Day: April 10, 2008

Bill Blames Hillary’s Screw Ups About Bosnia on Being Tired at Night. What About 3 a.m.?

Trish

Bill just keeps making things worse for Team Hillary. In explaining how she got it wrong on Bosnia, he himself is also inaccurate on almost every detail.

But here’s the capper: Bill keeps saying Hillary screwed up because it was 11 p.m. and she was tired. Excuse me? Someone who twice hung her entire campaign on her acumen, hypervigilance, and superior ability to respond after being awakened at 3 in the morning in the White House was brain dead at 11 at night on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania? Except it wasn’t 11 at night.

ABC’s Jake Tapper could find hardly anything correct in the former president’s explanation. First is Bill’s version, followed by what really happened, according to Tapper’s fact check.

Excuse me? Someone who twice hung her entire campaign on her acumen, hypervigilance, and superior ability to respond after being awakened at 3 in the morning in the White House was brain dead at 11 at night on the campaign trail?

Former President Bill Clinton offered this bit of revisionist history of his wife’s Bosnia story in Jasper, Ind., today, one riddled with a veritable sniper fire of errors.

“She took a terrible beating in the press for a few days,” he said, per ABC News’ Sarah Amos, “because she was exhausted at 11 o’clock at night (1) and she started talking about Bosnia and she misstated the circumstances under which she landed in Bosnia. (2)

“Did you all see all that? And oh, they acted like she was practically Mata Hari,” he said — referring to the Dutch exotic dancer accused by the French of spying for the Germans and executed by a firing squad during World War I — “like she was making up all this stuff.

“And then the president of Bosnia said, ‘Well, it was quite dangerous when she came, there were snipers in the hills all around,’ (3) And then Gen. Wes Clarke, who was there trying to make the peace among the Bosnians, said ‘Yeah, it was dangerous, let me remind you three of the Americans who were on my peace-keeping team were killed because they had to take a dangerous road ’cause they couldn’t go the regular way.’

[…]

Poll: Bush’s Approval Remains Stupendously High at 28% in New AP-Ipsos Survey

Jon Ponder

Although 28 percent is the lowest rating George Bush has received in the AP-Ipsos poll, it is still remarkably high for a president whose signal accomplishments in seven years and three months in office have been turning the entire world against the United States, needlessly causing the deaths of over 4,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, emptying the U.S. Treasury and staving off impeachment.

With Bush’s record of zero achievements, it is a miracle that over 25 percent of Americans — 100 percent of whom are Republicans — can yet muster approval of good ol’ George. But, as is typical of the liberal media, the AP writer sees the glass half-empty for Worst President Ever:

Public approval of President Bush has reached a new low in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll, driven by dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy.

A survey released Thursday showed just 28 percent approve of the overall job he is doing. His previous record low in the poll was 30 percent last month.

In another record low, only 27 percent are happy with his job on the economy, which threatens to enter a recession.

Other presidents have had low approval ratings that were nonetheless amazingly high, of course. Richard Nixon was still garnering a 25 percent approval rating at the time of his resignation in August 1974, for example.

Gov. Siegelman: ‘Karl Rove’s Fingerprints Were All Over’ My Conviction on Trumped up Political Charges

Jon Ponder

“Saying that Karl Rove is not involved in my prosecution is like saying George Bush is not involved in the war in Iraq,” former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman told Dan Abrams on the MSNBC show, “The Verdict,” on Monday. It was Siegelman’s first live interview after being released on bail from prison, where he was serving a seven-year term on federal corruption charges.

“I think the House and Senate Judiciary Committee should subpoena Karl Rove and bring him before those committees.”
– SiegelmanSiegelman, a Democrat, was convicted by a jury on charges that he traded a seat on a state board for a donation to the state education lottery. Siegelman insists that “not a penny of that money” went into his own pocket (and we can assume that if prosecutors had found otherwise, we’d know it by now). So, on the face of it, the quid pro quo here is far less corrupt than when a newly elected president gives a major donor an ambassadorship to, say, Luxembourg — a trade off that happens approximately every four years in this country.

Seigelman insists Karl Rove masterminded the prosecution by U.S. Attorneys from the political office in the White House in an effort to suppress the Democratic Party in Alabama:

ABRAMS: How are you so convinced that Karl Rove and Alabama Republicans were behind your prosecution?

SIEGELMAN: Well, number one, Karl Rove‘s fingerprints were all over this case. And you know, if you ask me, do we have the knife with his fingerprints on it, no, but we‘ve got the glove and the glove fits. And here‘s how.

In 1994, when Karl Rove was in Alabama trying to steal his first election, I voluntarily testified against his client. In 1999, his client starts an investigation of me and this goes on until 2001 when Bill Canary, who is a business associate and political partner of Karl Rove, his wife is appointed as a U.S. attorney and she starts a federal investigation.

ABRAMS: … You‘re alleging that Rove talks to his friend, who‘s that Bill Canary who‘s married to the U.S. attorney and it‘s a serious allegation you‘re making that he then effectively gets his wife to go after you?

SIEGELMAN: Well, I‘m telling you, the facts of this are that Rove‘s fingerprints are all over here – all over this case because his client investigated me, one of his friends, social friends started an investigation and prosecution of me that was dismissed after just a couple of days in court.

They went after me again, this time with the wife of Bill Canary—the wife of Karl Rove‘s business client and political associate. And, you know, it continues from there. When those investigations were faltering, the people who were holding back the investigation, a career Department of Justice employee was replaced, was replaced with someone who was the wife of the campaign manager of one of Karl Rove‘s clients … And then when that investigation was slowing down, they were called to Washington and they were told to go at Siegelman again.

Siegelman says Rove has strong connections into Alabama Republican politics:

[…]

Cheney, Rice, Powell and Other Top Bush Officials Said to Have ‘Choreographed’ Torture Techniques

Jon Ponder

ABC News is reporting that a gang of top Bush officials known as the “Principals” — but for whom a better moniker might be the “Sadists” — met, starting in 2002, to prescribe in detail which torture techniques, and what combinations, American interorogators could use on terror suspects.
The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed [that] some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
At the time, the Principals included Dick Cheney, National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and John Ashcroft, a devout Christian who then served as U.S. attorney general.

What this group of high officials did in these meetings appears to have been not only horrifically immoral and unethical, but illegal and un-Constitutional:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of “combined” interrogation techniques — using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time — on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

All of these officials — these suspects — were unavailable or refused to comment when contacted by ABC News.

Torture is illegal in the United States, and it can’t be made legal by a cabal around George Bush, or any president, just because they say so. Or at least that’s the way it used to be, back in the quaint old times before 2000, when Americans — especially Republicans — demanded that our elected leaders abide by the U.S. Constitution.