Clinton on Bush uranium line: 'Everybody makes mistakes'

MadMax, -- please... where did I say that?? Take a Valium or something.

We sat on Japan for exactly the reason you stated and for others as well. I never said we had made them "a part of our empire". We sit on them still... and in many respects they are glad of it. That's just my opinion, of course.

 

then i misunderstood...there's been some talk today about how our efforts in rebuilding Japan were merely imperalistic. i thought you were affirming that notion.

 

Nope. We did it because it was in our interest.
You're forgiven.

 

Look, you made a pronounced declaration designed to impact a dispute. You said it as if it were obvious fact. You obviously are not a close to being an expert on WWII or you would not ever said three instead of two. THAT is laughable. You purposely wrote what you wrote, just as Bush said what he said. But that does not mean he did not believe it was true, just as your misstep does not mean you were intentionally trying to stretch the truth or to flat out deceive. So, where does that put the conspiracy? We can blame the underlings I guess, the speecwriters or the policy hacks. What is the point? I'm think Clinton is appropriately saying get over it. We'll never know if these were miscues as a result of the policy decisionmakers seeing what they wanted to see or a calculated manipulation of the available data. Did Clinton have sex with Monica? Did Bill and Hillary do wrong in Whitewater? Get over it. Congress wasn't deceived, IMO. They saw plenty of information, including from outside the Pentagon's own intelligence group about Iraq.

 

Also no one advised me not to write that in my post. And the fact is we bombed Japan with Atomic weapons and killed thousands, the fact that it was two and not three doesn't change my point. That's a lot different from claiming a tyrant is purchasing uranium for making nuclear weapons based on false information that someone informed you may be false. And lastly, I took responsibility for my mistake. Something I thought you conservatives were all about, I guess not.

 

C'mon Hayes, that's just ridiculous. Bush mispronouncing words, forgetting that he'd been arrested for DWI (oopsie), and saying strategery is more akin to what pgrabriel did. This unarium thing is so far bigger and more devious. I can't believe you'd even remotely try to associate the two. But we all know America didn't quit after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor so don't quit with the spin!

 

Timing, what can you expect from those who align themselves with the person who they constantly called untrustworthy to prove their point. Yeah, Clinton's untrustworththy until he agrees with you I guess.

Also, anyone who justifies Bush's State of the Union mistake, by pointing out a mistake in a meaningless post on a sports fan web-site is clearly down to the point of grasping at straws. And for the last time, there is no conspiracy, we know what he said wasn't true, and we know that some of his advisors knew it wasn't true.

 

You just have to laugh sometimes man. Maybe Refman will be around soon to extoll Clinton's honesty on this issue. That will just make my day!

 

Here's a few of problems with the uranium speech thing.

1. We have George Tenet being pressured to include that stuff in the speech from someone in the whitehouse. They haven't said who yet.

2. We have Condi Rice saying that no one in the ntl. security council new about it... only to have her assistant come out and apologize saying he knew about it.

3. For whatever reason we supposedly don't know who wrote those actual lines in the speech, even though the whithouse communications director almost definitely knows.

4. It looks like everyone is taking the blame on this except the President. I know he didn't write the thing, but is he responsible for the words that come out of his mouth or isn't he? Is he some kind of ventriliquist dummy that other people are talking through? It's always someone elses fault. People have touted his leadership. Well I'd like him to take a leadership role on this. If it was truly a mistake he should come out and say the mistake was his. Then Bush should ask the communications director who put that line in the speech, and fire him. Yet instead of this we see first Tenet, then Condi's asst. trying to be the fall guys. It hasn't work, and has only made Condi Rice look like a liar, again. It also makes Bush look like he's incapable of speaking for himself.

 

Maybe I'm missing something...but it seems to me you're missing the point.

No one is extolling Clinton's honesty. But Clinton has been very consistent...throughout his administration and well past it...as to the type of intelligence he was given regarding the state of development of WMD's in Iraq in violation of UN mandates. That's all we're saying here. It has been alleged that Bush specifically lied about evidence to lead us to war...what history shows us is that Clinton had intelligence that led him to the very same conclusions during his administration. That tends to neutralize the idea that the current administration just made all this stuff up.

 

Maybe I'm missing something...but it seems to me you're missing the point Max.

Look towards the facts of the matter Max. You cannot dismiss Bush's lies about uranium on points that did not affect Clinton in 2000. There were no forgeries to hype in 2000. Clinton's argument is ridiculous.

Clinton touches on biological and chemical weapons... in some peculiar way in which I wonder if he's trying to compliment himself, ie: "maybe we got it all in the bombing". WTH?

More to the point, the claim that the administration exaggerated the threat that Iraq posed to the US won't go away simply b/c Clinton is now soliciting conservative favor. The Bushies claimed that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda. There's no proof of this. The Bushies claimed that Iraq was soliciting uranium from Africa. This is a lie. The NSC demanded that a semantically accurate statement be put in the SOTU. You should be outraged over such a Clintonism... I know that I am.

