MsUnderestimated » 2006 » September

FNS Panel on the McCain/White House Compromise (VIDEO)

September 24th, 2006 at 08:30 by MsUnderestimated

The second and final Panel segment focused on the recent compromise between the RINOs and the White House on detainee treatment, interrogation, and military tribunals. They were discussing who won in this compromsie: the White House or McCain et al?

WILLIAMS: It looks to me like the president won. It looks to me like the president won. And what it comes down to is that it’s going to be on the president’s desk. He has to be the one that will say this is allowed. and he…

LIASSON: But he has to tell Congress that.

WILLIAMS: Well, ideally, I think that’s what the Democrats and Senator McCain say. They want him to write it out, put it in the federal register, allow for oversight. The danger is that he would do something and say something and then subsequently say, “Well, we had to do that in that moment.”

But the whole notion that torture is allowed I just find reprehensible.

HUME: Well…

BARNES: It’s not allowed.

I love the way Brit ended this segment…

HUME: Look, this business about torture being allowed is a whopper. We know what torture is. Torture has a definition. It’s been laid out. It is not permissible under U.S. policy, and the CIA isn’t engaging in it. So can we please get that off the table?

This was about what John McCain thought something would look like. He now has decided that, with this new language, the same thing in a sense, it won’t look that way. He’s happy. The White House is happy.

Watch the video here.

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FNS Panel on Clinton’s Interview (VIDEO)

September 24th, 2006 at 08:21 by MsUnderestimated

Something you guys have always enjoyed, as have I, are the Panel discussions on FNS. Partially because it’s so entertaining to watch Brit Hume smack Juan Williams around a little. Juan just must be a sadist, because he keeps coming back for more. This Sunday, Fred Barnes was in Bill Kristol’s place, so it was a bit different. But thank God Juan was still there.

WALLACE: Just briefly, we should say, this was a docudrama on ABC called “The Path to 9/11.” It was supposedly based on the 9/11 Commission report. It later turned out there were at least three parts of the docudrama that, in fact, had been made up and were directly contradicted by the 9/11 report. And the Clinton team, as you point out, made a big stink about it and got some of it changed.

BARNES: And yet, it was shown all over the world. I know it was shown on BBC, for instance.

And President Clinton, he did one clever thing when he was talking to you, and that is to try to isolate the criticism of himself about bin Laden and terrorism and so on, that it’s just some right- wing neo-cons who are the ones who were doing it. He said that over and over again, and to really dismiss it because it’s a bunch of right-wingers saying that.

JUAN WILLIAMS: Well, he’s mad. He’s mad about the right-wing conspiracy. And he’s particularly mad…

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: Which one?

WILLIAMS: … at the idea that — neo-cons, he says, in this Bush administration, you know, for all their talk, didn’t do much to go after bin Laden.

So I think that he has a right to say he’s mad at Fox. He somehow sees Fox as part of this conspiracy. And you’re going to make your bones, Chris, on this.

(LAUGHTER)

But he’s…

HUME: Do you agree with that?

WILLIAMS: I don’t think Chris is — I think, in fact, you did a very good job. I thought you held yourself together…

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: It wasn’t always easy.

WILLIAMS: … in the force of the gale winds.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: … President Clinton didn’t.

And Brit ends the segment on this note:

HUME: Let’s talk a little bit about the political will that existed in the country after 9/11. Bill Clinton didn’t have anything like that behind him when he was trying to do what he tried to do. So what could a president have done?

If you look back at the first World Trade Center bombing, he was president; it was 1993. And he chose to treat that as a law enforcement matter.

And, you know, in retrospect, he could’ve made a different decision. He could have sounded the call and said, “This is a major attack. It requires a major response.” He would’ve had to make a huge deal out of it and use the presidential megaphone to the fullest.

The same is true after the bombings of the embassies. The same is true after the bombing of the Cole. He could’ve elevated those.

