"...Clinton: I would be prepared to shake hands with Hamas..."

Sure. He will shake anything for a price these days.

And what is the difference between a prostitute and this ex-president?

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at April 1, 2006 6:53 AM

Clinton is vile. A whore has way more integrity than Clinton could ever have.

Posted by: feralee at April 1, 2006 7:14 AM

What do you people expect from an politician?

That is, as opposed to that legendary and now probably extinct creature: the statesman.

Democracy is being slowly ruined by the constant pressure of affluence interest groups who use the media and PR "experts" to turn even a ten day old corpse into a respectable and voteworthy politician.

Posted by: Zathras at April 1, 2006 7:41 AM

A nation gets the politicians it deserves. If there is a lack of statesmen its purely because they wouldnt be elected by the voters of today.

Posted by: ExpatriateDK at April 1, 2006 7:57 AM

Three times in the last month or two Clinton -- when not busy with his Clinton World Initiative (not to be confused with any Initiatives by Jeffery Sachs, or Jimmy Carter, or others intent on Saving All of Humanity All the Time, with themselves at the helm) has displayed a remarkable willingness to stand up for Arab and Muslim interests. He deplored, in front of and for his Arab hosts, those Danish cartoons. He had not a word about the need to uphold, by practicing, freedom of speech, not a word about the mob violence and economic boycotts and threat to kill Danes, as he might have done, with no cost, and great credit, to himself. And we all know he is a graduate of Yale Law School, where he met his wife, and surely what must have stuck in his mind was not Civil Procedure but Constitutional Law, and not only Constitutiional Law, but the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and not only the First and Fourteenth Amendments, but Freedom of Speech, and Holmes and Brandeis, and all that. It didn't matter. He was in Qatar (was he coming to, or from, Davos or some other World Summit where Earth-Shaking Leaders Shake Hands Only With Each Other). And he was pocketing money from his Arab hosts, and he wanted to give them their money's worth. Others in the region would hear of it, and want him back.

And then there was the news that even as his wife opposed the Dubai Ports Deal, her husband, the head of the Clinton World Initative, was working to undo that opposition which was so significant, as a sign of mental and political health, a refusal on practical and symbolic grounds to pretend that there is "nothing wrong" with an Arab state-owned company controlling those responsible for security in 21 American ports, nothing different from, as Bush put it, a British company doing so. But Clinton, along with Madeline Albright (head of The Albright Group -- or is it Albright Associates -- that was retained by Dubai to influence and lobby others to drop their opposition to the deal), had no loyalty to the other members of his party. And had no loyalty to the political interests of his wife.

Now this. Clinton would legitimize an organization that has repeatedly stated that its ultimate goal is to wipe out Israel. It has stated this in so many ways, some of them in the calm way of those stating merely the logical and self-evident fact of what, according to their belief-system, must be, for of course an Infidel sovereign state such as Israel, no matter how tiny, how hard to find on a map, cannot be permitted to exist. And some of them have been statements dripping with blood. And over the past two months, the entire world has been falling all over itself -- especially European countries, though some in the Bush Amdinistration have done the same, and of course the systematically anti-Israel counsel of the aassorted malleys and crooks, who are careful never to discuss, never to raise, the tenets of Islam, are repeated by those who have a stake in keeping everyone focused on the notion that continuing aid to Hamas, the purest form of Jizyah (does Clinton know what Jizyah is, or has he still, even out of office,little time for history, because glad-handing, and pocketing envelopes from grateful hosts, is too time-consuming?) will do wonders. What this really means is that we will refuse to begin to see the Lesser Jihad against Israel as it is, and will continue on the path of throwing Israel to the wolves, and convincing ourselves that we are not doing that, we are working hard for a "two-state solution" by chipping away at Israel, at the confidence of its succession of mediocre leaders and desperate population, and at its support from outside, and nothing will stop us from little by little doing what in the end amounts to throwing Israel to the wolves?

