GOP Can’t Handle the 9/11 Truth
By Joe Conason
The most amusing part of the confrontation between former President Bill Clinton and “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace came in the immediate aftermath, when the bullies of cable and their wingnut gang shrieked about the mean, crazy man picking on them.
Waah! Waah! Waah! they wailed. Clinton planned it! Clinton tricked Fox! Clinton melted down! Clinton is responsible for 9/11!
If Wallace didn’t want to provoke a tough answer, he shouldn’t have impersonated a tough interviewer. By insinuating that Clinton was somehow derelict in failing to eliminate Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, he reopened a can of worms that he should have left shut.
That incident wasn’t the first time that the Republican Party’s media servants, at Fox and elsewhere, have tried to falsify the history of American conflict with Al Qaeda for partisan purposes. The smearing began within months after 9/11.
As Clinton sarcastically pointed out, his conservative critics show little concern about the Bush administration’s failure to act against the jihadist enemy for eight months after taking office. Not only did they refuse to do anything, but they and their top aides refused to even talk about doing anything.
What the Wallace interview and its aftermath proved is that the Republicans can be relied upon to take the path of political convenience—and to blame someone else for it later. In full confidence that nobody will look up the facts, they love to claim that they were courageous, steadfast and farsighted, when they actually displayed the opposite qualities.
Consider Wallace’s claim that “when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, [Osama] bin Laden said, ‘I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops,’ ” which suggests that Clinton had “cut and run.” Actually, he resisted Republican demands for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia—where President George Herbert Walker Bush had sent them—precisely because he wanted to preserve American credibility.
The Senate Republican leadership openly sought to weaken him by cutting off funding for the mission, which Clinton managed to sustain for another six months after the disastrous Black Hawk Down firefight in Mogadishu. (Among those who counseled retreat was Sen. John McCain.) But now the Republicans want to blame Clinton for doing what they forced him to do in 1993.
Or consider Clinton’s missile strikes against suspected Al Qaeda installations in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, which the Republican politicians and the press ridiculed as “wag the dog” maneuvering in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Now those same frauds complain that he didn’t try to hit Osama bin Laden often enough, when all they cared about back then was the blue dress. Clinton’s recollection that he was mocked for his “obsession” with terrorism is accurate. Indeed, whenever he took resolute action, whether in Haiti or Kosovo or Sudan, the brave Republicans could be relied upon to behave unreliably.
Finally, consider Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s retort on the subject of which administration did more to thwart Al Qaeda. “What we did in the eight months,” she assured her pliant hosts at Fox News, “was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years.” That sentence must rank as one of the most brazen lies ever uttered by any Bush administration official, which is quite an achievement. She knows that the frequent actions and mobilizations of the Clinton years stand in sharp contrast to the mental vacation of the Bush era.
The hard truth is that Rice, the president and the vice president were warned repeatedly about the threat posed by Al Qaeda for months before 9/11. The departing Clinton officials warned them. So did former Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke and CIA Director George Tenet. But they dismissed the Clinton warnings, demoted Clarke, ignored Tenet and threw the Hart-Rudman report in the garbage. When the president asked Vice President Dick Cheney to convene a task force on terrorism, he literally did nothing until days before the attacks—and the president never bothered to find out why.
If Chris Wallace and his Fox News colleagues ever stop crying about being spanked by Clinton and want to prove that their network is indeed fair and balanced, here is a timely question they can pose to the president, the vice president or their old friend Tony Snow, the White House spokesman: When will the government release the secret joint testimony of Bush and Cheney before the 9/11 Commission?
Contributors
Links
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blog Archive
-
▼
2006
(1766)
-
▼
September
(220)
- How George Bush Admitted His War Crimes by Richar...
- 9/11 Commission Counsel: Bush Admin. May Have Cove...
- How Mark Foley Represents The Entire Republican Party
- Bush Backrub
- Foley pushed child porn bills, asked: "Do I make y...
- Our Allies in TWOT.
- Iraqi democracy, as taught by America
- Two critiques of string theory.by Jim Holt
- Ruth Conniff:The “In Crowd” Versus the “Populists”
- Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq By D...
- Why Bill Clinton Pushed Back
- I think I have seen everything. posted by unhappyc...
- Waterboarding DefinedDavid Corn writes that as the...
- Uh...Jack who?
- The "We Have to Win" Mythby Cenk UygurBob Woodward...
- All The President's Lies
- Photo Finish
- Condi Rice: Liar, Stupid, or Both?
