Arianna Huffington: Will Hill Kill Bill for Lying About Iraq?

from HuffPost:




Arianna Huffington
Will Hill Kill Bill for Lying About Iraq?
Posted December 2, 2007 | 02:08 PM (EST)



I'm hearing that Hillary is ready to kill Bill. But it has nothing to do with his roving eye -- and everything to do with his Rovian lie.

By claiming that he had "opposed Iraq from the beginning" -- when the record clearly shows otherwise -- the former president served voters a piping hot reminder that the Clintons have frequently had an on-and-off relationship with the truth.

What made Clinton's statement infinitely worse, was that it came at the very moment when Karl Rove was being pilloried for his attempt to rewrite history on Iraq, with even Andy Card, his fellow member of the White House Iraq Group, rejecting his claim that Congress had pushed Bush into war. And just as Rudy Giuliani is being challenged for his penchant for playing fast and loose with the truth.

This should have been a week when Democrats could have asked voters: Have you had enough of all the lies? Are you ready for someone who will tell you the truth? Especially on the single most important issue of our time -- the war?

Instead, the public is left with the sour taste of "they're all the same" in its mouth.

No wonder Hill is lashing out at Bill. What the hell was he thinking?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/will-hill-kill-bill-for-l_b_74886.html

while it was Bush who refused to wait.

B Clinton was not a strong vocal anti-invasion voice but he was not a supporter of invasion without evidence of wmd from UN inspection team.

In the Clinton comment on Letterman, Letterman was for invasion, Clinton was talking about duration of invasion--and never said we should or must invade. He was pointing out that Iraq was militarily weak.

The 1996 quotes don't seem relevant at all. Clinton did not invade Iraq or ask Congress for a resolution while he was pres. He tried to enforce sanctions and thereby hurt citizens of Iraq but he did not invade (even if he did believe Hussein was trying to build WMD).

I remember H.Clinton's strong statement in favor of war when she made her vote and thought at the time it was a contrast with B. Clinton's statements.

The truth is always a moving target with them. You need a calculator to figure out what they're really saying.

What I remember is that Bill Clinton could have stood up and said something like "This is a fabricated crisis, and there is absolutely no reason to even talk about invading Iraq."

But nooo, he was for it,against it,skeptical of it, supportive of it..... :crazy: :crazy:

And defended it MANY times against the left - something he bragged about during his summer/2004 book tour during mainstream media interviews.

with her ridiculous "lie" accusations.
You are right however - for someone who knew directly that this war was not necessary, Clinton is fully responsible for supporting Bush and ultimately the war.

Bet the author creamed themselves when they found a way to work that in.

I thought it was very suspicious that Huffington Post turned off the comments to the story detailing the Obama fund-raiser with ex-gay activist Donnie McClurkin performing. They waited until Obama issued his statement about it, and then allowed comments for that. I wasn't previously aware of Arianna's disdain for the Clintons, but that doesn't excuse her turning off the comments on a story that makes the "anti-Hillary" look bad. Censorship, my God Arianna, shame on you!

Clinton's presidency. Then the hubby turned up gay, so she had an..."epiphany". But clung to her hatred of the Clintons when she crossed the aisle.

:shrug:

This kind of vitriol deeply turns me off - much as I am not a Hillary supporter.

http://facts.hillaryhub.com/archive/?id=4406

On the eve of war with Iraq, former President Clinton said we should avoid war and seek a new U.N. resolution. Here's what he said in New York on March 14, 2003, less than a week before the war began:

"He’s finally destroying his missiles, so let’s give him a certain date in which, in this time, he has to destroy the missiles, reconcile the discrepancies in what we believe is the truth on chemical weapons, reconcile the discrepancies on biological weapons, reconcile the issue of the Drones, and offer up 150 scientists who can travel outside of Iraq with their families for interviews. If you do that, then we’ll say this is really good-faith disarmament, and we’ll go on without a conflict. Now if that passes, however, then you have to be willing to take yes for an answer. You see what I mean? I’m for regime change too, but there’s more than one way to do it. We don’t invade everybody whose regime we want to change. There’s more than one way to do this, but if that passes and he actually disarms, then we have to be willing to take it, and then work for regime change by supporting the opposition to Saddam Hussein within and outside Iraq, and doing other things.

*******

After the war commenced, President Clinton repeatedly said he would not have invaded Iraq; he would have waited for inspectors to finish their job.

