Clinton Speaks
 

Rather than resurrect the countless old threads, I thought I'd start another :cool:

Once again, Clinton is not exactly supporting the position that W totally made up and then lied about the WMD being a threat to the US to get Iraq's oil :shrug: This is also, I believe, Kerry's position - at least in hindsight :cool: Then, Russia comes out with the intelligence that SH wanted to attack us after 9/11 - W can only get stronger based on this - Americans apparently are not willing to make the subtle distinctions required to villify W here - and that is sad IMO

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/06/19/cli...raq/index.html

Clinton defends successor's push for war
Says Bush 'couldn't responsibly ignore' chance Iraq had WMDs

(CNN) -- Former President Clinton has revealed that he continues to support President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq but chastised the administration over the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

"I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over," Clinton said in a Time magazine interview that will hit newsstands Monday, a day before the publication of his book "My Life."

Clinton, who was interviewed Thursday, said he did not believe that Bush went to war in Iraq over oil or for imperialist reasons but out of a genuine belief that large quantities of weapons of mass destruction remained unaccounted for.

Noting that Bush had to be "reeling" in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Clinton said Bush's first priority was to keep al Qaeda and other terrorist networks from obtaining "chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material."

"That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for," Clinton said in reference to Iraq and the fact that U.N. weapons inspectors left the country in 1998.

"So I thought the president had an absolute responsibility to go to the U.N. and say, 'Look, guys, after 9/11, you have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection process.' You couldn't responsibly ignore [the possibility that] a tyrant had these stocks," Clinton said.

Pressed on whether the Iraq war was worth the cost to the United States, Clinton said he would not have undertaken the war until after U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix "finished his job."

Weapons inspectors led by Blix scoured Iraq for three and a half months before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 but left after President Bush issued an ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave the country.

"I want it to have been worth it, even though I didn't agree with the timing of the attack," Clinton said.

Clinton blamed the Abu Ghraib prison abuses on poorly trained National Guard personnel and higher-ups in the Bush administration.

The former president said he was not surprised by the abuses committed by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib but that he was surprised by their extent.

"There is no excuse for that," Clinton said.

Clinton blamed the abuses on the higher echelons of the Bush administration.

"The more we learn about it, the more it seems that some people fairly high up, at least, thought that this was the way it ought to be done," he said.

Implying that the United States should lead by example, Clinton said of the abuses, "No. 1, we can't pull stunts like that, and No. 2, when we do, whoever is responsible has to pay."

Past presidents don't diss sitting presidents. eom

Ahh darn...
 

I thought good ol' Willie was going to talk about a certain rock band that played his inauguration instead of those elusive WMD's...:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Brian "Ya gotta love a former President who will do a book signing July 3rd at a Wal-Mart in Fayetteville, Arkansas" j.

I saw that! He'll be here on July 20th.

Tell that to Carter - he sure has no problems doing it - neither does Billy C. for that matter :cool:

In the end, I think the reality is the WMD issue was not a total complete red herring so W could get Iraq's oil - as the far left continues to say. The facts just do not support it. That does not mean, however, that W's rush to war and his lying to get there was excusable.

I just for the life of me cannot explain Putin coming in this late in the day and saying although SH planned to attack the US, the US' invasion of Iraq was not justified. That just makes no sense, esp. coming from Putin who has no issue with killing his own people at the mere mention of revolt. Maybe Russia knows it cannot prove the intelligence. Otherwise, why wouldn't Rove be SCREAMINING it to prop up W's falling numbers. Rove is VERY smart - so that he is not means to me that something larger is there :shrug:

CNN didn't post the whole quote. The full Clinton quote is:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...1896&ncid=1473

Bush Timing on Iraq Was Wrong, Clinton Says

Sun Jun 20, 7:29 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush made the right decision to go after Saddam Hussein but the timing of the invasion was wrong, Bill Clinton said in an interview with Time magazine released on Sunday.

"I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq (news - web sites), even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over," the former president said.

"I would not have done it until after (former U.N. chief weapons inspector) Hans Blix finished his job."

Clinton spoke to Time days before the release of his memoirs, "My Life," on Tuesday. It was his first print interview as part of the high-profile publicity campaign.

