolve is genuine or just more political manipulation? We want to believe him because he is the president, but why should we?

The Times Union (Albany, NY)
August 21, 1998

But a strong Clinton critic outside Congress, conservative politician and Reagan administration official Oliver L. North, said, ‘’Given what we know about this commander-in-chief, one has to wonder if the theme song for this operation comes from the score of ‘Braveheart’ or ‘Wag the Dog.’ ‘’

Jonah Goldberg
National Review 5/5/99
http://www.nationalreview.com/.....50599.html

I refused to believe at the time that Clinton wagged the dog; not so much because I give him any credit, but because I gave the armed forces and intelligence community the benefit of the doubt. Now, the Clinton Justice Department says it won�t fight the suit by the Saudi owner, because to do so would jeopardize American intelligence assets.

This is totally unacceptable and outrageous. At the time the administration insisted that the proof would be forthcoming and conclusive. The White House insisted, on the record, that the evidence was so overwhelming that the plant produced VX nerve gas that critics would be humiliated. They have since revised downward these claims at every opportunity. Christopher Hitchens and Seymour Hersh, among others, have written that Clinton did indeed wag the dog.

Now, it seems reasonable to me that the President of the United States should be required to show some proof that his action was warranted. If the proof was overwhelming, a little slice couldn�t cause more harm than leaving the accusation unchallenged. The charge being bandied about is that the President of the United States committed an act of war on an innocent nation as a fig leaf for his personal sins. For the United States government to allow that (credible) assertion to stand unchallenged is a smear to the good name of the United States, or a cover-up of a High Crime. It is disgusting either way.

Byron York
National Review 12/17/01
http://www.nationalreview.com/.....12901.html

Instead of striking a strong blow against terrorism, the action set off a howling debate about Clinton’s motives. The president ordered the action three days after appearing before the grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair, and Clinton’s critics accused him of using military action to change the subject from the sex-and-perjury scandal — the so-called “wag the dog” strategy. Some of Clinton’s allies, suspecting the same thing, remained silent. Even some of those who, after briefings by administration officials, publicly defended the strikes privately questioned Clinton’s decision.

I don’t understand you at all. You aren’t dumb yet you say shit like this.

He likes pie.

I mean, Sock Puppet whined six or seven times in his crazy rant that Wallace “lied” and was spreading “fictitious” “FOX propaganda”—without once mentioning what any of those lies were! What were the lies in that question?

Are you saying that Wallace wasn’t implying that Clinton wanted to cut and run immediately after the Black Hawk Down incident.

First, Wallace never said “after Black Hawk Down” although many others in the mainstream media have!

I never said he did. I said that. I was using the name of the movie to tellyou what incident I was talking about. I could have said Mogadishu, I could have said Somalia, I chose Black Hawk Down. You argue like Hitchens. That was completely irrelevant but you used it as a gotcha. Weak dude, weak.

Wallace even gave Clinton the “hindsught is 20-20” out—it’s not like he was badgering the guy.

Saying ‘hindsight is 20/20’ is setting you up for ‘its your fault’. There would be no reason to say that if you weren’t implying fault.

Second, you’re absolutely wrong about the pullout order. The disaster happened October 3, 1993— Clinton announced that we would begin pulling out troops FOUR DAYS later and set a timeline for all American troops to be withdrawn.

To Clinton’s point which is backed up by statements made by republicans at that time, they wanted him to pull out IMMEDIATELY. He had to beg Congress to let the boys stay until he could coordinate with the UN.

Third, none of that has anything to do with bin Laden’s reaction to it—declaring that the US was weak and would run after casualties—which is, of course, the point of mentioning the incident by Wallace.

I don’t understand you at all. You aren’t dumb yet you say shit like this. Wallace is saying Bin Laden saw weakness because we pulled out and he’s implying Clinton is the reason for Bin Laden thinking that. Clinton is the reason for the pullout, not the republicans who screamed for pullout. Its called revisionist history, you do it in small moves so its not so obvious and so that asshats like you swallow it easier. This interview (which was supposed to be about something else) was a part of the ‘blame Clinton’ narrative being pushed by the right. Its an election strategy, its not a search for truth.