President Clinton: 'I would not have done it until after Hans Blix finished the job.' According to an article in TIME magazine, President Clinton said, "I would not have done it until after Hans Blix finished his job. Having said that, over 600 of our people have died since the conflict was over. We've got a big stake now in making it work. I want it to have been worth it, even though I didn't agree with the timing of the attack." (TIME, 6/24/04)

President Clinton: 'I thought that we should not have gone in there until we let the UN Inspectors finish their job.' On CNN’s The Situation Room, Clinton said, “Well, at the time, Wolf, I thought that we should not have gone in there until we let the U.N. inspectors finish their job. That was, after all, the understanding the Senate had when it was asked to vote to Congress to give the president authority to go in.” (CNN, The Situation Room, 8/11/05)

President Clinton: 'I don’t agree with what was done when it was done.' On CNN, Clinton said, “The question is, what's now best for the American people, for the war on terror, and for the people of Iraq, and the stability of the Middle East? We don't want to set a fixed timetable, if that led to chaos, the establishment of permanent terrorist operations in the Sunni section of Iraq, and long-term greater instability in the Middle East. So, whether you are for it or against it, it seems to me you should all be praying that it succeeds. I am. And so -- and I didn't agree with what was done when it was done. But we are where we are.” (CNN, 12/1/05)

:think:

to attack them if they weren't posting supported statements.

And how does that invalidate what Bill Clinton specifically said on specific dates about what he felt regarding the war?

N'est-ce pas?

totally irrelevant. The quotes from that post are real, i remember reading them - they meant a lot to me at the time. Then I was disappointed.
Why this effort to cancel the past - which is meaningless now anyway?:shrug:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/06/19/clinton.iraq/index.html



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54905-2004Jun19.html

This is par for the course. The democrats who voted for the IWR wanted inspections to continue, however they all ended up agreeing with the invasion. Their problem isn't with an invasion, or just how completely fucking stupid that idea was, it was with the timing of the invasion.

The Congress decides and the Republican Congress went along with the phony intelligence provided by the Republican Executive Branch.

It wouldn't have mattered how Hillary or any Democrats voted because the Republican Congress would have voted on the same phony intelligence and plunged us into war.

Get real, folks! The Bush White House war cabal wanted this war and it lied to Congress and to the world to start the war under a banner of unity.

at the very time that the Dem nominee was opposing the DECISION to go in when weapon inspections were working and opposing the permanent bases and Donald Rumsfeld's conduct and strategy.

Bill spent all his airtime on mainstream media defending and supporting Bush.

Seems he forgot that Kerry was the top lawmaker in DC on the tracking of terror networks and their funding in the 80s and 90s. In fact - he even forgot to mention that in his book though one would expect post 9-11 the public would be interested in that.

Arianna has no more credibility with me then Bill or Hillary - less, actually.
As for Bill - he did resist the neocons pressure to attack Itaq as president - matters a lot to me. he also spoke about Saddam not having WMD (summer of 2002 - CFR Q & A). he stated several times that it's the wrong priority.
Then he fell in line with Bushco - and lost me in the process.
Which really makes whatever he said in the beginning quite irrelevant. I wouldn't even bring it up if Arianna's vitriol wouldn't unnerve me so.

At a time when it seemed the anti-war forces were about to score a minor victory, or at least move public opinion, Pres. Clinton, who had been uncharacteristically silent about the invasion, decided to weigh in. It was the night before David Kaye's final report on the WMD. For some unknowable reason (although I have my suspicions) Bill Clinton decided to call into Larry King and announce that he, Clinton, had believed Saddam had WMD. There were no qualifiers attached to his statement, no additional words about how Saddam posed no imminent threat, just a few words to cover bush's tush and the tushes of those who voted for the IWR. Anyway, it set the stage for a white-washing of the worst foreign policy decision ever made by this country. His little call also undercut the hard work done by many activists to wake the country.

Note: at the time Clinton was being pressured to invade Iraq by the PNAC criminals, Clinton did make regime change in Iraq our policy. And he then bombed them after Saddam demanded the removal of the weapons inspectors believed to be CIA. Those inspectors were later proven to be CIA causing a furor among the remaining team who had nearly completed their job.

But my recent concerns centered on Senator Clinton's chosen foreign policy team. What is Lee Feinstein, a man who believes that bush's doctrine of preemption doesn't go far enough, doing heading that team? And while I don't mind Holbrooke (her rumored choice for State), he was 100% on board with this damn war. Shouldn't we be looking for some people smart enough to denounce what was a completely flawed policy? Of course Holbrooke's wrong-headedness pales when compared with Michael O'Hanlon, another trusted Clinton adviser. And why is Gen. Jack Keane, author of the surge, her leading military go-to guy? Don't forget Clinton's statements about sending Powell out as our face of the new diplomacy.

Doesn't this give you pause?

Meet the next NSA

So, of course it gave me pause - I didn't even vote for Hillary for the senate in 2006.
But the so called lie was not a lie - and it doesn't even matter - as the facts you wrote about are right (except that he wasn't completely silent in the beginning).
I still resent the shrill Gingrich fan making points that do not matter.
Hillary voted for IWR. That's all I need to give me pause about her.

Her Clinton Derangement Syndrome is pathological. She's a seriously disturbed person.

Can't our country move on?