Again, it always has and always will be an argument posed by both lefties, righties and moderates that the ME is crucial to our economic interests, as well as our interests w/ respect to Israel. Trivia time: which US president said that we'd go to war to secure our interests re: the ME? It wasn't a crazy right wing ideologue.

Incidentally, waging war with Iraq might be the best thing to ever have happened concerning the middle east... but that doesn't mean that the administration didn't hype the case for war. Whether Clinton had made the case for war, or Bush had made the case for war... the problem is for all of us, per the CIA, per the House Intelligence Committe, per the Senate Intelligence Committee... that there was an attempt by the administration to make a case for war when they simply did not have the information that they claimed to have.

 

For Clinton, "lie" and "mistake" are the same thing.

 

You're the same people who berated him for blowing up an asprin factory, bombing Baghdad in 98, and shooting up tents in the desert with cruise missiles. You're being hypocrites. Just like conservatives are talking about how great it is to fight this war for humanitarian reasons (free the poor Iraqis!) when in fact conservatives berated Clinton for going to Somalia, for going to Kosovo, and going to Haiti for "humanitarian" reasons. THIS President berated him for it and now engages in the same nation building that he vowed to stop. Yes, 9/11 changed everything though and I'll believe the sincerity of that as soon as I see Newt Gingrich on O'Reilly apologizing on behalf of conservatives for their attacks on Clinton's efforts to become engaged in humanitarian situations around the world. C'mon man, recognize the inconsistency please.

 

Achebe -- you may be right...i may be missing the point. i was responding directly to timing who said he thought it funny that we were all putting so much stock in what clinton said now. my point is merely that clinton said all that back in 98, too.

you may be right...this war may have been overhyped...i don't know. but i'm pretty well convinced that iraq was seeking to develop wmd. and the spirit of all it was to go in there and knock those out through regime change. whether or not any one piece of evidence was misleading..i don't know. but clearly there is some evidence, which clinton even alluded to long before bush got in office, that iraq was developing wmd. if we're talking about war justification, that gets it done for me.

the lying is a separate issue...and if bush deliberately lied, he should face the consequences.

 

when you say "you're the same people," does that include me.

i did criticize the aspirin factory...absolutely i did. that was only because of the timing of the event, though. and i do criticize the fact that his administration made a big deal that day about changing the rules of the game...that pre-emptive strikes would be done to fight terrorism...that they were taking the fight to the terrorists...none of that ever happened, timing. i don't recall berating him for bombing baghdad or kosovo. i certainly questioned our role in somalia.

i personally feel that the united states did something good in freeing iraq from saddam. i feel good about that. i don't feel guilty for feeling good about, timing. i don't feel like i've been inconsistent because i feel good about that. i felt great watching the iraqis celebrate their freedom that day...their new hope. i'm hoping that you felt that way too on some level. it's hard for me to see happiness and not feel happy for people in response.

i acknowledge those inconsistencies from guys like newt. i don't acknowledge them for myself. you should know (and you can pass it on to glynch), i'm not newt gingrich.

as for nation-building..you answered your own question...9/11 changed the tone of this president's administration. if you're gonna carry on a war against terror in the wake of an attack, you're going to have to nation-build or you're going to end up with the same problems you had before. we can't walk away from places like afghanistan after we dismantle their terror-supporting governments.

 

I'm trying to figure out how you can declare this is devious? What evidence do you have that this was more devious than, for example, the neo-cons making their decision as their ideology logically concluded they would, that intervention was necessary? My point is that there is a comparison as both have made statements as facts to bring their audience to their same conclusions. Both were wrong. Both want to blame someone else, in one case their speechwriters, and in the other, their lack of speechwriters.

As for these continual ridiculous assertions of inconsistency; I was a Clinton supporter, am not a Republican, have in many instances declared Bush was 'stupid.' Hardly the flag waving republican defending Bush no matter what. Make a real point instead of this 'spin.'

BTW, Clinton was criticized for his handling of Somalia, not for the intervention. Bush Sr was actually the President that involved us in Somalia. And who criticized Clinton for Bosnia and Haiti? As Shaggy sings when he's blaring from the locals boomboxes down here, 'it wasn't me...'

As for Achebe, the intervention being the right thing to do does not excuse the Administration for misleading people intentionally, nor does it excuse them for using shoddy intel to make decisions if they knew it was suspect or not. It also, however, does not make the intervention wrong either.