"We went in there because (Bush) bought the Wolfowitz-Cheney analysis that the Iraqis would be better off, we could shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, and our leverage to make peace between the Palestinians and Israelis would be increased," Clinton told Time.

The results have been mixed so far, he said.

"I think right now, getting rid of Saddam's tyranny, ironically, has made Iraq more vulnerable to terrorism coming from in the outside," Clinton said. "But any open society is going to be more vulnerable than any tyranny to that."

During a two-hour interview conducted on Thursday, Clinton also touched on his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and his battle with independent counsel Ken Starr.

"I was involved in two great struggles at the same time: a great public struggle over the future of America with the Republican Congress and a private struggle with my old demons.

"I won the public one and lost the private one," Clinton said. "I don't think it's much more complicated than that."

Of Starr, Clinton said the special prosecutor represented "the new right that runs the Washington Republican Party."

"This was not about evidence. This was about a struggle for power. I think that they really saw us as usurpers. They thought the only reason they lost the election to Jimmy Carter was Watergate," he said.

Of course the Clinton haters are going to spin this into whatever. It's no surprise to me that the source of this story is Reuters. Once again, former presidents don't diss sitting presidents, expecially in an election year.

I hear that the NYT trashed his book in reviews.

- Jake

They did, but the reviewer said in many interviews on Sun. that all Pres. biographies are similarly boring, self-involved, etc.

I guess my expectation of Clinton was higher. :shrug:

- Jake

Dan Rather read it and said today that Clinton really involves the reader. :shrug:

I read the NYT review and anyone with that name and headline title isn't reliable, in my book. :eek:

I think that Clinton's analysis here and in the CNN quote is true. I think that the news source is irrelevant. We are talking about direct quotes here. I think what Clinton says is pretty much is exactly what has happened and is happening in Iraq. I just take him at his word. But, the far left cannot do the same because to do so would be to give W a litle credit for something and that just cannot ever happen in their world. They have white hot blind hatred for W just as the far right can never ever under any circumstances admit that Clinton did some good things. Such is the state of politics.

As for former Pres. not dissing sitting Presidents, Clinton and Carter have dissed W on more than one occasion. In fact, Clinton has been called out for it by several pundits. So, I think that is just not true. Again, I think Clinton is saying exactly what he thinks. I think he is not trying to find something nice to say. I case this on the fact that Clinton has been saying the same things about SH being a threart for years and he said alot of them while he was in office.

Plus, I think one must consider the NYTImes rarely likes anything - IMO they love to diss everything in an attempt to make themselves look smart and important :laugh:

Here is a related article.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/21/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes

All the president's money
With a $12 million book deal and speaking fees of $9.5 million, Bill Clinton's rolling in it.
June 21, 2004: 10:38 AM EDT
By Les Christie, CNN/Money contributing writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Bubba's book blitz has begun.

Bill Clinton started promoting his autobiography with an interview on Sunday's "60 Minutes" that ran the entire length of the show. The former president chose "My Life" as the title of the900-page work. He might have called it "My Wallet."

Clinton will continue to flog the book,due to go on sale in bookstores on Tuesday, with book signings and appearances across the country.

With a retail price of $35, publisher Alfred A. Knopf has enormous hopes for the book. The company has ordered a first printing of 1.5 million copies, and paid Clinton an advance of $10 to $12 million, according to Publisher's Weekly, the largest ever for a non-fiction title. For Knopf to turn a profit, "My Life" must sell like hot cakes.

Thomas McCormack, a playwright and former CEO of St. Martin's Press, estimated Knopf's break-even point for the book is probably about 800,000 hardcover copies. "If they sell out the first printing," he says, "they'll make millions."

Clinton -- this week's Time cover boy -- can, at least potentially, earn additional royalties beyond the advance.

Royalties for big-name authors vary greatly, according to a spokesman for literary agent International Creative Management. But if you figure the industry norm of 15 percent of the cover price, Clinton's book would have to sell nearly 2 million copies to cover his advance. After that, he would collect an additional $5.25 for every book sold.

