Bill Clinton Unleashed (VIDEO)
All I can say is “wow.” I didn’t have this earlier like everybody else did because Fox News Sunday only airs in the evening in my area. So, my apologies for not getting it to you sooner.
This was quite an eye-opening experience, and according to FishBowlDC via MediaBistro, even Chris Wallace was a bit shocked by Clinton’s reaction. His words “I felt as if a mountain was coming down in front of me.” According to Chris:
I began the interview with 2 questions about Mr. Clinton’s commitment to humanitarian causes. His answers were cogent and good-humored.
Then–I asked him about his Administration’s record in fighting terror–fully intending to come back to CGI later (as indeed I did).
I asked what I thought was a non-confrontational question about whether he could have done more to “connect the dots and really go after al Qaeda.”
I was utterly surprised by the tidal wave of details–emotion–and political attacks that followed.
The President was clearly stung by any suggestion that he had not done everything he could to get bin Laden. He attacked right-wingers–accused me of a “conservative hit job”–and even spun a theory I still don’t understand that somehow Fox was trying to cover up the fact that NewsCorp. chief Rupert Murdoch was supporting his Global Initiative. I still have no idea what set him off.
Former President Clinton is a very big man. As he leaned forward–wagging his finger in my face–and then poking the notes I was holding–I felt as if a mountain was coming down in front of me.
The President said I had a smirk. Actually–it was sheer wonder at what I was witnessing.
I tried repeatedly to adhere to the ground rules–to move the President along–and back to the CGI. But he wanted to keep talking about his record fighting terror.
When it became clear he wanted to throw out the ground rules–then I just went with the flow of the interview.
That’s kind of how I felt, too, watching it. In fact, I thought Clinton was going to punch Chris a couple of times. Talk about someone in need of anger management!?!?!?!? This is the poster boy for that, and since he’s had heart problems in the past, this is almost self-explanatory for that. He’s got some temper, doesn’t he?
I took a series of screen shots of Clinton going from calm to rage in 0 to 60. These are in sequence, and show the degradation of the tone put forth by Clinton:
You can read the full transcript at RealClearPolitis here, but here’s just a small portion:
WALLACE: … but the question is, why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?
CLINTON: OK, let’s talk about it. Now, I will answer all those things on the merits, but first I want to talk about the context in which this arises.
I’m being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right- wing conservative run in their little “Pathway to 9/11,” falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report.
And I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn’t do enough said I did too much — same people.
They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in “Black Hawk down,” and I refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.
OK, now let’s look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al Qaida was a growing concern in October of ‘93.
WALLACE: I understand, and I…
CLINTON: No, wait. No, wait. Don’t tell me this — you asked me why didn’t I do more to bin Laden. There was not a living soul. All the people who now criticize me wanted to leave the next day.
You brought this up, so you’ll get an answer, but you can’t…
WALLACE: I’m perfectly happy to.
At about 13:40 minutes into the video, you’ll see a close-up of Clinton’s hands, and they are shaking hard. Another sign he’s lost control. There were a couple of other things I noticed that struck me as strange. Bill Clinton said he has never criticized Bush (GW) before this interview, but I seem to remember a few instances when he has. And secondly, Clinton talks about how he’d ordered the CIA to take UBL out, he’d ordered other forces to take him out, and this got me to thinking: What would the Democrats do if even today they found out Pres. Bush had ordered an assassination squad to go after UBL? The MSM would have a FIELD day, and McCain would also join the club of the unhinged over that one. Oh, no, we have to treat these guys according to the Geneva Conventions, and a hit-squad is way out of the question! Ah, the hypocricy abounds.
He also brings up BlackHawk Down, which is an event that in every way imaginable angers me about Clinton’s inactions. I’m speaking from having listened to a very long talk given by one of the people who were there at the time; in fact, Tom Sizemore portrayed him in the movie. So don’t say I’m pulling stuff out of the air - Lt. Col. Brian McKnight was there, and he knows who gave the orders and for what. You might also want to be on the lookout for a book by him, because at this forum, he said now that he’s no longer with the government, he’s ready to tell all. Clinton has more unhinged days to look forward to, for sure.
Lastly, why did his wardrobe person put him in high-waters? The last thing I wanted to see was his bare shins and black socks.
