Next song! Next song!
Bill Clinton on Bush uranium line: ‘Everybody makes mistakes’
“You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president. You can’t make as many calls as you have to make without messing up. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now.”
“People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.”
-Bill Clinton from a Larry King interview
Now can we move along please? I am at the point now that I don’t care who is right or wrong or how wrong this person is, I just want to have constructive, productive conversations as to what we should do moving forward. And for the strict Democrats out there, please concentrate your efforts on finding someone to represent your party in the upcoming elections. I try to be as much in the center as I can, and I am dissatisfied with all the options I have seen for the Democratic representatives for president.
If you have something constructive to say, please comment, if you are a zealot of any kind, please go have a refreshing beverage.
Justin Said,
July 23, 2003 @ 1:43 pm
I still care who’s right and who’s wrong, and I care who lied, and I care about how much the president knew.
This isn’t some small deal, I don’t think. The president went out and made his case to the country for deposing a dictator. No one forced him to take that route, but that’s the route he took. And, if he lied, it’s important. If the intelligence was wrong, that’s also important. If the communications between the various, important agencies of the executive branch aren’t up to par, I think that’s important, too. I think all of those things are important to how we proceed and what we do next. They are, at least, important in assuring that next January the president doesn’t announce that Lesotho has The Bomb, and We Have Proof.
People were saying the same thing during Watergate. “Okay, some people took responsibility. Let’s move on, now. Let’s not turn this into a witch hunt.” But there’s more to find out. There was a bigger witch. I think Republicans are just afraid of what we might find if we keep digging. (And by we, I don’t mean Democrats. I’m not a Democrat. I mean “we” as in “the American people, to whom this lie was told.”)
Clinton knows a thing or two about fucking up in the White House, but I don’t think this stamp of approval from a Democrat means we should all pack our things and go home. Maybe that’s just presidential sympathy. I have no such sympathy. If you want this job, you’re going to be scrutinized and you’re going to be held accountable. Anyone who doesn’t like it can go fish.
As for there not being any viable presidential candidates, John Kerry has a lot more experience in foreign relations and national security than Bush did four years ago. Bush was a stuffed shirt four years ago. He was the governor of Texas, who is maybe the fourth or fifth most powerful elected official in the state of Texas. Dean was a governor for 12 years. Kerry was a Lt. Gov and has been a Senator for going on 20 years. Graham was governor of Florida for a while, and has been in the Senate for a while. They’ve all got more impressive resumes than the president had four years ago.
As a centrist, I would have thought you’d like John Kerry. He’s talking up the left now, but he’s really someone who’s governed and voted evenly. He has the advantage of letting Teddy Kennedy do all the really liberal stuff and draw fire from the right.
John Edwards seems like an even-headed guy too.
Chris Said,
July 23, 2003 @ 2:15 pm
I like Howard Dean. Socially progressive and fiscally conservative is the ideal combination for me. I generally favor governors over Senators, because governors actually have to run things, not just opine about them and cut deals. Dean was in a turnaround situation in Vermont and did a good job with it. He knows how to balance a budget. Running against Bush as a balanced-budget candidate would be hilarious, and would likely give the GOP fits. Dean isn’t embarrassed about his progressive/Democratic ideals. He’s articulate and he’s got a touch of that McCainesque fire to him. Dean’s going to catch some hell from the anti-gun folks, because he thinks Federal gun laws should be enforced and additional gun control should happen at the state level. I don’t think that’s unreasonable … Wyoming and Connecticut probably need different approaches. It’s just too bad he’s from Vermont. America hates smartypants yankees. If he was from Kansas I think he’d be the ideal candidate.
deezo feezo Said,
July 23, 2003 @ 2:19 pm
Look at the jugz on that statue man!!!!
–Dizzil Fizzil
“Limo tint, rollin’ deep like the President
See, I don’t go to clubs, I never chase a b****
I’m here to bang that gangsta s*** to the apocalypse”
jarodius Said,
July 23, 2003 @ 3:43 pm
I like Dean too. But since I live in Idaho, the MOST conservative state, my vote doesn’t count for two piles of rotten potatoes on I-84… just outside Boise. You know, that really flat spot just before the mountains. Right. And I have been to Vermont. Good ol’ Wacky Vermont. Home of NO road-side billboards and miles of naturally dyed wool yarn. We didn’t take any pictures, we just bought a post card, cause all the pictures look like that anyway.
