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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: American Spirit who wrote (88018)2/22/2007 7:11:26 PM
From: jlallen  Respond to of 173976
 
lol

TDFW!!!

Back at it again!!



To: American Spirit who wrote (88018)2/22/2007 8:08:25 PM
From: longnshort  Respond to of 173976
 
hey you see who the biggest liars are in politics ??? lolol the Clintons but you already knew that , right ?



To: American Spirit who wrote (88018)2/23/2007 6:53:22 AM
From: puborectalis  Respond to of 173976
 
February 23, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
A Foreign Policy Built on Do-Overs
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Watching the Bush team wrestle with Iran, North Korea and Iraq reminds me of something that used to be said of the Reagan administration: The right hand never knew what the far right hand was doing.

In fact, my bet is that when the inside history of the Bush team is written, we will discover that, contrary to its carefully managed image of a disciplined core operating from consistent, conservative principles, it has actually been one of the most internally divided administrations — ever.

The only thing the Bush folks all agreed on was that they would never do anything Bill Clinton did. Beyond that, it’s been a food fight. The trial of Scooter Libby, with its testimony about wars between the V.P.’s office and the White House, the White House and the C.I.A., and everyone against the State Department, proves that beyond a reasonable doubt.

When the former Bush U.N. ambassador John Bolton trashed the president’s recent deal with North Korea as a “charade,” though, he highlighted the biggest internal division of all within the Bush team: how to deal with rogue regimes like Iran, North Korea and Saddam’s Iraq — whether to go for regime change or behavior change.

On Iran and North Korea, “this administration does not have clear policies, it has competing impulses,” said Robert Litwak of the Wilson Center, who just published a smart book on this theme: “Regime Change: U.S. Strategy Through the Prism of 9/11.” “The administration’s mantra is ‘all options are on the table.’ But the dilemma is that too many objectives are on the table as well.”

Because this administration was divided for so long on Iran and North Korea, over regime change or behavior change, it got neither. All it got was that Iran and North Korea both went out and bought Bush insurance: a nuclear weapons program.

President Bush obviously recognizes that and is now trying to remedy it. Bill Clinton was criticized for taking more golf mulligans — do-overs — than any other president. Mr. Bush will be remembered for taking more foreign policy mulligans than any other president.

On North Korea, the president has finally decided to focus purely on changing behavior. He struck a very sensible deal last week with Kim Jong Il to take his country off our terrorism list and normalize relations, provided Mr. Kim gives up his nukes.

But we could have had a similar deal years ago — when North Korea had only two nukes — had the Bush team not been wrangling with itself over regime change or behavior change. While it wrangled, Mr. Kim built up his nuclear arsenal, adding six to 12 more bombs. If this deal is carried out, which is still uncertain, the wasted years will not have been a disaster. If it isn’t carried out, they will have been very costly.

Why do you think that a year after Mr. Bush told us we were “addicted to oil” we still have no serious plan to end that addiction? Because the market fundamentalists in his White House — led by Dick Cheney, who opposes any government effort to impose carbon caps or taxes to promote alternative energies, à la California — keep blocking the market pragmatists who do. And Mr. Bush won’t intervene.

The irony of Iraq is that it’s the one place where Mr. Bush decisively chose regime change, but he then executed it so poorly, with insufficient troops, that Iraq never stood a chance. If Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney had spent as much time plotting the toppling of Saddam Hussein as they did the toppling of Colin Powell, Iraq today would be Switzerland. Today’s Bush troop surge in Iraq is just another mulligan — the president’s trying to do in 2007 what he should have done in 2003. In between, we’ve paid a huge price.

How about we avoid a mulligan on Iran? Let’s put a clear deal on the table: full diplomatic relations, security guarantees and thousands of student visas if Iran puts its nuclear program under U.N. inspection and stops supporting terrorism. If not: more sanctions and isolation. Such an offer would at least get us some leverage, unite us more with our allies outside Iran, energize our allies inside Iran and force some excruciating choices on Iran’s leaders.