Watch Clinton get unhinged here.
There is a TON of coverage on this including (but not limited to) HotAir (TONS of updates), Michelle Malkin, BigDog, Webloggin, Newsbusters, Cao’s Blog, Rusty at MyPetJawa, Euphoric Reality, JosCafe, and Stop the ACLU. Also Ace has a great roundup.
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September 24th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
I gather his administration was full of outbursts and meltdowns from both him and the First Lady; unlike that which any of the employees at the Whitehouse had ever seen from at First Family.
September 25th, 2006 at 12:27 am
Liveblogging The Clinton Interview…
First, before I get into the Clinton interview, let me say that I watched a lot of the talk shows and the other news stories that were playing throughout the day on this. Besides the usual things, the one thing that stuck with me is Chris Wallace hims…
September 25th, 2006 at 1:12 am
AWESOME!!!!! Its great to see Bill give some shit back and all the Right-wing drones get completely unhinged about it. Funny times 10!!! Its like watching a flea circus on acid!
Well, at least there is still one Democrat who still has nuts. The rest sure as hell don’t.
…and if there was an election tomorrow and Bill was running against “Bullhorn photo-op” Bush…..who’d win? Yeah….you know it! UNHINGED LITTLE BITCHES!!!!
September 25th, 2006 at 2:38 am
Syntax~ It comforts me to know that as a consertative I’m fighting a “flea circus on acid”. And not only that but confirms why I have no doubt that we, the GOP, will once again will be the majority in the House and Senate.
Ms.U~ Why is it that the extreme left stomps in outrage about Conservatives adopting the phrase “islamo-facist” but the former (D)Commander in Chief can sling “Neo-Con” and everyone pumps their fist?
September 25th, 2006 at 9:26 am
Twin, you’ll go crazy trying to figure them out, so don’t even waste your time.
The unintended consequence of this outburst is that Clinton verfied to the world that the rest of the media is soft on him, and biased against conservatives. He made that abundantly clear to me by indicating Chris and Fox were the ONLY ones who ask him the hard questions.
And Syntax, don’t get too excited. Clinton did not win that bout he tried to start. Anyone who’s got it together doesn’t tremble like Clinton did while pushing his finger in Chris’ face. Clinton lost big time on this one.
September 25th, 2006 at 11:38 am
SinTax,
Your characterization of what Billy-boy “gave” is absolutely correct: s-h-*-t.
Once again, we see the same old tired tactics we’ve seen from him before:
1) When the truth comes out and your back is up against the wall, point the finger at someone else.
2) When they ask questions you don’t want to answer, filibuster.
3) When you don’t have anything to say, say it with emotion.
In the past we’ve seen anger and crying. Anger we got, but where were the tears? I was expecting one of his patented “single tear down the cheek, I’m a victim of my own making” sob-jobs right at the end.
It’s the fault of all those neo-cons and their darned “vast, right-wing conspiracy” that are out to get him. That’s the reason his legacy is crumbling. It has nothing to do with his shameful term as president using his authority to make the U.S. his theme park.
Actually I like the word “neo-con”. It characterizes a conservative to be like Neo fighting to free the human race from the democrat Matrix that’s enslaving mankind in an illusory world to occupy their minds with lies, while the democrat Matrix drains the life from them. Yeah, baby! True, times two.
September 25th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
The video won’t download.
September 25th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
I apologize for the bad link. It is now corrected.
I’m very sorry, you guys, but I’m glad you alerted me to it. Thank you to all of you for your readership.
Ms. U
September 25th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
The link’s working now. Thank you so much for providing a downloadable clip of it. Everyone that has the clip is just using YouTube, so it’s not downloadable.
September 25th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Shapter, you’re very welcome… I do some on YT just because they get more traffic, but when I do that, I also try to make a downloadable copy for my readers.
Ms. U
September 25th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
saw the clip on fox news tonight.. great, another world leader coming unraveled on international TV.
he looked like a pissed off angry trapped little man, trying to recover from having his life’s “accomplishments” recounted and exposed on national news…and now he had to stand (well..sit) there and deny that he failed, deny that he didnt do all he could, make incredibly unprofessional comments about the current President and administration. In other words, he looked rather pitiful. Reminded me of past experiences, when I have had to call someone I supervised into my office after them being caught “red handed” breaking a rule, regulation, or law. They usually go into a dance rewriting history, denying everything, and them blaming those that were around or came afterwards. REAL professionals dont talk trash about their successors, or rewrite history. God help us if he gets back close to the White House as a special advisor to the Hillary.
