Holy Cow. Outsourcing Torture Began Under Clinton, Not Bush.

[MannyGoldstein]

It always seemed to me that The Big Dawg was somewhat to the right of Nixon - but this takes the cake.

I read an old New Yorker article this evening which claimed that "extraordinary rendition", e.g., outsourced torture, was started by Clinton. A quick search on the 'net shows that it's true, e.g.,

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/extraordinaryrendition/22203res20051206.html
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2004/06/extraordinary_r.html

The DLC is utterly out of control. Somehow we were able to win WWII without torture - in fact, we treated POWs so well that many chose to stay in America rather than go home.

[theoldman]

1. I think that very few people were tortured while Clinton was

President. There certainly would have been an uproar from the Republicans. You are correct that we treated WWII prisoners very well when they were in the US. We did not treat them very well in prisons in other countries. I know this to be a fact from talking to both our military personnel and to former prisoners.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Are You Defending This Practice? nt

[theoldman]

3. No, I am just saying that it happened.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

4. So, you're focusing on a single sentence in the article, rather than the article itself?

How about an OP about the meat of the story, the cabal's extremely illegal program, upon which this article focuses?

The DLC is "out of control"?

How about the cabal????

Alerting the OP on out of context interpretation. MKJ

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

5. BTW, where might we find the New Yorker article of which you speak? n/t

MKJ

[MannyGoldstein]

7. October 30, 2006 p 34

"The C.I.A.'s Travel Agent"

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

9. Was the gist of the article about Clinton torturing people? n/t

MKJ

[MannyGoldstein]

11. No. Did I Say That It Was?

Please be specific.

My point was that it alerted me that the process of outsourced torture was begun by Bill Clinton. Do you disagree with this?

[William769]

12. I believe it was started by Ronald Reagan.

[mzmolly]

28. You are correct, see my post below.

It began under Reagan, and expanded under Bush.

[MannyGoldstein]

8. So Anything is OK If Bush Does It Worse?

That seems to me what you're saying.

Outsourcing torture is wrong, no matter who does it. Even if you showed me that FDR tortured people, or sent them elsewhere to be tortured, I would not defend it under any circumstance.

[Dr.Phool]

6. We know why Clinton keeps his mouth shut on this.

And if you read Scott Ritter's "Iraq Confidential", you'll find that they had everything in place to bomb the shit out of Baghdad if Saddam refused to submit to an inspection of the Defense Ministry.

[monktonman]

10. Hey, check it out

Clinton is not our president any more..................

[underpants]

39. He's not? I saw Rohrabacher on CNN this morning blaming him for 9/11

well not directly see apparently it was the FBI and DoJ under Clinton who let all those ties between Iraqi nationals, the first WTC bombing, and the OKC bombing go on without the proper investigation and arrests.

I saw the man on the box say so.

[stillcool]

13. I found a well-written piece in..

the New Yorker...I'm not sure if it's the one mentioned above..

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050214fa_fact6?050214fa_fact6

In 1995, Scheuer said, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally—including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea. “What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,” Scheuer said. “It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated.” Technically, U.S. law requires the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from foreign governments that rendered suspects won’t be tortured. Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was “not sure” if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed.

A series of spectacular covert operations followed from this secret pact. On September 13, 1995, U.S. agents helped kidnap Talaat Fouad Qassem, one of Egypt’s most wanted terrorists, in Croatia. Qassem had fled to Europe after being linked by Egypt to the assassination of Sadat; he had been sentenced to death in absentia. Croatian police seized Qassem in Zagreb and handed him over to U.S. agents, who interrogated him aboard a ship cruising the Adriatic Sea and then took him back to Egypt. Once there, Qassem disappeared. There is no record that he was put on trial. Hossam el-Hamalawy, an Egyptian journalist who covers human-rights issues, said, “We believe he was executed.”

A more elaborate operation was staged in Tirana, Albania, in the summer of 1998. According to the Wall Street Journal, the C.I.A. provided the Albanian intelligence service with equipment to wiretap the phones of suspected Muslim militants. Tapes of the conversations were translated into English, and U.S. agents discovered that they contained lengthy discussions with Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy. The U.S. pressured Egypt for assistance; in June, Egypt issued an arrest warrant for Shawki Salama Attiya, one of the militants. Over the next few months, according to the Journal, Albanian security forces, working with U.S. agents, killed one suspect and captured Attiya and four others. These men were bound, blindfolded, and taken to an abandoned airbase, then flown by jet to Cairo for interrogation. Attiya later alleged that he suffered electrical shocks to his genitals, was hung from his limbs, and was kept in a cell in filthy water up to his knees. Two other suspects, who had been sentenced to death in absentia, were hanged...........

