In what has been described as a "combative interview" on "Fox News Sunday," former president, Bill Clinton who, you may recall, was impeached for having oral sex in the Oval Office, was cross-examined by anchor Chris Wallace about why he didn't launch a preemptive strike against Osama bin Laden. (AP) The former president recounted how he went after bin Laden to the fullest extent possible, trying to "kill him," as well as how the same folks who condemned his actions then are stepping up to the plate to attempt a "conservative hit job" now.
One can only say "amen, Mr. Clinton." What a troubling statement about our national priorities, and ethos, that we impeach a president for a sexual contretemps while a sitting president gets to turn the military into an assembly line of bungled misadventures while hiding behind a flagrant misreading of the Second Amendment, all but shredding the First and Fourth Amendments,while turning foreign policy into a simple, and deadly acronym, "CYA -- cover your ass."

Anyone who thinks Bill Clinton doesn't have the cajones to speak up needs corrective lenses. Happily, the former president defended himself against Chris Wallace's assertions that he was incompetent with regard to stopping Al Qaeda. Hello, anybody home? Which American leader has demonstrated competency with respect to diffusing Al Qaeda? Wallace's suggestions are equally ironic, and absurd, in light of the fact that Bill Clinton was the first president, on record, to talk about the danger posed by paramilitary groups, as well as to attempt to make inroads towards preventing their proliferation. About the only thing the Bush administration has been adept at exposing is how occupation of a conceptually neutral, if nefarious, state like Iraq can pose a clear and present danger to world peace for now, and possibly centuries to come.

Instead of putting a former president on the defensive with regard to the "handling" of bin Laden, how about holding the current president accountable for his mishandling of the hunt for the world's greatest terrorist, as well as for his exceptional deployment of weapons of "mass distraction." Make no mistake, Iran is at least as irrelevant to the "war on terror" as Iraq. This administration's jihad for global domination, whether it can be described as diabolical or otherwise, is at least as transparent as a Fox reporter's efforts to pin the blame for global insurgency, and insurrection, on a previous president.