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Outfoxed

Bill Clinton’s outburst on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace (….here at Crooks and Liars) was not just great TV, but a brilliant display of indignation and clarity from the Democratic Party’s biggest name. Despite whatever qualms one may have about him, it’s always a pleasure to watch Clinton at work–as TPM notes, we sometimes forget “not just what a tremendously effective communicator he is but how much he just plain gets it.” (Another thing I am in awe of: it looks so easy for him.) Clinton’s response to Wallace’s transparent set-up was angry, yes, but articulate and intelligent as well, a performance that should serve as an inspiration to Democrats who still refuse to adopt a more pugnacious stand in the face of the right’s shameless tactics.

The Clinton-Wallace showdown was valuable for a handful of reasons. One, while the right-wing noise machine is common knowledge to many progressives, vast numbers of the public likely have neither heard of it (or, worse, think those who posit its existence are delusional). Clinton’s breaking of the fourth wall–and his invocation of a “serious disinformation campaign” and suggestion of Fox’s softball approach to Republicans–gave eloquent voice to the progressive media critique, something that Democratic elites don’t harp on enough.

I inserted the Crooks and Liars video because it is my understanding that Fox had the Youtube videos removed, even though they left hundreds of other videos from Fox up. Not unexpected that Fox would try and ambush president Clinton when he was there to talk about his Initiative, but it is hypocritical. Since 9-11 Fox hasn’t exactly grilled conservatives who during the nineties blocked or slowed President Clinton’s anti-terror legislation, Republicans Sabotaged Clinton’s Anti-Terror Efforts

“In August 1998, President Clinton ordered missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan in an effort to hit Osama bin Laden, who had been linked to the embassy bombings in Africa (and was later connected to the attack on the USS Cole). The missiles reportedly missed bin Laden by a few hours, and Clinton was widely criticized by many who claimed he had ordered the strikes primarily to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. As John F. Harris wrote in The Washington Post:

In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation - from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) - that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said he was mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around bin Laden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicans accused him of hysteria.

See: “Claim: The Clinton administration failed to track down the perpetrators of several terrorist attacks against Americans. Status: False.” http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/clinton.htm. See also: Bill Press, “Don’t blame it on Bill Clinton,” CNN.com, October 18, 2001: http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/10/18/column.billpress/index.html

Also see: Lauria, Joe. “U.S. Embassy Bombers Get Life Sentences.” The Ottawa Citizen. 19 October 2001 (p. A5). As well as Randolph, Eleanor. “4 Guilty in Bombing of World Trade Center,” The Washington Post: 5 March 1994 (p. A1) and “Trade Center Bombers Given 240 Years Each,” The Washington Post: 25 May 1994 (p. A1).

Republicans typically couldn’t decide whether President Clinton was too blasé or too “hysterical.” In reality, his response was appropriately focused on bin Laden and al Qaeda according to top anti-terror officials of the Reagan and Bush I administrations. What did Bill Clinton do?

Issued January 23, 1995 his Executive Order 12947 “Prohibiting Transactions With Terrorists Who Threaten To Disrupt the Middle East Peace Process,” provided for prevention and punishment of efforts to fund terrorism and authorized the FBI and Treasury Department to investigate and prevent financial support of terrorism. It read in part:

“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America … I, William J. Clinton, President of the United States of America, find that grave acts of violence committed by foreign terrorists that disrupt the Middle East peace process constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”

This executive order provided for prohibition and punishment of transactions to support terrorism including transfer of “property and interests in property of … the persons [found] to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of disrupting the Middle East peace process, or … to assist in, sponsor, or provide financial, material, or technological support for, or services in support of, such acts of violence….”

There is more at the link. Some far right wacky web sites are already putting out their own distorted version of history, ‘Fact Sheet’ On Clinton Interview Gets It Wrong

Today, the right wing is circulating a “fact sheet” on President Clinton’s Fox News interview. Here is one item, published on the Hotline Blog:

MYTH: President Clinton Said No One Knew Of Al Qaeda In 1993:

Former President Bill Clinton: “[No one] even knew Al Qaeda was a growing concern in October of ‘93.” (Fox News’ “Fox News Sunday,” 9/24/06)

FACT: Osama Bin Laden And Al Qaeda Were Well Known By The Time Clinton Was Inaugurated

The sole backup for this claim is a 2003 Q&A session with conservative author Richard Miniter, published on the National Review’s website. The interview doesn’t even rebut Clinton’s assertion.

Miniter says that Bin Laden was known to the Clinton administration after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That’s true. What wasn’t known for several years was that Bin Laden had a terrorist network called al-Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission report makes that clear on page 341:

In 1996-1997, the intelligence community received new information making clear that Bin Laden headed his own terrorist group.

Clinton was right. The “fact sheet” is wrong.

And because everyone needs a break from seriousness, House of Sugar by Rebecca Kraatz

Where ladies are beautiful, babies have perfect round heads and men shine handsome and strong like Excalibur, the sword! Updated weekdays.

Slow to load on a dial-up, but worth the wait if you like offbeat comics.

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I found this composite the other day. Might be the best I’ve ever seen. For me anyway it takes digital art (outside of Hollywood studios) to a whole other level. I don’t know the original artist, but all credit to him or her whoever they are.

Slave Labor, Poisoned Toys Give Global Capitalism a Black Eye 

And then there are the poisonous products–the killer toothpaste containing diethylene glycol found at a Dollar Store in Miami. The questionably “organic” herbs and food products. William Hubbard, the former deputy commissioner of the FDA who now runs an organization called Coalition for a Stronger FDA told NPR about the Chinese food shipments FDA officials turn back at ports after labeling them as “filthy”–that’s the term of art for smelly, decomposing, chemical-laden and otherwise obviously unfit food. On NPR, Hubbard described how an inspector found an herbal tea factory where herbal tea was processed by driving trucks over it: “‘To speed up the drying process, they would lay the tea leaves out on a huge warehouse floor and drive trucks over them so that the exhaust would more rapidly dry the leaves out,’ Hubbard says. ‘And the problem there is that the Chinese use leaded gasoline, so they were essentially spewing the lead over all these leaves.’”

And, “That lead-contaminated herbal tea would only be caught by FDA inspectors at the border if they knew to look for it, Hubbard says.”

As food imports to our country have exploded, with China leading the way, the FDA’s food inspection unit is shrinking. Hubbard estimates that 1 percent of food imports are actually inspected by FDA officials. And funding for food inspection has shrunk from half to one-quarter of the agency’s budget since he started his career in the 1970s.