........................
The U.S. began rendering terror suspects to other countries, but the most common destination remained Egypt. The partnership between the American and the Egyptian intelligence services was extraordinarily close: the Americans could give the Egyptian interrogators questions they wanted put to the detainees in the morning, Scheuer said, and get answers by the evening. The Americans asked to question suspects directly themselves, but, Scheuer said, the Egyptians refused. “We were never in the same room at the same time.”

Scheuer claimed that “there was a legal process” undergirding these early renditions. Every suspect who was apprehended, he said, had been convicted in absentia. Before a suspect was captured, a dossier was prepared containing the equivalent of a rap sheet. The C.I.A.’s legal counsel signed off on every proposed operation. Scheuer said that this system prevented innocent people from being subjected to rendition. “Langley would never let us proceed unless there was substance,” he said. Moreover, Scheuer emphasized, renditions were pursued out of expedience—“not out of thinking it was the best policy.

another interesting piece on this was found on Democracy Now here:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/17/1530242

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, your article also makes a extraordinary revelation about what could have been the possible cause of the 1998 bombings in – of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania related to a special – one of the special operations that was occurring in Albania connected to the Egyptian government. Could you explain that? What happened there?

JANE MAYER: Yeah. Well, they – in 1998, in one of the early ones of these extraordinary renditions that was carried out by the C.I.A., a number of terror suspects were picked up in Albania by the U.S. and along with some local agents; and some of the suspects were killed in a gun battle, others were abducted and interrogated on a ship in the Adriatic Sea. And they were eventually – those that survived – were sent back to Egypt for further interrogation, where some of them vanished and were thought to have been killed. And soon after this all took place, there was an article in a newspaper in London, an Arab newspaper in London, that was about this process, and said, ‘We are going to retaliate in language that the U.S. understands;’ and shortly after that, the U.S. embassies were blown up. Now, I don't really know whether there's a causal link there. I think it’s speculation, and there’re plenty of people who would suggest that it would have – the planning for the bombing of the embassies would have had to take place earlier than that. So, I don't know how closely you want to rely on that causal link; but it is clear that if the U.S. is going to be abducting individuals around the world, and just spiriting them away to be tortured or whatever, you can’t do these things secretly, really secretly anymore. The world's a small place and people are watching; and, you know, somebody disappears, the family knows and their colleagues know, and so eventually, these things do get out.

and another article here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37943-2002Dec25?language=printer
U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations
'Stress and Duress' Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects Held in Secret Overseas Facilities

By Dana Priest and Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 26, 2002; Page A01
The Clinton administration pioneered the use of extraordinary rendition after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But it also pressed allied intelligence services to respect lawful boundaries in interrogations.

After years of fruitless talks in Egypt, President Bill Clinton cut off funding and cooperation with the directorate of Egypt's general intelligence service, whose torture of suspects has been a perennial theme in State Department human rights reports

[MannyGoldstein]

19. New Yorker Article is by the Same Author -

- Jane Mayer - as the article I referenced.

Thanks for the info!

[seabeyond]

14. i heard this a couple of months ago. pissed me off. yes clinton did.

during the 9/11 hearings i was concerned about clinton past undiscovered. i forget the specifics, but i was feeling that something was being hidden.

[silverojo]

15. 5th K&R from me!

I'm not in the least surprised by this. And we'll have more of the same if Hillary (President DLC 2) would become president.

Does anyone else care to ask why so many people on this board are against Hillary? :mad:

[SaveElmer]

16. Hmmm....

"Somehow we were able to win WWII without torture - in fact, we treated POWs so well that many chose to stay in America rather than go home."

Wonder how the 120,000 interned Japanese-American citizens felt about our internment policies!

[MannyGoldstein]

17. I'm Sure That They Weren't Happy!!!

And they shouldn't have been put in camps.

But they weren't tortured, either.

[niyad]

25. not tortured, but their properties were confiscated, and maybe you ought to look into the conditions

in the camps before you make any more statements about them. better yet, go visit one of them before you continue being so dismissive of what the japanese-americans were subjected to.

