FredF said:
In 8 Years of Slick Willie in the white house he was too busy getting Monica'ed to worry about anything else except to launch missles at an asprin factory in the Sudan and moan and groan about Sadam.
[post="167618"][/post]
I realize that the Republicans miss Clinton badly, but you have to get over it and move on, Fred.
As AA-MCI points out, what Clinton did not do was invent a reason to invade another country by accepting only the input that backed his decision. A real Commander-In-Chief is supposed to listen to all the facts and decide from there but the Bush administration has, from the very beginning, been marked by an unwillingness to listen to anything that doesn't reinforce its agenda. Even those in the US Armed Services and the Bush administration itself who dared question the fact that we appeared to have no actual plan for the winning the peace in Iraq were pushed aside while being accused of being un-American. Not exactly a recipe for success.
Also, since we're allowing the excuse 'He was given bad intelligence' these days, do you think Clinton targeted those cruise missiles himself?
There was a bombing of the world trade center towers underground. He did nothing.
Except pursue those responsible and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. That slacker...
There was the bombing of the USS Cole. He did nothing.
If he had taken any action in Oct, 2000 when the USS Cole was attacked the Republicans would have been screaming that he was trying to influence the election and you know it. The investigation into the Cole bombing collapsed not on Clinton's watch but AFTER Bush was sworn in and showed clearly that he wasn't interested in any line of investigation that didn't lead back to Iraq.
There was an embassy that was bombed. He did nothing.
It was TWO embassies actually, not one, and his response was to target Al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and Africa for the cruise missile strikes you mentioned earlier. I guess there is just no pleasing you on that one...
Iraq continually launched missles at US fighter planes enforcing the UN no-fly zones in Iraq. He did nothing.
Wrong on both counts there Fred. First of all there were
NO U.N. 'No-Fly Zones' in Iraq; the 'No-Fly Zones' were instituted unilaterally by the US, England and, of all people, France in response to Saddam's attacks on the Kurds. There never was any UN resolution calling for them or recognizing them as legitimate. After Saddam had stopped attacking the Kurds, the same ones we led to insurrection against him, there was not even a moral reason for the zones to exist, let alone a legal one. That was in 1991. That the French pulled out completely and the Brits reduced their presence to almost nil at this point should be suffecient to show that the need for those zones, if any, had ceased to exist. Yet we maintained them.
How would you feel if someone were to tell us that we were not allowed to fly military aircraft in Texas and Minnesota then patrolled our skies in armed strike aircraft? Of course they shot at us and it's only due to the skill and bravery of our crews that we never had to deal with the humiliation of having a shot-down air crew in Saddams hands for him to torture and parade before the world.
As for Clinton doing nothing about it, the fact is that in every case where the US planes were shot at they, or an airstrike shortly thereafter, responded in kind. For instance, in the year 2000 alone there were over 30 different days where we conducted airstrikes against a country with whom we were ostensibly at peace. I don't think we'll agree on whether that's the kind of country America should be, but even you must admit that it is hardly 'doing nothing'.
Sadam kicked out UN weapons inspectors, in stark violation to multiple UN resolutions. He did nothing.
Then he allowed them back and both the then-current and the previous heads of the weapons inspection programs (Hans Blix and Scott Ritter) said that the evidence showed that Saddam had complied with the UN resolutions. It didn't matter because the Bush administration had already decided that it was going to invade Iraq and wanted no evidence that did not support that conclusion. Don't believe me? Read Dr. Blix's book
Disarming Iraq.
Prior to our invasion of Iraq, the Iraqis delivered to the UN what was required of them by the original UN resolutions, a complete accounting of the destruction of their WMD programs. The document totalled over 11,000 pages and was seized upon delivery by the US Government and returned several days later with over 8,000 pages missing. Wonder what happened to those pages Fred; what did the US government not want the world to see?
He DID of course LIE under OATH to a Federal Grand Jury. He did weaken the military
Did Clinton weaken the military? As compared to the force we fielded against the Soviet Union, yes, but the Soviet Union was long gone. It would be irrational and irresponsible to maintain such a force with not even a potential enemy threatening us. As KCFLYER correctly pointed out, Clinton's allegedly weakened military was able to handle Afghanistan and Iraq while maintaining a credible deterrent everywhere else in the world. Hardly seems weak to me, just not as profitable for Halliburton - the US military's #1 contractor - the corporation which operates US bases on every continent. Our war with the Al Qaeda terrorists doesn't require a big military but a smart and agile force able to deal with multiple mission types and it certainly appears that is what Clinton provided for us.
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "When Clinton lied no one died", the funny thing about it is that it was on a car belonging to someone who has been one of the staunchest Republicans where I work and he did put it on there himself. It is covering a 'Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry' bumper sticker he has had on there for months. His nephew was killed in Iraq recently, not liberating it or hunting those responsible for 9/11 but instead while providing security for an oil company work crew. Clinton wasn't trying to justify a war, Fred, just a personal weakness. Maybe you feel what he did was obscene but with our dead in Iraq approaching 1000, an administration with no realistic goal in mind and no end in sight, I would have to say that obscenity is in the eye of the beholder.
Maybe we should all miss Clinton as much as you do, Fred.