“Resolving the contradiction in Washington will sharpen the contradiction in Tehran,” Mr. Litwak argued. “Taking regime change off the table in America will put behavior change on the table in Iran.”

I guess we should be thankful that Mr. Bush is trying to fix some of his mistakes, but we have paid a huge, unnecessary price for his learning curve. Which is why it’s always best to get it right the first time. The best golfers never take mulligans, and the best presidents never need them.



To: American Spirit who wrote (88018)2/23/2007 11:18:38 AM
From: Crimson Ghost  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 173976
 
Yes, Bill and Hillary lie
Friday, February 23rd, 2007 | 9:58 am
By DOUG THOMPSON

Hillary Clinton’s campaign staffers, as well as the candidate herself, are up in arms because former supporter David Geffen called Ms. Clinton “a liar.”

Geffen, once a major contributor to the Clinton, now supports Brack Obama and the Clintonites claim he was put up by the Obama campaign to smear the carpetbagging Senator from New York.

As my lawyer likes to say, truth is always an absolute defense. Whatever Geffen’s reasons, he wasn’t lying when he says Hillary, and her skirt chasing former President husband, lie like teenagers caught breaking curfew.

George W. Bush lies too. So did his daddy (remember: “Read my lips?”).

Truth be told, lying is a required trait for political life. Show me a politician who doesn’t lie and I’ll show you a politician who loses elections.

Those who defend Hillary and Bill’s lying say that, unlike Bush, their lies did not result in a war where more than 3,100 Americans and thousands upon thousands of Iraqis have died. The theory of relativity always works as a convenient political excuse.

True, Bush accomplished what many thought might be impossible: He made people long for the halcyon days of the Clintons. Now some point to the Clinton years with fond nostalgia and talk about balanced budgets, a booming economy and no wars…well, no long wars but we did have Somalia and the bombing of a pill factory to divert attention from Bill’s banging of White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Clinton faithful claim Somalia doesn’t count because only a few Americans dies. Sorry but the death of even a single American in a questionable military action is, in my opinion, just as serious as the deaths of 3100.

But the Clintons share a disturbing trait with Bush: An innate inability to tell the truth. From Watergate to Lewinskygate, the Clinton lied through their teeth. They got rich from shady land deals, blocked investigations into their actions, practiced the “politics of personal destruction” on anyone who questioned their ways.

They left behind a trail of broken friendships, abandoned loyalists and unpaid debts. Former Both Clintons, for example, still owes millions in unpaid legal bills but that didn’t stop them from buying a million manse in New York and living large while their creditors wait, in vain, for their money.

In testimony before a federal grand jury, young Lewinsky described in near-pornographic detail how she would crawl under the desk and nosh on he First Penis while President Clinton joked with heads of state. She talked about how the President would stick cigars up her vagina and then smoke them during Oval Office meetings.

Clinton then lied about the affair in a deposition in a sexual harassment suit brought by another of his dalliances. Hillary Clinton went on national TV and swore she knew nothing about the affair and blamed the whole thing on the “vast right wing conspiracy.” Sorry, but her husband has been a known whore-monger his entire life and her claim that she didn’t know doesn’t pass the smell test (maybe she should have smelled the cigars).

Bill Clinton was, is, and always will be Arkansas trailer trash who married a bright, but homely, wallflower because he sensed she could be of use for his unbridled ambition. In exchange for rescuing her from the obscurity of wallpaper, Hillary conveniently looked the other way while her husband screwed every woman in sight.

George W. Bush deserves to be in jail for his many crimes against humanity. But the Clintons deserved far more punishment than they received. Perjury is a crime and the Arkansas bar association stripped Bill Clinton of his right to practice law because he lied under oath. Hillary committed more than one act of obstruction of justice in covering up her role in Whitewater and other crimes.

I can think of several places where the Clintons belong: A pedestal ain’t one of them.