[architect359]

42. You're right about the dismal conditions that the Japanese-Anericans were subjected to

However, it is 2 different things that can't be accurately compared agianst each other. The rendition program that was mentioned in the original post involves individuals that may or may not be terrorists secretly being taken or placed outside of our country in order to illicit information by means that our country currently forbids.

[fuzzyball]

44. We were at WAR for crying out loud, and Japanese spies were

caught in the US again and again. So, President FDR
made the exactly right decision to PROTECT Americans.

[ieoeja]

48. And German-Americans were imprisoned longer.

Due to better vetting of those interred -- because of cultural similarity -- the German-Americans interred during the war largely WERE pro-NAZI. While possibly preventing large numbers of sabotage, their interrment served as a crucible for intensifying their NAZI beliefs. Furthermore, many of those improperly interred were converted to the cause by the more numerous, openly NAZI majority.

Conversely, Japanese-Americans who supported Imperial Japan were a decided minority among the Japanese-Americans in the camp. Attempts to win over converts only made them outcast within the camps. By the end of the war these dispirited people were deemed no threat unlike the still virulently NAZI German-Americans.

We did not enter World War II as the Jolly Green Giant we are today. Victory was no sure thing.

[fujiyama]

63. Those were US CITIZENS that were put in internment camps

Spare us the Michelle Malkin bullshit defense.

The internment is a stain on FDR's legacy. Most now recognize that.

[hughee99]

65. Did he "protect" us from the Alaskan Aleuts too?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1973515

[truedelphi]

18. But who bothers winning wars any more? that is so

Yesterday.


>>The DLC is utterly out of control. Somehow we were able to win WWII without torture - in fact, we >>treated POWs so well that many chose to stay in America rather than go home.


I also am confused about the word "rendition" Wasn't that something you used to express
your version of a song i.e "Sinatra threw himself into an upbeat rendition of "New York New
York"?

[dad]

20. zx

Main Entry: ren·di·tion
Pronunciation: ren-'di-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: obsolete French, from Middle French, alteration of reddition, from Late Latin reddition-, redditio, from Latin reddere to return
: the act or result of rendering : as a : SURRENDER b : TRANSLATION c : PERFORMANCE, INTERPRETATION

[arikara]

21. Atrocities have been going on for a very long time

I just saw a documentary on CIA mind control, where they often used innocent civilians as their guinea pigs in horrible experiments. In Poppy's Iraq invasion, thousands of Iraqi soldiers were buried in the sand with bulldozers, many were still alive. Maybe technically not torture... but this sort of thing has gone on no matter which party or president was in power. When they are selected, they make a few nice little cosmetic changes to pacify their "base" otherwise they just carry on with the policies of the previous administration and up the ante as much as they can get away with.

But nothing that you or I need concern ourselves with. :sarcasm:

[AZBlue]

22. ooooh....it started way before Clinton....

eom

[jazzjunkysue]

23. But it wasn't for neo-con profit. There's the difference.

And Clinton doesn't have to cover up what he did because it was based on reality, not his idealogy and personal business with the Saudis.

It was in service to the country.

And I'm sure it was the correct people: Not anyone who wandered to close to some illegal business of his.

[MannyGoldstein]

24. He Sure Earned A Spot At Poppy Bush's Table...

Is some torture OK?

[jazzjunkysue]

37. I really don't have the detailed info to argue either way.

But with Clinton it wasn't his own oil pipeline he was defending. I know he stopped lots of real terrorist plots, and did it quietly. I know he was keeping a close eye on the bad guys all the time. He wasn't creating bad guys around every corner. There really are some terrorists who have killed and need to be stopped. But that didn't mean tapping your phone and picking up anyone who walked by and throwing them in prison for years for no reason.

[arikara]

26. I honestly don't know what was done under Clinton

... at least of the Abu Ghraib type dog, pyramid and rape sort of torture.

But the pathetic little lives of the 500,000 Iraqi children who died because of sanctions imposed under Clinton's watch were pretty horrible too. Ideology or service to country surely doesn't excuse that.

[jazzjunkysue]

36. Maybe the sanctions were an attempt to ease him out of power

the old fashioned way, by encouraging his own people to rise up against him. I didn't study Clinton's tenure that closely, but pressuring him to play fair is the normal route.

The thing is, Clinton doesn't have joint accounts in the Carslyle group with the Saudis. He didn't use our military according to the King's whim. He wasn't summoned over like Cheney was last month. This wasn't about CLinton's personal oil profits. Clinton acted as a legitimate president.

