0102scot

While Clinton slept
by Scot Lehigh

If newspapers are indeed the first draft of history,
Bill Clinton's chance for a favorable reappraisal of his presidency is in trouble.

His supporters have hoped that as time adds perspective, Clinton's personal peccadilloes
will shrink in memory, while underappreciated accomplishments will grow in importance.

Hey, Scot! We all have personal peccadilloes.
It's just that your party put Clinton's under a microscope like no human in history.

Then came the horror of Sept. 11 - and the troubling questions raised in its aftermath.
How could Osama bin Laden and his band of murderous zealots have caught this nation so off guard?
And, given bin Laden's past history of attacks against the United States,
why hadn't we done more to destroy Al Qaeda?

Those are great questions, Scot, but why blame for former captain when a ship hits the iceberg?
Shouldn't you be blaming the guy steering the ship at the time?

Sunday's New York Times addresses those questions in close and careful detail. Although the Times spreads
the responsibility for inaction or inadequate action across both eight years of Clinton's presidency and eight months
of George W. Bush's, the investigative report reads as a particularly damning indictment of Clinton's mishandling
of the all-too-evident threat of terrorism.

But Scot, if it was "all too evident," why didn't your boy take some action?
Why did your boy wait until 9-12 to take action?

After all, Clinton's term was less than two months old when the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center
took place on Feb. 23, 1993, an attack that killed six people and injured hundreds. That bombing should have
been an early wakeup call for the administration, Michael Sheehan, who coordinated the administration's
counterterrorism efforts at the State Department during its last few years, told the Times.

Well, sure.
Why wasn't Pearl Harbor ready for the Japanese?
Why did JFK ride thru Dallas in a convertable?
Why did the Secret Service let Hinckley get so close to Reagan?
It's so easy to take today's knowledge and criticize yesterday's inaction, you dumbass.

But despite growing information about bin Laden and his intentions, anti-terrorism efforts were never
pursued with the urgency and determination required to avert future attacks.

But Scot, why didn't Bush "pursue terrorism with the urgency and determination required to avert future attacks?" Can you explain your boy's lack of action?
You can't, right?
Isn't that the real reason you're spinning this as Clinton's fault?

Hindsight, of course, never needs glasses. But let's say we accept at face value the assessment of former
presidential adviser George Stephanopoulos that the first World Trade Center attack didn't galvanize the
administration to greater action because it ''wasn't a successful bombing.''

Scot, don't ever accept anything Judas Maximus says at face value.
He is a money-driven whore, much like yourself.
Besides, whatever you make of history, your boy had a chance to learn it, too.

How, then, could the White House have failed to respond with more force and focus to Aug. 7, 1998, when
truck bombs detonated at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 244 people and injured thousands more?
Two years earlier, as the Times also reports, political adviser Dick Morris had urged Clinton to launch a
higher-profile antiterrorism effort. The American people would back measures like federalizing airport security
and taking military action against terrorist installations in foreign countries, Morris told Clinton.

Scot, Dick Morris is more of a whore than Judas Maximus.
Don't you know that?
Dick Morris says "I told Clinton at the time," and you believe him?
And why do you only quote avid Clinton-haters?
So you can believe whatever is said by the most rabid dogs that run loose in DC?
And again, your boy knew about Kenya and Tanzania, but what concrete steps did he take prior to 9-11?
You see how stuck you are, Scot?

The twin embassy attacks once again underlined the need for more sweeping action. While it is hardly fair
to say the administration did nothing, it is completely fair to say that the response fell far short of the peril.

Yes, Scot.
Looking back, we can say neither Clinton nor Bush did "enough" to convince bin laden not to attack.
But then again, Clinton didn't put bin Laden in power. Your boys did that, remember?
...and thanks for making such an effort to "be fair."

Clinton fired a volley of cruise missiles at a suspected Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan
(which turned out to be a disputed target). And he issued orders authorizing covert action against bin Laden.

Gee, Scot, you think maybe the lack of non-disputed targets could've slowed Clinton's response?
Plus, remember your your party howled and screamed how unnecessary that all was?
You guys kept screaming "wag the dog," instead of supporting the first president
who took action against the terrorists. By the way, Scot - how'd you get your job?
Do you have a relative that works for the Boston Globe?