- Oy Vey!!!
- GOP Can’t Handle the 9/11 TruthBy Joe ConasonThe m...
- Clinton vs. Bush: A foolish fight for the GOP to p...
- No title
- At war, in denial
- New News Is Bad News by Molly Ivins Noshing on ...
- Republicans Are Losers, So Make Sure They Lose
- A Case for Impeachmentby Elizabeth HoltzmanThe fra...
- Dems Propose Emergency Voting Legislation To Provi...
- Rice Falsely Claims Bush’s Pre-9/11 Anti-Terror Ef...
- Clinton vs. Fox's Chris Wallace: Condi Rice offers...
- Olbermann’s Special Comment: Are YOURS the actions...
- Republicans Give In To Bush, Betray Americaby Thom...
- Fascism at the Gate
- Due Process, Bulldozed - New York TimesThe New Yor...
- To the terrorists' level
- To the terrorists' level
- Demonizing ChávezLove him, hate him, fear him, rev...
- Challenging the Culture of Obedience by Ross C. An...
- If you want to know why the Media is fucked upby A...
- No title
- CIA Deal Reveals Shirker and Cipher by Les Payne ...
- Who wanted to "cut and run" from Somalia?by Glenn ...
- Teammate: "George Allen is a racist."WASHINGTON --...
- The Devil and George Bush
- Bill Clinton's Bipartisan Love-In Blows Up In His ...
- OFFICIALS WARY OF ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES
- "Just a comma"
- The Fox Conventions
- life cycle
- BUSH READING PROGRAM GETS FAILING GRADE
- Bush Seeks Immunity for Violating War Crimes Act
- The October Surprise
- Slippery Slope
- Axis of Sketchy Allies - New York TimesThe New Yor...
- Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat...
- Hugo Chávez InterviewBy Greg Palast, "Here the em...
- Orwell: Politics and the English LanguagePolitics ...
- The Bush administration vs. the founding American ...
- Clinton Takes On Fox NewsToday, President Bill Cli...
- French paper says bin Laden died in Pakistan Saudi...
- Insurance Horror Stories - New York TimesThe New Y...
- Is the GOP manipulating gas prices?
- GOP: Just Say No to Peace and Prosperityby mcjoan ...
- CHAVEZ TO DISCOUNT OIL FOR U.S. POOR
- When we pay our taxes, we will be paying for torture
- Marty Lederman: Senators Snatch Defeat From Jaws o...
- White House denies it threatened to bomb ally Paki...
- A Bad Bargain
- When Will the Pope Apologize for the Long History ...
- The abduction and torture of an innocent man
- Bill O'Reilly The Baron Munchausen Of Cable News?R...
- Torture in Iraq Worse Now Than Under Saddam
- Saudi Arabia/OPEC Establish A "Reasonable'" Price ...
- Where Torture Got Him
- When War is on the Horizon, Follow the Money
- From NBC's Mike ViqueiraThe House Judiciary Commit...
- Meltdown: Ice Cracks at North Pole
- Robert Rivkin: Bush's Paltry Excuse for Subverting...
- The Fix Isn't InDon't count on the architects of f...
- The long way homeCall us cynical, but we've long ...
- Bush's brain found lacking
- King of Pain - New York TimesThe New York TimesPri...
- Senator Dorgan to the Cheney/Halliburton Pentagon:...
- Quote of the DayNational Security Advisor Stephen ...
- Spiritual Niggers: Islam and the West
- The Swift Boat Connection to ABC's 9/11 Deception
- The Longer the War, The Larger the Lie
- LIEBERMAN PLEADS FOR UNITY AGAINST "BARBARIANS"
- Bush's Useful IdiotsSince 9/11, US liberals have s...
- WP: Missteps in Iraq rebuilding
- Earth to Wolf Blitzer
- New Air America Line-up Announced Amidst Reports o...
- Torture Impasse: The Content of Our CharacterJerem...
- Getting with "The Program": Clarity Through Obfusc...
- Molly Ivins : Remembering Ann Richards
- "We tortured an insane man."
- Progress or Regress? - New York TimesThe New York ...
- The Costs of Crying Wolf by Kirsten A. PowersIf Am...
- More Legal Trouble For Rove: Attorney Says He Targ...
- HITS OF THE 60'SIt was fun being a baby boomer .....
- Ohio congressman pleads guilty
-
▼
September
(220)
No comments:
Post a Comment