[arikara]

52. Well whatever the reason

it didn't work unless of course they meant to decimate the civilian population. The sanctions were nothing but a cruel act of genocide against innocent civilians.

"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."
--Howard Zinn

This was on my banner in the peace rally's before Chimp's Iraq invasion. It speaks just as well for Clinton's more silent, more sneaky and every bit as lethal acts of genocide against the same people. Even if his motives may have been slightly more pristine than Bush's motives, and perhaps he wasn't dealing with the Saudis (although I bet if you were to dig deep enough you would find that he was playing in the same sandbox...) it is still wrong.

[hughee99]

66. So torture is okay depending on who's doing it and why?

There are "right people" to torture? Torture can "serve the country"?

[mzmolly]

27. Correction, it BEGAN under REAGAN - and EXPANDED under BUSH.

Extraordinary rendition comes back to bite the Bush administration. ~ Salon

In 1984 and 1986, during a wave of terrorist attacks, Congress passed laws making air piracy and attacks on Americans abroad federal crimes. Ronald Reagan added teeth to these laws by signing a secret covert-action directive in 1986 that authorized the CIA to kidnap, anywhere abroad, foreigners wanted for terrorism. A new word entered the dictionary of U.S. foreign relations: rendition.

The goal of the early renditions was to ensure that terrorists understood that they could not escape their day in U.S. court. But since launching its war on terror, the administration of George W. Bush has expanded the practice to "extraordinary rendition," which includes kidnappings of foreign suspects so they can be turned over to authoritarian allies like Egypt for interrogation sessions that likely involve torture.

...

The declassified record of the estimated 100 to 200 renditions that have taken place since 1987 is too incomplete to indicate whether U.S. agents obtained cooperation in every instance. But the best-known cases—the snatches of Ramzi Yousef and Mahmud Abouhalima, co-conspirators in the first bombing of the World Trade Center, and Mir Amal Kansi, who attacked CIA agents commuting to work in Virginia—all involved the secret service of the country where the fugitive was located.

http://www.slate.com/id/2121801/

MORE >

“Extraordinary rendition” is not a legal term; it describes the perverted form of a practice already defined by its informality. Used by the U.S. since the Reagan era, rendition involves the extra-legal transfer of an individual from one state to another. While originally used to bring suspected terrorists into the United States so they could stand trial before federal courts, it morphed during the Clinton presidency into a procedure through which the U.S. would effect the transfer of suspects from one country to another where they were expected to stand trial. After 9/11, the process apparently took on a new purpose: intelligence-gathering. Instead of focusing on suspects with pending charges, the U.S. sent detainees to States known to “employ interrogation techniques that will enable them to obtain the requisite information,” as one alarmed F.B.I. agent explained. These were States that the U.S. had itself accused of widespread and systematic torture, including Syria, Egypt, and Morocco. Rendition to justice had become rendition to torture, or extraordinary rendition.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/03/rendered-meaningless-rule-of-law-in-us.php

Let's get our bastards straight huh?

[NobleCynic]

29. Doesn't exonerate Clinton

Just means he didn't start it.

[mzmolly]

45. Actually if you take time to read the info, it does.

:hi:

[NobleCynic]

60. My mistake

On re-reading, Clinton improved it vastly by requiring a trial. There are still some flaws in it, but it is no where near as bad as it appeared on the first read. Thanks for pointing that out.

[mzmolly]

61. Thanks for reading the info completely.

:hi:

[MannyGoldstein]

35. I Think That Your Sources Agree With My Post

It looks like Reagan started nabbing folks in other countries to bring them back to the US. I hate to defend Reagan, but this seems entirely reasonable, with the right oversight in place.

But Clinton pioneered the practice of nabbing people in one country and sending them to another country, knowing full well that the receiving country would torture the suspect. Civilized countries don't do this.

[William769]

38. You seem to like to defend the otherside quite a bit, and our side?

Well anyone who reads DU can make up thier own minds.

[MannyGoldstein]

40. WTF?

If, by "the otherside" you mean Republicans, then you're quite mistaken - please point to examples.

What really drives me nuts is Republicans that pretend to be Democrats, e.g., the Clintons and the rest of the DLC, and so forth.

[paulk]

51. yes, I'm sure Mr. Goldstien's outrage over this is based on his

deep moral convictions and not because it's just another chance to dump on the Clintons/DLC/whatever Democrat he's trashing on today.