 

I guess the difference between you and me on this is that I thought that the weapons inspectors should be allowed to do their job until they found something or cleared the regime of wrongdoing. Then, the administration started claiming that there were thousands of gallons of chemical and/or biological weapons. I personally thought that the intelligence should have been given to the weapons inspectors to check out (seeing as that is why they were there). Then, in the SOU, Bush claims that Iraq recently tried to buy weapons grade uranium and this pushed me over the edge. At that point I supported the war and started praying that our troops would be safe from the massive stockpiles of weapons.

I feel like I have been duped and that the wool was pulled over my eyes so that I would be OK with this war. I realize that other politicians lie and mislead too, but this is a (lie, deception, fib, misstatement, exaggeration, whatever) that got people to support a preemptive strike. That, IMO, is a much worse deception than the one our former president was nearly crucified for.

Don't get me wrong, I am glad that Saddam is no longer in power, and I wish only good things for the Iraqui people and hope that they have good luck in rebuilding their country. Unfortunately, I believe that in the long term, we are going to pay for this action with the blood of our innocent civilians down the line. We have drummed up support for our enemy from a number of corners of the world and they are fairly justified in accusing us of imperialistically taking over a country rich in oil in order to establish a government more friendly to our corporations.

This was a reckless, unjustified war that is going to cause more Americans to lose their lives.

 

Andymoon,

I have one problem with your reasoning that this will only make "them" more angry. For crissakes, they rammed 2 jetliners into the Trade Centers and I doubt they did it out of love for us. We are going to be hated no matter what we do.

As there are no levels of sin, there are no levels of hatred. So by your rationale, if we wouldn't have invaded, their anger would've been softened slightly and they would decide to scale back their hostilities? Not going to happen. We did the right thing. There were no Machivellian lies coming from the Bush admin. They labored under the credo "better safe than sorry." It is far better thing that we overthrow Saddam and made for sure there were no WMD than waiting around for the Inspector Clouseaus of the UN to find them.

I'm tired of our foreign policy being determined by trying not to "inflame the Arab street." I'm tired of being told that we can't use our strength to defend ourselves. I'm tired of being told that we are wrong, when we do so much right in this world.

 

How many times does it have to be pointed out that there was no Iraqui involvement whatsoever in 9/11? There are no substantiated claims that Saddam had any part AT ALL in those attacks. We already invaded and kicked the Al Quaeda a$$es in Afghanistan for their involvement in hiding terrorists.

No matter what you may think of the UN weapons inspectors, they had a mandate: find any WMDs and make sure that the terms from 1991 was carried out. They were attempting to do their jobs until our President kicked them out because he claimed that we were in imminent danger of being attacked by WMDs and invaded. Now that the WMDs are nonexistant, they just want to say that the regime change was justified because of Saddam's behavior.

I have no problem with "better safe than sorry," but let me remind you that the weapons inspectors could have verified that there were no WMDs in Iraq. If we had given the weapons inspectors our intelligence (good intelligence, that is), they would have been able to find any program or weapon prohibited by the GWI cease fire. Our intelligence was hazy, so the administration exaggerated their terms, gave statements that are "technically true" but misleading as hell, and fanned the fires of public opinion, using 9/11 to manipulate us into supporting this action.

I don't know where you get your news about our foreign policy, but what evidence can you cite from recent years to support the "right" we do in this world? We contribute less than 1% of our GDP to worldwide charitable efforts, we have forced a regime of prohibition on the world, we have contributed to civil wars and tyrants across the globe, and now we have led an unprovoked attack on a country that has a resource that we consume more of than any other country in the world.

 

What do you call the billions in foreign food aid we send to all these Third World countries? What about the billions we are going to piss away in Africa to try to help those folks? Who says we have to give more of our money away to third world ****holes that don't deserve it and whose leadership would squander it? I think we should give less than 1% of our GDP.

I wish you didn't see us as an evil, imperialistic bully. We must do what is neccessary to preserve our vital national interests. In the Cold War, we had to support anti-communist tyrants. It was ugly, but a sad fact of life. It's attitudes like that which have led to the handicapping of our CIA by banning assassinations and coup de tats which could change governments to favor our interests. What is so wrong with having a government friendly to us? So what if we have to off a few folks? We are the supreme power in the world, power is all that matters and if you get our way, in the words of Ratt, "we'll knock you on your shell."

And on the subject of the inspectors, these assholes couldn't have found water in the ocean. They were constantly monitored and harassed by Saddam's secret police, so there was no way that they could even think of accomplishing their mission. They were buffoons who were lucky to even be able to tie their own shoelaces, much less find sneaky WMD in Texas-size Iraq.

Andymoon, if their WMD were "nonexistent," why did we need the inspectors? The damned Iraqis have the singular distinction of being the only nation in the Middle East to my knowledge to use WMD in war.

Lastly, did you forget the terrorist training camp that was found near Baghdad that had a fuselage of a jetliner for training? And do you forget that the Iraqi intelligence service trained, equipped and planned the attack on Bush 41, showing that they were capable and willing of both training and assisting terrorists.