I am trying to convince my fiance (only 1 week left, so all the LADIES out there who want a piece better get in the long line, if you know what I mean) to go help the Democrats who have a HQ about 3 blocks from our house. Yes, she will be laughed at by the locals, but that is OK. And then she is really a Greeney (Member of the Green Party - although not a real “member”). But she knows more will be done for the greenies with a democrat in office than one of those gun-carrying liars - sorry, I mean rebuplicans.
So, Bush and Iraq, little problem there huh? And now we should drop it. Hmmm. I am thinking that the growing numbers of dead people whose blood has been spilled in the Iraqi desert might have a thing or two to say about dropping it. How many of our own soldiers died thinking about how that evil Saddam tried to buy Uranium from those mysterious Africans. Ok, probably none really. They were too busy thinking about how they would never see the faces of their loved ones again. Ah, the price of mis-communication between the CIA and the president. Well, I guess if George and Bill can live with it, I can too. Let’s have some McDonalds on the way home from WalMart and see what’s on the TV tonight.
I smell a zealot! ZEALOT!!!! Die like the rest of them!!!
Mike Said,
July 24, 2003 @ 8:25 am
i’m not going to try to improve upon justin’s eloquent stating of the facts. i will, however, refer you to howard dean & his questions to mr. bush. all i ask is that you don’t come back w/the argument that there are other problems in the country that require attention because if we can’t trust our own government not to mislead us, then we’re all in the same handbasket.
FilteringCraig Said,
July 24, 2003 @ 8:41 am
Is this something new? Have we ever been able to trust the government not to mislead us in our lifetime?
Clinton bombed an aspirin factory in Iraq because of faulty intelligence and then basically said my bad. This isn’t Republican or Democrat. It isn’t anything new.
There isn’t anything impeachable here. Until you prove that Bush and his crew forged documents, you just have a case of bad judgement. Without anything impeachable, this just becomes another phase of the election cycle, as Mister Crunchy called it yesterday.
The way I see it, we have one problem right now and it isn’t “How did we get to Iraq in the first place and was it justified?” Our problem today is that we are there, we apparently don’t have an agenda to “finish” anything and we can’t bring out troops home. All this other stuff is political bullshit until we get these other things figured out.
Grandstanding for the next presidential election before we get this situation under control is very selfish. I didn’t want to go into Iraq either. I didn’t see the urgency. We can’t just up and pull out now, so let’s figure out what we are going to do. Take care of the rest in the next election.
What do you think we should do in Iraq to get us out of there? And if you say we should just pull out, I will void your answer for being unrealistically utopian.
Mike Said,
July 24, 2003 @ 9:11 am
since we rushed into this blindly w/o the blessing of NATO or the UN, i’d say we’re screwed. the normal plan would be to have a UN force stay there until the iraqi coalition gov’t could take hold. two problems w/that: 1) we told the UN to f’off when they asked us to hold on invading iraq. now, no one will help & send troops. india has balked. the uk may string up blair if he gets any further up dubya’s ass. right now it appears we are hanging our hopes of help on a group of polish-led soldiers. polish!! that about sums up this entire operation. we’re on our own. 2) the iraqi coalition gov’t will never last due to the religious conflict in the area. the gov’t is made up of Arabs, Kurds, Christians and Turkmens who haven’t had the best history of getting along.
so, we’re left w/a situation where no one will help us out, so we can’t take some of the troops home. the people in the country can’t get along. we’re like a single mom. the dad won’t help & the kids are at each other’s throats.
Justin Said,
July 24, 2003 @ 10:55 am
I’d like to think that we’d have the same level of interest in the honesty of our president and the veracity of his intelligence-gathering and analysis agencies even if Howard Dean and John Kerry weren’t screaming bloody murder.