[mzmolly]

46. Your post is incorrect.

Period. Clinton did not begin this process.

If you read the info I posted it points out that Bush began "interrogations" overseas in order to subvert justice.

[elehhhhna]

41. We've done this for 20 YEARS?!! Where is my country? She's been gone

a long time, now.

[FormerDittoHead]

30. Bush continues doing it and two wrongs don't make a right.

Just because Clinton did it doesn't mean we have to give Bush a pass.

[w4rma]

31. Clinton just continued the status quo. (nt)

[farmboxer]

32. Clinton is Jesus Christ compared to Bush! Bush is the worst

president in US history by far, and he wasn't even elected! I have never seen anything as bad as Bush and his pals, never!

[fujiyama]

33. Your thread's title is misleading

and your statement about the DLC being out of control, while having some merit to it, is quite odd.

Clinton didn't start the outsourcing of torture. This goes back way farther - and the use of torture by the US government for intelligence gathering goes back to the beginning of the formation of the CIA itself.

It's just a awful set of policies that have not let up for about fifty years.

This doesn't excuse Clinton's unwillingness to stop the use of it, but to single Clinton out for this is nonsensical.

[MannyGoldstein]

34. Clearly Stated

I'm not sure why the title is misleading. It clearly states what is clearly stated in the articles cited - that Bill Clinton is the father of outsourced torture.

I have no doubt that our CIA previously supported regimes that used torture on their own citizens, and this is awful, awful. However, based upon the referenced material, it seems that Clinton decided to start shipping prisoners in our custody to countries where they could be tortured. Don't you think that this is very disturbing? And all the more disturbing because it was a "Democrat" that pioneered this barbaric practice?

[ieoeja]

43. In all the examples given above...

... the terrorists are taken into custody by authorities in one one country then extradited to the country where they are wanted for crimes, usually Egypt. The US provided assistance in these particular cases. I am sure criminals are extradited all the time without US assistance as well.

So what practice is wrong: capture and extradition of criminals between two non-US countries, or US assistance in this practice?

Please note: the excerpt printed above states that the CIA was legally required to get assurances from country B that they would not torture the prisoners before the US would assist country A in the capture and extradition.

[mzmolly]

49. Exactly!

Nice job boiling this down. :hi:

[wyldwolf]

50. so another purposely misleading anti-Clinton thread is laid to rest

You have to wonder if the people who post them are misinformed or if they think the rest of us are.

[ieoeja]

55. Well, *I* am anti-Clinton.

I think he moved this country way to the right by ceding ground.

But I don't think the charge in this thread holds up. Also, I just can't get that worked up over the abuse of terrorists by foreign powers with or without a nod and a wink from us. These cases aren't like the inmates of Abu Ghraib where:

1. over 90% of the inmates were ultimately released because they had done nothing except happen to live in a village where an attack on U.S. forces took place; and
2. that attack on U.S. forces was a legitimate act of war during the state of active warfare.

I can buy the trial and execution of the guilty at Abu Ghraib if they were fighting in civilian clothes (hence: spies). But there was no excuse for the torture.

Conversely, I believe Taliban fighters should be executed in or out of uniform. I have serious problems with those monsters and anyone who would support them. Cripes, even the NAZIs did their worst away from the public view.

[wyldwolf]

59. but you know BS when you see it.

All I ask for is a bit of honesty. So thank you. :)

[MannyGoldstein]

53. A Good Clintonian Effort!

But short of the mark, I think.

As far as I can see:

1. Reagan started extralegally nabbing people from other countries and bringing them back to the US. At that point, presumably, they were subject to US law. Once in US custody, by law, court approval was needed in order to extradite.

2. Clinton extended Reagan's edict by declaring that we could immediately turn suspects around and ship 'em to anyone who claimed that they were wanted for any 'ol reason, with zero judicial review. The receiving country was supposed to sign a declaration that they would observe human rights norms, but, gee, they seemed to have lost the paperwork gosh darn it. And these countries are well known as havens of torture and other human rights abuses.

So Clinton decided to circumvent the law, and quite likely established human rights treaties, in a thinly-veiled effort to have suspects broken by torture in other countries via a purely extra-legal process. I'm not sure how you can see it any other way.

[ieoeja]

54. Everything I know about this topic...

... I got from YOUR source for this thread. And it says the criminals:

1. are being arrested by country A'saw enforcement, and
2. shipped to the country in which they are wanted for a crime.

