Bill Clinton Hypocracy on Osama bin Laden

Subject: Bill Clinton Hypocracy on Osama bin Laden Tue May 08, 2012 4:20 pm

Bill Clinton Hypocracy on Osama bin Laden

Just as we will never forget 9/11, we should not forget the dereliction of duty by our impeached 42nd president and his enablers.

By HENRY I. MILLER / The former FDA official is fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Politicians assume we're stupid and have short memories. At least, that's what I took away from a tasteless and baseless Obama campaign ad released in April. The ad had Bill Clinton describing how difficult it is for the nation's chief executive to make decisions about national security and praising President Obama for taking the "harder and honorable path" of ordering the killing of Osama bin Laden by the Navy SEALs last year. And based on Mitt Romney's statement that "it is not worth moving heaven and earth just to try to catch one person," the ad implies that as president he would not have made the same decision. (For the record, the context of Romney's remarks makes it clear that he was arguing for a comprehensive, multi-faceted anti-terrorism policy that did more than focus just on getting bin Laden.)

There has been a lot of blowback from the ad, with many people objecting to politicizing the hunting down and killing of the mastermind of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks. But what has been missing from the commentary is a recognition of Clinton's grotesque hypocrisy in making any statement about bin Laden – except possibly a heartfelt mea culpa. For the worst of reasons, Clinton himself failed miserably to take the "harder and honorable" path.

In his stunning 2003 book, "Dereliction of Duty," Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, a presidential aide and carrier of the "nuclear football," describes President Clinton's gross irresponsibility toward national security. Patterson tells how, in the fall of 1998, the watch officer in the White House Situation Room notified the president's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, that they had located bin Laden and had "a two-hour window to strike."

Here is Patterson's chilling account:

"Berger ambled down the stairwell and entered the Sit[uation] Room. He picked up the phone at one of the busy controller consoles and called the president. Amazingly, President Clinton was not available. Berger tried again and again. Bin Laden was within striking distance. The window of opportunity was closing fast. The plan of attack was set and the Tomahawk [missile] crews were ready. For about an hour Berger couldn't get the commander in chief on the line. Though the president was always accompanied by military aides and the Secret Service, he was somehow unavailable. Berger stalked the Sit Room, anxious and impatient."

Patterson continues:

"Finally, the president accepted Berger's call. There was discussion, there were pauses – and no decision. The president wanted to talk with his secretaries of Defense and State. He wanted to study the issue further. Berger was forced to wait. The clock was ticking. The president eventually called back. He was still indecisive. He wanted more discussion. Berger alternated between phone calls and watching the clock.

"The dithering continued until it was too late–and bin Laden lived to fight another day. And to plot the Sept. 11 attacks."

That was not an isolated incident. On Sept. 13, 1996, while on the golf course with his lawyer friend Vernon Jordan, President Clinton had refused to take repeated urgent phone calls from Berger, who needed the president's approval for air strikes on Iraq. Patterson wrote: "Pilots were in the cockpits, waiting to launch, targets were identified, everything was in place, all [Berger] needed was the go-ahead."

He never got it. The protective cover of night lifted, and the mission was aborted.

There were other examples of gross and inexcusable incompetence. President Clinton twice managed to lose the computer codes that were necessary to activate the nation's nuclear arsenal.

There is yet another Clinton irony in view of the relentless tracking and eventual killing of bin Laden by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies in a brilliantly executed operation. Patterson relates an incident that occurred during the Clinton administration's very first week that typified its view of the military. Army Lt. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, greeted a young aide in a White House hallway with a cheery, "Good Morning."

The young aide replied, "I don't talk to the military." I consider that to be a firing offense for a White House pipsqueak.

Speaking of the military and also of Bill Clinton's predilections, Patterson describes a sordid incident in which the president – the commander-in-chief – groped a female steward on Air Force One. As an enlisted member of the U.S. Air Force, she opted not to make an issue of it and settled for a personal apology from the president. (I have verified this incident from an independent source.)

This incident troubled Patterson: "I brooded over the fact that if our commander in chief had been actually serving in the armed services, he would have been jailed. His immunity struck me as completely unacceptable."

Another irony: Bill Clinton's chief of staff, who would certainly have known about this sorry state of affairs, was none other than Leon Panetta, later appointed to head the CIA by Obama and currently the secretary of defense. (Why is it, one wonders, that neither members of congress nor the press corps have asked Panetta about his role in suppressing the various "bimbo eruptions," as the molester-in-chief's sexual dalliances were known during the Clinton presidency. As they say in court, it goes to character.)

Just as we will never forget Sept. 11, we should not forget the dereliction of duty by our impeached 42nd president and his enablers.

As the author first stated, we, the public, do have memories and incidents are recorded and available to jog them. Yet politicians, especially the stupid and lying Democrats, without moral conscience, put a slime-ball like Clinton into an Obama campaign ad thinking Mr. Bill's appeal will carry the day.....over our memories and facts!

In this case the Democrats act as if putting their lies and exhibits of low character on display are points of virtue. To their minions I imagine this is true.