Embarassing to have the world see his whiney weasling, same week as the visiting dignitary/spineless asshole show at the UN.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
I’d be pissed too but, as Clinton said, he did more to stop UBL. He admited he tried and failed. What did Bush do the first 8 months in office with the intel Clinton left him - ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! He already had his mind made up to avenge daddy and market a needless war in Iraq.
It wasn’t until 9/11 that Bush got all worked up and subsequently overthrew the Taliban. He also was stern about the capture of UBL back then. What happened? Get rid of the Taliban then pull out to go into Iraq, which by the way, had nothing to do with 9/11. (Don’t get into the WMD reason - Condi and Colin both stated in hearings that the intel didn’t support it.) He later stated that UBL wasn’t a prioroity. So, what was the point of diverting troops to Iraq and sub-contracting with the local Afgans for the hit on UBL? What a stroke of genius…NOT!
It’s five years later and UBL is still on the lamb and we’ve now lost more troops then the number of victims from 9/11 - not to mention the 130,000 innocent Iraqi lives. What for? We are no safer now. However, the billions and billions of dolars this needless war is costing us sure could have helped to secure our ports and borders. Instead, we have nothing to show for our a huge national debt other then graves and a civil war that we are now stuck in the middle of.
By the way, didn’t Clinton leave Bush a surplus balance?
September 26th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
ExLeper:
right. Clinton mounted a huge military effort to defend the US. As he drew down funding and support of the military. Told the military staff assigned to the White House NOT to wear uniforms to work, because it made “people” uncomfortable to have uniformed military coworkers? He misread the significance of the 93 WTC bombing, as did many of us. He was in charge during Somalia. And that went less than wonderfully.
He did indeed leave Bush and the rest of us with an apparent budget surplus. HOWEVER, and this is the important part: The US Economy is a huge and slow moving organism. A basic principle of economics is any measure or change made to effect the national economy will not become evident in its actual effects for 3-5 years. So… some might comment that while there were apparent budget surpluses when BUSH took over…there was a building correction in the economy, reacting to CLINTON economics, that eventually resulted in a deficit and slowed job growth. Add that to the 9-11 attack and IT’s EFFECT on the economy, followed by a war… and gee Wally… economy faltered. And, now that BUSH economic policies have been in place for 4-5 years… we have job growth, rising GNP, etc.
I wont waist argument time debating need/needless war, innocent vs. non innocent Iraqi lives, because you apaprentrly wont listen to reason anyway. Afghanistan is free, the Taliban is largely destroyed, UBM may be dead. Iraq is getting better, but is a mess.
September 30th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Face it guys, Clinton might have lied about a blow job, but Bush lied to us about Iraq. You tell me which is worse. On his shoulders is the weight of the lives he has taken in this needless war. What for? The military industrial complex, perhaps?
This war was marketed to us like a product with deception and lies. Bush himself recently admited on camera that Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaida. I guess it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. WTF? How can anyone trust him? Are you guys so blinded by passionate pride that you can’t think for yourself and see the big picture?
Don’t get me wrong, I was all for going into Afganistan. However, we left without getting the job done.
Unfortunately, most of this terror bullshit is all “blowback” from late 50’s when we got involved in Iran. Therefore, both political parties share accountability.
September 30th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
exleper, can you please name one lie Bush told prior to the war in Iraq? Now, remember, a lie is only a lie if the person knows it to be untrue when they make an assertion.
Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed, we’re still in Afghanistan.
September 30th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Still in Afganistan? Surely you jest. How do you expect a handful of people to get the job done?
A lie…mmm…let’s see. How ’bout circa 2002 when Bush said “We know for a fact Iraq has weapons of mass destruction”. I believe that would qualify. To counter it you must review senate hearings in the months prior to 9/11 where you will see Condi and Colin both stating under oath there was no evidence to support that statement. Therefore, I would conclude that it was a lie.