If it’s just another brick in the election wall, I’m fine with that, though, because this one’s actually important. Every once in a while in an election year, something important is raised. We’re so used to unimportant nonsense that we think that anything a Democrat says to a Republican must be self-serving, and vice-versa. This one’s not. This one matters. And if it’s partisanship that’s getting it some facetime, then yay for partisanship.
I’m not expecting the president to resign or be impeached. I don’t even really expect that there was some massive scheme to trick us. I just think it’s worth looking at. If Nixon taught us nothing else, it’s that slime runs down the ladder from the top. You never know how far up these things go.
As for Iraq, I agree with Mike. We should be asking for help, and we should consider ourselves lucky if we get any. If we’re looking for weapons, we should have UN experts helping. If we’re trying to keep peace, we should have UN peackeeping forces helping, if not doing the bulk of the work. We obviously can’t just up and leave, but we can’t babysit this country forever. We can’t turn the middle east into colonies for our armed forces. We would surely fuck it up.
jarodius Said,
July 24, 2003 @ 11:19 am
Well said Mike. I was thinking that Bush was going to wait until near election time and start magnanimously bringing the troops home. But now I think he is screwed. If the troops aren’t home by the election, he looses. If he pulls them out and the Iraqi gvt fails, he looks like all his work was for nothing and he looses. So, only if he pulls out and the gvt doesn’t collapse will he get elected.
So, here is what I predict - all Nostradamus like - The troops have to stay. The gvt is in no shape, and won’t be for several years, to support itself. So Bush’s best ploy is to quietly keep the troops there and occassionally announce progress: “We are building a new sewer system. We have a constitution drafted. We killed three more evil towel heads.” Actually, it won’t be Bush at all. I predict that he will soon act as though he has washed his hands of the matter and try to look as if he is focusing on domestic issues. That is where the Dem’s are going to try to hit him hard. Them Dem’s, if they continue their slippery ways will launch a two pronged attack: Put Bob Graham on the offensive with Iraq and put Kerry on the offensive with domestic issues, get Mr Dean elected. Now, if the democrats can come up with the leadership to make that happen, they will walk away with this thing.
So, I didn’t focus on constructive ways to “solve” the Iraq problem. When you shoot yourself in the foot, it is just going to take time to heal… especially if you pissed off the only doctor in town. Bush screwed up by declaring an Axis of Evil. You don’t go calling things “Evil” unless they have a little mustache and goose step. You just look silly doing it.
Let me open the discussion up here to a more serious problem: North Korea. What are we going to do about that? This guy is EVIL. Ok, he is just loony and that scares me more than evil any day. Oh, Bush should declare an Axis of Loony (Lunacy?).
deezo feezo Said,
July 24, 2003 @ 11:24 am
Point is well taken on the conspiracy theory’s and all but I think we are getting away from the fact that the statue in that picture has some huge jugzzz!
Dizzil fizzil
“As fly as it get, as fly as I spit you know its the shit”
Chris Said,
July 24, 2003 @ 1:15 pm
Putting aside, for just a moment, the fantastically entertaining task of needling Bush about the premise for the war, I do think there’s a real issue here. The bombing of the aspirin factory was an intelligence mistake. It could be argued that in many ways September 11 happened because of a combination of intelligence mistakes. This uranium thing appears to be an intelligence mistake. The lack of WMD evidence suggests an intelligence breakdown. Somehow, we seem to be making a lot of very high-profile and costly intelligence mistakes. We act on bad intel and ignore solid intel. As far as I know, no one in the US intel community or either of the two most recent administrations has lost their jobs over any of these things. That doesn’t make sense to me. Someone should look into it.
Finally, I think we all have to acknowledge that Shizzle McNizzle is right: The statue’s packed.
Justin Said,
July 24, 2003 @ 1:59 pm
I agree with Chris and D-Fizzle. If we’re talking about WMDs and we neglect to mention the bombs that Lady Liberty is packing, we’re dangerously derelict in our duties.
That’s a *huge* bitch!
FilteringCraig Said,
July 24, 2003 @ 2:05 pm
You know what is even funnier? Later today, I have a post that is borderline feminist. I am going to piggyback that on a picture of lady liberty with huge cans getting groped by a former president. Irony is awesome.