September 25 - Pet Peeve Monday - History Unplugged

This week’s PET PEEVE MONDAY is based upon former president Bill Clinton’s recent interview on Fox News last Sunday.

Chris Wallace interviewed Clinton. Clinton took extreme exception to Wallace’s line of questioning. Clinton flailed, got red in the face, and at one point looked like he was ready to lunge out of his chair at Wallace. He did every thing but wag his famous finger. He even got personal at one point and I quote, “And you've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever.”

This type of language really isn’t appropriate for an ex-president unless it’s the President of the Tony Soprano Fan Club.

What set Clinton off was an innocent question about Clinton’s inability to get Osama bin Laden after eight years of trying. If Clinton wanted “softball” questions, he should have appeared on CNN (or as it was know in the 90’s – The Clinton News Network.)

Wallace wasn’t smirking. He was probably just having a private laugh at some random stain he saw on Clinton’s suit or tie.

My PET PEEVE is not Bill Clinton, the person, the lothario. It is his transparent attempt at REVISIONIST HISTORY. Clinton stated that he did more to get Osama bin Laden than the facts indicate.

Historical revisionism describes the process that attempts to rewrite history by minimizing, denying or simply ignoring essential facts. It is illegal in some countries such as Switzerland, Austria, and Germany when it concerns Holocaust Denial.

Clinton claims that he did everything he could and more than Bush ever did to try to get Osama bin Laden.

Clinton claims that the “Path to 9/11” movie played fast and loose with the facts. Slick Willie forgets that with the Internet, anything he says can be Googled and checked as well. He should know about the Internet, his buddy Al Gore invented it. (Sarcasm should be noted.)

Now I could bombard you with facts and cross-references, but I won’t. Clinton’s mis-statements on Sunday were numerous and well documented.

In 1993, 18 Marines died at the hands of the Somalian warlords. This was chronicled in the movie, Black Hawk Down. After that event, Clinton cut and ran and removed the troops. The same strategy is now promoted by every 2006 election year Democrat concerning Iraq.

In the book, The Looming Tower,” it talks about how this motivated bin Laden. Osama said, "I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops."

Other Al-Qaeda attacks occurred under Clinton’s watch:

* First New York World Trade Center attack (1993)
* Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex (1996)
* Nairobi, Kenya US Embassy (1998)
* Dares Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy (1998)
* Aden, Yemen USS Cole (2000)

None were met with an effective response from Clinton. Clinton had eight years, Bush had eight months to get bin Laden. But Clinton doesn’t want to focus on this. He wants you to forget it, as he wants to be a Revisionist Historian. He wants to use political rhetoric to cloud history.

However, the Clintons are no strangers to Revisionist History. Hillary once offered that she was named after the famed mountain climber, Sir Edmund Hillary. Problem was, she was born six years BEFORE he scaled Mount Everest.

To be fair, I wasn’t unhappy with some domestic results from the Clinton Presidency. The Welfare Reform Act got millions off of the welfare rolls and was great legislation. The Republican Congress passed it and Clinton signed it into law.

What does PEEVE me is when people only want you to believe their version of history. Anything counter is a “VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY.”

That term was first offered by Hillary Clinton on the Today Show in 1998. She made the statement during an interview on NBC's "Today" show, where she was asked to comment on accusations about her husband’s possible indiscretions with an intern, Monica Lewinsky. Hillary tried to revise history as it was occurring.

How did that turn out for the married (in name only) Clintons?

Oops, sorry, I think I just smirked.