It’s hard not to notice that some of the most hawkish supporters of the Iraq War have been dominating the debate over what to do next in Iraq. Last week, ABC‘s This Week (6/22/14) had Dick Cheney on so viewers could hear Jonathan Karl ask: “What is your solution, your plan right now, for Iraq? What would you be doing?”
And NBC‘s Meet the Press (6/22/14; FAIR Blog, 6/23/14) tapped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , a week after noted Iraq expert Mitt Romney weighed in (6/15/14).
But this week, Meet the Press is evidently doing something different. They’re putting the Iraq question to former President Bill Clinton. There’s an excerpt up at the Meet the Press website, which they’re headlining this way:
Clinton on Cheney: ‘If They Hadn’t Gone to War in Iraq None of This Would Be Happening’
It’s a good line. But history will recall Bill Clinton as someone who supported the Bush administration’s drive to war in 2003–even though Clinton has at times tried to claim otherwise. As FAIR noted in 2007 (Action Alert, 11/29/07), Clinton said he’d been against the war “from the beginning.” But he had a funny way of showing it–writing a column for the Guardian (3/18/03) the day before the invasion headlined “Trust Tony’s Judgment” (as in former British Prime Minister Tony Blair), explaining on 60 Minutes (3/30/03) that “I support our troops in Iraq and the president,” and telling Time magazine (6/28/04) that he had “repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq.”
And this is to say nothing of Clinton’s own Iraq policies, which included bombings and devastating sanctions that took a tremendous toll on Iraqi civilians, particularly children.
Is Clinton trying to pull this trick all over again? Who knows. But what’s clear is that proponents of the Iraq War are still the kinds of people that corporate media are seeking out as experts now. Getting pro-war Democrats to balance out the pro-war Republicans isn’t exactly a broad debate.
Well Clinton does have to get some facetime in so that Hillary can at least make a run for the Oval Office.
No real need to be “Slippery William” with the corpress, is there?
They’re hardly trying to catch him in his contradictions.
(I love that photo – quintessentially Clintonesque.)
At least we still have some manufacturing activities in this country, even if it’s just the MSM/media fabricating public opinion with these programmed interviews.
Slick Willie/Willary/Hillie. ” … , what difference does it make?”
24 June 2014 Last updated at 19:37 ET
US forces arrive in Baghdad to advise Iraqi troops
The BBC Headlines, did anyone else hear about this in the lame Stream corpse-irations news? So someone tell me again how this is fostering peace in the middle of where we are sticking our noses and really shouldn’t be. And I thought one more cheap shot is really about the level have sunk to. How many more people need we send over, they are their own people, and have been for longer than Uncle Sam has been around in any form.
The only saddness is that the like the book; there won’t even be a break in the syntax as Iran becomes our ally,always been our Ally….”
“The thing that impressed Winston in looking back was that the speaker had
switched from one line to the other actually in midsentence, not only
without a pause, but without even breaking the syntax.” – 1984 George Orwell
Agree with you and the policy in Iraq has been the wrong policy since the first gulf war .
bill Clinton had Avery close relationship with Tony Blair I know there was no criticism of mr Blair regarding Iraq .Clinton wants to have it both ways