A more determined president, however, could have used those attacks as justification both for tougher
domestic-security measures and for the sort of military campaign Bush has led. It's impossible to say
whether either would have prevented the tragedy of Sept. 11. But such a response certainly would have
made that sort of well-organized and well-financed attack much less likely.

Yeah, Scot, a more determined president would've had his VP write a lengthy, detailed report
with a former senator to outline strict, new measures to combat terrorism and improve airline safety.
Wait, that's exactly what happened!

Gore and Gary hart wrote a lengthy, detailed report recommending such measures as securing the cockpit doors,
but the GOP congress just laughed and called Gore a "tree-hugging policy wonk," remember, Scot?

Scot, have you been in the political game very long?
I haven't heard of you before - is this your first column?
Are we, perhaps, in our early twenties, and know very little about recent political history?

One of Clinton's problems, of course, was that by the time of the embassy bombings, the Monica Lewinsky scandal
was consuming the administration. Between the date of the attacks and the US cruise-missile response, Clinton would acknowledge to the nation that he had had an affair with Lewinsky. For the next six months, the president would
struggle merely to survive.

Another of Clinton's "problems" was a ditto-monkey congress who wanted Clinton impeached at any cost,
even at the cost of losing seats in congress, along with an out-of-control "independent" counsel who was actually
a tool for BIG tobacco, and an on-the-take Supreme Court who so desperately wanted a GOP president,
they had to give up their charade of non-partisanship to accomplish their goal.

Besides Scot, why was Clinton's "affair" any of your business?
Why was it any of Kenneth Starr's business?
Why was it the business of Gingrich, who was screwing his secretary?
Why was it the business of Henry Hyde, who broke up a family with his affair?
Why was it the business of Dan Burton, who had a secret child from a tawdry affair?
Why was it the business of Bob Barr, who was made to confess that he wrote a check so
an abortionist could kill his baby daughter in the womb?

Why is that, Scot?

There's blame aplenty for the lost period and the lost focus.

Yeah, so why don't you bastards apologize?

Certainly the ammoniac partisan atmosphere created by then
Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress contributed.

Duh! You think?
All Clinton wanted to do was run the country.
But you bastards wanted to distract him and you were damn successful at it.

Just think - what if the FBI was looking for bin Laden instead of Elizabeth Ward Gracen?
They chased her to fucking Japan to ask about Clinton's cock, remember Scot?
I wonder if they flew over Afghanistan on their was to Toyko?

And yet, whichever way one slices it, the root cause of that politically debilitating scandal was the mind-numbing
lack of self-discipline on the part of a man who gambled his future for a dalliance with an intern less than half his age.

There you go - it always comes down to Clinton's cock with you guys.
Clinton had an "affair," and tried to keep it quiet.
But the Party of Lincoln thought American needed three years of constant oral sex talk.

That wasn't Clinton's doing.
He tried to hide it, remember?
But you guys screamed, "The flag is falling," remember, Scot?
It was your boys who created the big distraction, not the last lawfully elected president.

In musing about how history will treat him, Clinton and his advisers have noted that he wasn't confronted with
the sort of grave foreign-policy crisis whose successful resolution defines presidents as great in history's gaze.

Yeah, blame Clinton for steering around the iceberg - go ahead.
I'll take Clinton's peace and prosperity over Bush's war and recession any day.
I can't believe you attack him for not screwing up like 41 and 43 did.

...and why would history judge a president by how well he got out of a hole he dug for himself,
like with Reagan and the economy or Bush's bungling with Kuwait? You can spin until you get dizzy
but the World Trade center attack happened on your boy's watch, not Bill Clinton's.

But in retrospect, Bill Clinton did face a dangerous foreign adversary. He was president when
Al Qaeda went global and started to make the United States the target of its terrorism.

Yeah, and George Bush was on vacation - again - playing with his Game Boy in Crawford, Texas
while bin Laden's boys were getting time in on flight simulators - so what's your point?

That was one of the principal international challenges of the last decade - and it's far more
our misfortune than his that Bill Clinton didn't do more to meet it.

But Scot, why do you repeatedly give the captain of the ship a pass?
Bush ran into the fucking iceberg, NOT CLINTON.

You can always blame Clinton for not saying, "Now George, there's an iceberg eight months in front of you,"
but you don't want to be fair, do you, Scot? You're still obsessed with Clinton's cock.
You should see a therapist about that.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.