The country would’ve swung behind him, as the country always does at times like that. The politicians probably would have, too. And he probably would’ve gotten what he needed to mount — the political effort needed to mount a larger-scale undertaking.

I think it’s fair to say that he and his administration chose not to do that. In retrospect, it looks like bad choices. But, no doubt, he did make some efforts. He’s right about that.

Watch the panel here.

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Clinton on FNS Part Deux (VIDEO)

September 24th, 2006 at 07:52 by MsUnderestimated

Now Chris asks Clinton about several things, including his recent comment that he was sick of “Karl Rove’s bullshit.” Clinton first starts to patronize, then he suddenly seems to intimate he admires Rove for his political savvy.

WALLACE: Let’s talk some politics. In that same New Yorker article, you say that you are tired of Karl Rove’s B.S., although I’m cleaning up what you said.

CLINTON: But I do like the — but I also say I’m not tired of Karl Rove. I don’t blame Karl Rove. If you’ve got a deal that works, you just keep on doing it.

WALLACE: So what is the B.S.?

CLINTON: Well, every even-numbered year, right before an election, they come up with some security issue.

In 2002, our party supported them in undertaking weapons inspections in Iraq and was 100 percent for what happened in Afghanistan, and they didn’t have any way to make us look like we didn’t care about terror.

And so, they decided they would be for the homeland security bill that they had opposed. And they put a poison pill in it that we wouldn’t pass, like taking the job rights away from 170,000 people, and then say that we were weak on terror if we weren’t for it. They just ran that out.

This year, I think they wanted to make the questions of prisoner treatment and intercepted communications the same sort of issues, until John Warner and John McCain and Lindsey Graham got in there. And, as it turned out, there were some Republicans that believed in the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and had some of their own ideas about how best to fight terror.

The Democrats — as long as the American people believe that we take this seriously and we have our own approaches — and we may have differences over Iraq — I think we’ll do fine in this election.

But even if they agree with us about the Iraq war, we could be hurt by Karl Rove’s new foray if we just don’t make it clear that we, too, care about the security of the country. But we want to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, which they haven’t for four years. We want to intensify our efforts in Afghanistan against bin Laden. We want to make America more energy-independent.

And then they can all, if they differ on Iraq, they can say whatever they want on Iraq.

But Rove is good. And I honor him. I mean, I will say that. I’ve always been amused about how good he is, in a way.

But on the other hand, this is perfectly predictable: We’re going to win a lot of seats if the American people aren’t afraid. If they’re afraid and we get divided again, then we may only win a few seats.

WALLACE: And the White House, the Republicans want to make the American people afraid?

CLINTON: Of course they do. Of course they do. They want us to be - - they want another homeland security deal. And they want to make it about — not about Iraq but about some other security issue, where, if we disagree with them, we are, by definition, imperiling the security of the country.

And it’s a big load of hooey. We’ve got nine Iraq war veterans running for the House seats. We’ve got President Reagan’s secretary of the Navy as the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Virginia. A three-star admiral, who was on my National Security Council staff, who also fought terror, by the way, is running for the seat of Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania.

We’ve got a huge military presence here in this campaign. And we just can’t let them have some rhetorical device that puts us in a box we don’t belong in.

That’s their job. Their job is to beat us. I like that about Rove. But our job is not to let them get away with it. And if they don’t, then we’ll do fine.

WALLACE: Mr. President, thank you for one of the more unusual interviews.

CLINTON: Thanks.

Oh, and the Republicans use fear to win elections? He says if it’s terror, then the dems lose, so why is that? And does he really think that we’re just making these threats up? The foiled U.K. plot, the repeated Zawahiri videos, Hezbollah gone crazy, and the Muslim freak-out over the Pope are “made up?” Well, I’m sure that the democrats all think that, but come on!

And even though the tone is a bit different in this segment, the contempt is still there in Clinton’s face. He’s steamed, and I love it!

Watch the 2nd half of the interview here.

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