Consider the Blind Sheik who was behind the 1993 WTC attack. There is a man as likely a candidate for torture as any you could name. Not only that, he is also a wanted man in Egypt. But he is in a U.S. prison because he committed a crime that fits under U.S. jurisdiction. We COULD legally incarcerate him, and we DID so.

We can not just go around arresting people because they hate the United States and may possibly intend us harm. But if we find these people and know they HAVE committed a crime in some other country, then we sure as hell can AND SHOULD work to have them incarcerated where they have committed the crime.

[MannyGoldstein]

56. You Need A Judge to Do This

A judge is needed for extradition. This is to prevent people being shipped to countries that do not respect human rights.

For example, Egypt routinely arrests, tortures, and even executes people for no reason other than speaking against the government. Uzbekistan boils people alive for the same crime. There is a legal process for rendering people to those countries from the US - a judge determines if there is reasonable evidence of an actual crime, and a reasonable certainty that people will be treated humanely.

The Clinton administration decided to subvert the legal process in cherry-picked cases. A quick look at the evidence leads me (and would lead most people, I think) to believe that it was because they wanted to "get the bastards". They wanted them tortured.

US law is not based on "get the bastards". It is based on fairness, due process, and an independent judiciary. Even in WWII we didn't just "get the bastards" - we played by the rules, and we won. Eisenhower, among others, credited our playing by the rules as an important part of the victory - when the vanquished saw that we were just, fair, and humane, they were all the quicker to surrender.

"They may introduce the practice of France, Spain, and Germany--of torturing, to extort a confession of the crime. They will say that they might as well draw examples from those countries as from Great Britain, and they will tell you that there is such a necessity of strengthening the arm of government, that they must have a criminal equity, and extort confession by torture, in order to punish with still more relentless severity. We are then lost and undone." - Patrick Henry

[chieftain]

57. Maybe most people who think Clinton is to the right of Nixon

would come to the same conclusion you did but others have looked at your links and other posts and do not agree with the view that you started this thread with.

[MannyGoldstein]

58. Yet They Don't Point Out Specifics

Odd, isn't it? (Feel free to be the first)

As to Clinton being to the right of Nixon - again, feel free to point out specifics on how this is not the case. Other than, of course, the bold "don't ask, don't tell" decree.

[chieftain]

62. Actually Mzmolly demolished the premise of your thread

with an able assist from ieoeja. But as to "Don't ask don't tell", refresh my memory what bold initiative did your hero Nixon make on gay rights. I can't remember any.

[ieoeja]

67. Clinton vs Nixon

National Security

- Nixon took very Liberal (and smart) positions with Detente, SALT, China; embraced very Conservative positions in SE Asia

- Clinton ended the very Conservative business-as-usual approach to paying ransom for hostages which overnight ended a decade and a half of hostage taking by Islamic terrorists

- Tie; Nixon's big change in Cold War policy cancels his inaction vis-a-vis SE Asia


Domestic Security

- Nixon never saw a Civil Right he didn't trash.

- Clinton DOMA, Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell, Brady Bill

- Advantage Clinton; while things got worse under Clinton but improved under Nixon, in both cases that was largely brought about by Congress; Clinton was merely enabled the rightward drift while Nixon did his best to wage war against the American public


Environment

- Nixon gave us the EPA, etc with a liberal congress

- Clinton pushed the Kyoto Accords with a conservative congress

- Tie; Nixon had greater achievments, but again Congress played the big role in each case


Economy

- Nixon tried price-fixing to constrain inflation! That is going too far left.

- Clinton eliminated Welfare, but took more liberal policies towards trade (historically Conservatives were Protectionists while Liberals championed Free Trade; and I'm no follower of fashion)

- Advantage Nixon; remember we're comparing them for "leftism" not whether it was good or not; clearly Clinton's economy was better than Nixon's, but that's because Nixon went beyond the Left to EXTREMISM where either worldview fails

Note to wyldwolf: price-fixing is far, far, far to the Left of anything being advocated by your average Leftist in today's America; so don't try claiming this as an argument in favor of Clinton's rightward drift


Conclusion:

- It's comparing Apples and Oranges. Neither man presided over a change in direction for this country. Both largely embraced the prevailing winds instead of leading. Nixon ultimately looms larger as he introduced the change in policy that hastened the fall of the Soviet Union (market place competiveness instead of the previous policy of containment that Reagan tried, and failed, to re-introduce; consider what Pizza Hut opening on Red Square told the eastern bloc about the State of the Soviet yet the Reagan administration fought tooth and nail to STOP Pizza Hut).