For Clinton, the streets leading out of the White House are paved with gold, thanks to the book deal and a lucrative sideline: public speaking.

He may be the highest paid speaker in the world right now, although that's a "tough call," said Mark Castel, CEO of Boston-based AEI Speakers Bureau.

"He's certainly up there among the highest paid," said Castel, noting it depends how it's measured: highest average fee, total annual fees or the biggest one-shot engagement.

According to Hillary Clinton's 2003 Senate financial-disclosure form covering 2002, her husband had 60 paid speaking engagements that year, earning about $159,000 for each speech, on average, or $9.5 million in total.

Road to riches
Just to get an idea of how a former president keeps himself busy on the lecture circuit, here's one month from Clinton's 2002 schedule.


Feb. 7. Speech to the Women's International Zionist Organization in Miami. Fee: $125,000.

Feb. 11: Speech to Group Vivendi/Universal in Sundance, Utah. Fee: $150,000.

Feb. 15: Speech to the Long Island Association in Woodbury, N.Y. Fee: $125,000.

Feb. 18: Speech to ORT, a Jewish charity in Montreal. Fee: $125,000.
Then, Clinton made a quick pop Down Under to make presentations in Sydney (Feb. 22, for a whopping $300,000), Perth (Feb. 23, $125,000), Adelaide (Feb. 25 and 26, $125,000 and $250,000), and Melbourne (Feb. 27, $125,000).

All told, his words of wisdom generated $1.45 million in fees in one month.

Agents usually take 20 to 30 percent of a speaker's fees. But according to Castel, bookers often settle for as little as 10 percent to capture the business of high-profile speakers.

Castel noted that Clinton benefits since he's a scarce commodity on the speaking circuit: an ex-president.

"Gerald Ford is pretty much retired," said Castel. "Jimmy Carter does some engagements, but is very selective, speaking mostly to humanitarian groups. And George H.W. Bush has cut back a lot."

For organizations willing to pay through the nose for a presidential presence, that leaves Clinton.

Hillary's recently released financial disclosure form for 2003 showed her husband slashed his paid speaking schedule last year, with just 22 engagements, down from 60 in 2002. Bill earned $3.5 million in speaking fees, or about $161,000 an average that was a bit higher than in 2002.

Working wife
In addition to speaking fees and book advances, Clinton collects some incidental income.

His presidential pension totals$171,900 a year. The government picks up the $354,000 annual rent on his 8,300-square-foot office in Harlem, and pays his office staff to a maximum of $160,000 a year. The Feds reimburse travel, postage, telephone and printing expenses, not to mention providing a Secret Service detail.

Then there's what Hillary brings in. Her Senate financial disclosure form showed book royalties of $1.15 million in 2002 from "Living History," for which she's guaranteed to reap at least $8 million in total, according to news reports. She donates other literary proceeds to charity (from "It Takes a Village" and "Dear Socks, Dear Buddy").

Hillary's Senate salary is $150,000, and she earned at least $56,000 in dividends and interest from investments in 2002.

But she earned more than $2 million in book royalties for Living History last year alone, her filing showed.

The 2003 disclosure form also revealed that the couple's investments had climbed to between $2 million and $10 million and they had income from those investments of between $120,000 and $1,060,000.

Best of all, the couple has paid off most of their legal debts; between $1 million and $5 million of the fees owed to Williams & Connolly and $100,000 to $250,000 to Wright, Lindsey & Jennings had been retired by year's end. They now only owe Skadden Arps, between $500,000 and $1 million.

A legal defense fund had paid off the lion's share of the legal debts. The fund's executive director, Anthony Essaye, says it has covered $8 million of the $11.3 million in legal expenses the Clintons incurred at the White House.

The ultimate political power couple bought two houses after leaving the White House; they hadn't owned even one home of their own since 1983.

The one they bought in the bucolic New York suburb of Chappaqua cost $1.7 million. Their Georgetown digs went for $2.85 million. Neither would have been affordable if not for post-presidential earning power.

As long as the Clintons can keep talking and writing, they should have few real financial worries. But that doesn't mean the famously sensitive ex-president can't still feel your pain.

They trashed his wife's book as well.

What? The New York Times book reivew designates what you read?