Thursday, August 23, 2007

It depends on what the definition of 'kill' is

 
Gateway Pundit fires up the Clinton fabrication detector and pegs the needle. Newsweek reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball reviewed the Inspector General's report of pre-9/11 intelligence failures. One interesting revelation: Clinton's anti-Fox outburst notwithstanding, he never authorized the assassination of Osama Bin Laden:

The report... criticized intelligence problems when Bill Clinton was president, detailing political and legal “constraints” agency officials felt in the late 1990s.

...[the] report made it clear [why the U.S.] never mounted more effective operations against him. ...Scheuer agreed with the inspector general’s findings on this issue, but said if anything the report was overly diplomatic. "There was never any ambiguity," he said. "None of those authorities ever allowed us to kill anyone. At least that’s what the CIA lawyers told us." A spokesman for the former president had no immediate comment...

In September 2006, during a famous encounter with Fox News anchor Wallace, Clinton erupted in anger and waived his finger when asked about whether his administration had done enough to get bin Laden. “What did I do? What did I do?” Clinton said at one point. “I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since.”

Ed Morrissey -- not exactly the vindictive type nor interested in revisiting 9/11 -- concisely nails Clinton to the wall:

I've written before that pursuing partisan blame for 9/11 is a waste of time. It gets in the way of determining where failures occurred and developing the proper approaches to avoid them in the future...

However, it gets difficult to remember that when former presidents essentially lie about their roles on national television. Given Clinton's unique history, this prevarication and self-aggrandizement comes as no surprise, but it is still pretty disappointing. It leaves the historical record muddied, right up to the point when independent investigations reveal the truth. Worse, his shouted fabrications contribute to the partisan atmosphere...

And Fausta's on fire:

Ed asks, Did Clinton lie about targeting Bin Laden?, to which I say, the question should be, "when hasn't Clinton lied about anything?"

Indeed, Clinton never gave the CIA an assassination order on bin Laden. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball have the whole story. Don Surber points out,
Michael Isikoff, the reporter who broke the Monica Lewinsky story only to have his editors at Newsweek spike the story, has caught Bill Clinton in another lie: He never authorized the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Perhaps it all depends on what the definition of "kill" is.

To paraphrase Harry Truman: if the Clintons ever caught themselves telling the truth, they'd lie just to keep their hand in.

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