- But this is a case of the times making the man. The greatest threat to the United States under Clinton's watch was a constitutional crisis brought about by partisan Republics over a blowjob. Would Clinton have been to the right of Nixon had he been president 1969-197? Probably not. But he sure did not do much (anything?) to stop the rightward movement prevailing when HE was in office.

[wyldwolf]

68. Economy: Clinton advantage hands down.

While critics on the right AND the left try to chalk Clinton's economic record up to the tech bubble in the stock market, they ignore the scope of Clinton's economic accomplishments.

It was not a "happy accident" or the long-term result of Reaganomics, it was Clinton's undoing of Reaganomics that was a strong part of the reason for his success.

Break down here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/25/151516/617

And here are key points:

Longest Economic Expansion in U.S. History. In February 2000, the United States entered the 107th consecutive month of economic expansion -- the longest economic expansion in history.

Moving From Record Deficits to Record Surplus. In 1992, the deficit was $290 billion, a record dollar high. In 2000, we have a projected budget surplus of $167 billion -- the largest dollar surplus on record (even after adjusting for inflation) and the largest as a share of our economy since 1951. This is the first time we have had three surpluses in a row in more than a half century.

Paying Off the National Debt. We are on track to pay down $297 billion of debt over three years. In 1998 and 1999, we paid down $140 billion in debt. This year, we are on track to pay down $157 billion of debt - bringing the three-year total to $297 billion. Public debt is $2.4 trillion lower in 2000 than was projected in 1993. Debt reduction brings real benefits for the American people -- a family with a home mortgage of $100,000 might expect to save roughly $2,000 per year in mortgage payments. Reduced debt also means lower interest rates and reduced payments on car loans and student loans. With the President's plan, we are now on track to eliminate the nation's publicly held debt by 2013.

Over 21 Million New Jobs. 21.2 million new jobs have been created since 1993, the most jobs ever created under a single Administration -- and more new jobs than Presidents Reagan and Bush created during their three terms. 92 percent (19.4 million) of the new jobs have been created in the private sector, the highest percentage in 50 years. Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, the economy has added an average of 248,000 jobs per month, the highest under any President. This compares to 52,000 per month under President Bush and 167,000 per month under President Reagan.

Fastest and Longest Real Wage Growth in Over Three Decades. In the last 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased 3.7 percent -- faster than the rate of inflation. The United States has had five consecutive years of real wage growth -- the longest consecutive increase since the 1960s. Since 1993, real wages are up 6.8 percent, after declining 4.3 percent during the Reagan and Bush years.

Unemployment Is Nearly the Lowest in Three Decades. Unemployment is down from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 4.1 percent in March 2000 -- nearly the lowest unemployment rate in thirty years. The unemployment rate has fallen for seven years in a row, and has remained below 5 percent for 33 months in a row. African-American unemployment has fallen from 14.2 percent in 1992 to 7.3 percent in March 2000 -- the lowest rate on record. The unemployment rate for Hispanics has fallen from 11.6 percent in 1992 to 6.3 percent in March 2000 -- and in the last year has been at the lowest rate on record. For women the unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in March -- nearly the lowest since 1953.

Highest Homeownership Rate in History. In 1999, the homeownership rate was 66.8 percent -- the highest ever recorded. Minority homeownership rates were also the highest ever recorded.

Lowest Poverty Rate in Two Decades. The poverty rate has fallen from 15.1 percent in 1993 to 12.7 percent in 1998. That's the lowest poverty rate since 1979 and the largest five-year drop in poverty in nearly 30 years (1965-1970). The African-American poverty rate has dropped from 33.1 percent in 1993 to 26.1 percent in 1998 -- the lowest level ever recorded and the largest five-year drop in African-American poverty in more than a quarter century (1967-1972). The poverty rate for Hispanics is at the lowest level since 1979, and dropped to 25.6 percent in 1998.

[mzmolly]

47. Clinton is not the father of outsourced torture.

He turned over suspects to the countries in which they had committed crimes. That is not the same as using our own CIA to torture people.

[AtomicKitten]

64. thanks for correcting the premise of the OP

I would rather someone just bash someone outright than misrepresent an article to do so.