Everything we have been told about Iraq was mis-information. Saddam once had WMD’s and it’s because we sold them to him back in the ’80’s. I can still see Rummy welcoming Saddam back then. Shaking his hand and cutting him a deal.
Most of the information we were told was intel that was taken way out of context (like the statement above) just to support the build up for this war. Propoganda and lies for the military industrial complex. Just what Eisenhower warned us about!
September 30th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Currently there are approximately 25,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but that’s in addition to the other NATO and coalition troops, so there’s answer #1.
And we DID know for a fact Iraq had WMDs. What do you think he used on the Kurds in al Anfar? Strong cologne? Also, in case you haven’t noticed, 500 weapons with Sarin gas have recently been uncovered. I’d call that “WMDs.” Saddam himself was a WMD.
And by the way… did you hear about a small thing called UN Resolution 1441? Hmmm?? go read it and educate yourself.
October 1st, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Read 1441.Result: Inspectors began visiting sites where WMD production was suspected, but found no evidence of such activities. As was discovered after the invasion of Iraq, no production of WMDs was taking place, and no stockpiles existed.
Debate about Resolution 1441 therefore turns on whether, despite the absence of WMDs and the acceptance of inspections, Iraq failed to comply with the terms of the Resolution, and whether an invasion was justified in the absence of any further UN Security resolutions on the subject.
My response to the second paragraph would be a comparison between Iraq & Lybia (I’m sure you remember that terrorist nation). Reagan imposed sanctions on the latter and, for 20 years, they were a non-entity. Lybia eventually was welcomed back after Kadafi complied and denounced terror. No war - no troops. Iraq was just as isolated and even further with a no-fly zone. and posed NO immediate threat to anyone. So why didn’t we allow the sanctions to take a similar course as we had done with Lybia
October 1st, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Was it because Bush II wanted revenge for Daddy? Was it the military industrial complex? Was it oil? My feeling’s are it was a combination of all 3. However, had we given the time for sanctions to work effectively, Iraq would have fallen or compitulated just like Lybia. What was the rush? Our troops could have remained in Afganistan in the original larger numbers and finished the job.
The billions we’ve spent on this war could have been used instead to secure our ports and borders. Something I feel is more necessary than a needless war!
October 1st, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Like I said, any WMD’s that were elluded to in the build-up - the right-wing propoganda machine used to persade the public and exploit our feelings after 9/11 - were procured from intelligence documents from the ’80’s taken completely out of context. We propped up Saddam and provided him with the weapons since, he too, was an enemy of Iran. Blowback baby!
October 1st, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Exleper, with your “Was it because Bush II wanted revenge for Daddy” comment/question, you just negated any need or desire for me to debate this with you any longer. Your talking points are showing. Goodbye.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:34 pm
No worries. It doesn’t surprise me that you find a way to retreat while choosing to ignore the facts presented before you.
It only reinforces my belief that this county is deeply divided because of the republicans blind passionate pride. Reacting only emotionally instead of factually with open eyes.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:38 pm
No worries. It doesn’t surprise me that you find a way to retreat while ignoring the facts before you.
It only reinforces my belief that this country is so deeply divided because of the republicans blind passionate pride. Reacting only emotionally instead of factually with open eyes.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:48 pm
No worries
It doesn’t surprise me that you find a way to retreat while choosing to ignore the facts. Responding only emotionally instead of intelligently.
It only reinforces my belief that this country is so deeply divided because of the republicans blind passionate pride.
Additionally, you may choose to delete this account and ignore me as well because of your inablitiy to debate the topic in a mature manner.
“If your not with us your against us.” Another example of the blind leading the blind.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:51 pm
(Formally Exleper)
No worries
It doesn’t surprise me that you find a way to retreat while choosing to ignore the facts. Responding only emotionally instead of intelligently.
It only reinforces my belief that this country is so deeply divided because of the republicans blind passionate pride.
Additionally, you may choose to delete this account and ignore me as well because of your inablitiy to debate the topic in a mature manner.
“If your not with us your against us.” Another example of the blind leading the blind.
October 1st, 2006 at 5:22 pm
You must be tired, exleper, jumping to conclusions like that. When you try to submit back-to-back comments on my blog, SpamKarma catches them and I have to approve them. And as you can see, that is exactly what I did. So there goes your “censorship” charge.