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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (8667)	10/23/1998 12:23:00 PM
From: Axxel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13994

I think it would be exciting to have another president like that...who knows..we might invade Canada?

To: Bill who wrote (8667)	10/24/1998 11:04:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13994

>>True, but his memory is already as bad as Ronnie's. Far worse. According to the legal record, Clinton's memory is shot and he should be removed for mental incapacity if nothing else - 146 "I don't remember's" or similar. Almost 50% of his responses were of that type and are empirical evidence of Clinton's profound mental deterioration - something he even admitted to while under oath. Saturday, October 24, 1998 View from Abroad Bill Clinton's finest hour? Latest Mideast peace pact breaks little new ground By JOHN BIERMAN The Financial Post Observing the frantic and quite unprecedented efforts of the White House and State Department over the past week to force through an agreement -- any kind of agreement, whole or merely partial, viable or merely cosmetic -- between Israelis and Palestinians at the Wye Plantation peace talks, this commentator found himself wondering what it was primarily meant to achieve: Genuine peace in the Middle East or the salvaging of Bill Clinton's presidency? Early in that presidency, five years ago, Clinton reaped absolutely unearned kudos by staging aWhite House signing ceremony between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat of the remarkable Oslo Agreement -- one that had been reached between the two sides without any U.S. input at all. Merely presiding over the signing ceremonies after all the hard work had been done in no way compared with the heroic efforts of Clinton's much-traduced predecessor Jimmy Carter who, at Camp David in 1978, knocked heads together and secured a truly historic peace deal between Israel and Egypt. But this past week it has been payback time. Clinton has had to really work for whatever kudos may now accrue, dropping everything else and playing every possible card -- including the royal card, represented by the dying King Hussein of Jordan -- in a belated effort to achieve something for which (apart from the tawdry mementos of the Monica Lewinsky affair) his presidency may be remembered. Does that seem too harsh and cynical a judgment? Well, just think back on the 19 months of relative U.S. inaction since the Israelis started construction work on the disputed site at Har Homa, during which the peace process has remained paralyzed. What did Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright do during all that time, apart from sending the hapless Dennis Ross on a few more fruitless trips to Jerusalem and Gaza City? So why the burst of frenzied activity now? Can it have something to do with the mid-term Congressional elections in a couple of weeks and the start of impeachment proceedings against the president shortly thereafter? The last-minute delay in signing caused by the row over Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy jailed for life by the U.S., means details of Friday's agreement were not available by the time this column went to press. But whatever the details, White House spin doctors were sure to put the best possible gloss on things. Clinton could not afford an obvious failure. But will this agreement genuinely advance the cause of peace in the Middle East? That's doubtful. For when all the hype and the hair-splitting and logic-chopping have been put aside, and all the tantrums and stage-managed near-walkouts have been forgotten, this "peace summit" has not been about breaking new ground but merely about implementing what had already been agreed upon at Oslo between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And at the heart of that Oslo Agreement was the principle of land for peace -- the surrender of enough Israeli-occupied territory in the West Bank and Gaza (enough not just in terms of quantity but also of quality and contiguity) to enable the eventual creation of a Palestinian mini-state capable of living at peace and in some kind of dignity with its powerful Israeli neighbor. Rabin, that redoubtable old soldier, had accepted that principle as essential to the future tranquility for the Land of Israel. An assassin's bullets put paid to him and a mismanaged election brought to power Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who -- far less his coalition partners even farther to the right -- has never pretended to embrace the idea of land for peace. So whatever small advances have been achieved at Wye Plantation may not affect the core of the problem. Though it is possible this shaky interim agreement may clear the way for the long-delayed final status talks, the well of distrust and dislike between the two sides remains deep and unbridged. The incident in which Netanyahu's hard-line foreign minister, Ariel Sharon, walked straight past Arafat, who saluted in a vain and pathetic attempt to signify respect and reconciliation, speaks volumes for the true feeling of top Israeli policy makers. The incident in which a Palestinian bomber threw grenades at Israeli commuters in a Beersheba bus station tells what you need to know about the hatred and resentment that persist among ordinary Palestinians. Saving Clinton from impeachment and winning him an approving footnote in the history books has nothing to do with the realities of the situation or the mindset behind that snub or those bombs. John Bierman is a correspondent for The Financial Post. canoe.ca