But what did you expect? They don't dare stand back, give themseleves time to study Islam, and therefore, even permit themselves to analyze the situation differently. To discuss the "Arab-Israeli" matter without taking Islam not only into consideration, but understanding that without it nothing makes sense, and anything that ignores the tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, its hold upon the minds of hundreds of millions of Arab and other Muslim masses, is the only way to start making sense of it all.

In official Washington the Arab diplomats and businessmen and fixers of every kind, know how to sound reasonable, know exactly what goes over well in the presentation of things, and also know how easily fooled Westerners are when it comes to distinguishing nonsense from truth, or attributing to the hundreds of millions they do not see before them, the real masses, what they learn from these rulers and representatives, the smilers with the knyf under the cloke you are likely to meet in official Washington or on official visits. A widespread failure by Western leadrs and elites to educate themselves, or even see the need to be educated, about Islam, is wedded to a widespread failure of imagination, of the ability to figure out that not everyone believes in the same things, sees the world the same way, and what's more, cannnot conceivably be made to see the world the same way, given the hold that Islam has over their minds, their socities, their countries.

The entire Iraq tarbaby - that which was built by the Bush Administration itself, when it decided American forces should remain in Iraq to create a Light Unto the Muslim Nations -- built by it and then the builder, unaware of what he had built, put out his arms and hugged the tarbaby, and continued to tell himself, as he stood there stuck to it, that it was a willed

The belief that democracy in the Western sense, with its indispensable panoply of guarantees for individual rights, could ever take hold in a Muslim country unless that country had first undergone, in the manner of Turkey, a systematic suppression, over several generations, of Islam as a political and social force -- is simply wild. And naive, ignorant, obstinately immune to reality, crazy, cracked. That is the Bush Administration's fault.

But the Democrats have been terrible. They have failed in exactly the same analysis. They have attacked the Iraq War for all the wrong reasons -- that there was no real threat, that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein had no relations, and so on. They should be saying: there is a real menace. The menace is the Jihad. The menace is not merely, not mainly, "terrorism" even if it took an act of terror to begin to get the attention that the world-wide manifestations of that same Jihadist impulse, with the same textual sources, now is just beginning to get. And that is why we should leave Iraq. It is cost-ineffective. It does not permit us to take advantage of the sectarian and ethnic divisions within the "camp of the Jihad" (describe it demurely as that, and for now leave "Islam" out of it). And we have much more important matters, including Iran's nuclear project, and the current "attacks even within Europe" on the "recognized rights achieved by the peoples of Europe." It will sound awkward at first, a little funny. Political figures don't talk that way anymore, the way they might have, with complete naturalness, even a half-century ago. In fact, a few decades before that, in the Western world everyone wrote and spoke candidly about the nature of Islam. Islam hasn't changed its nature. All that has changed is the willingnes, or perhaps the ability, of Western leaders to speak truthfully and piercingly about it.

And now we come, by a commodius vicus, back to that Representative Man, Bill Clinton, head of the Clinton World Initiative. He deplores for an audience in Qatar the Danish cartoonists who were published in a Danish newspaper written for Danes, and who should have censored themselves, should have "respected" Muslim demands and done what Muslims would wish them to. So much for those classes at Yale Law School on Constitutional Law, where the names Brandeis and Holmes must once have fluttered through his mind, that law school where, it seems (and he would not be alone), he obtained a credential but not an education. He announces that he's for that Dubai Ports Deal -- strange that he should be so quick to declare support for the Bush Administration, especially when his wife is against it. Surely he had time to make a phone call to her, and ask what she would like him to say, or perhaps to have him not say anything at all. And now this vicious nonsense about Hamas.

Now Bill Clinton is a rapacious man, an endlessly greedy man. But he has so much money at this point, did he really have to attack freedom of speech to please present Arab hosts, and possibly set up future well-paid speechifying tours in the Gulf? Did he need to stand up for the Dubai ports deal? Did he need to repeat the malley-crook line on Hamas, that they would mature, that they would change, that if only we kept "talking to them" and of course supplying the Jizyah of more Infidel money (does no one wish publicly to suggest that Hamas should go to the rich Arabs who every day take in billions from oil -- no one?).

Possibly there is something else going on here. Senator Clinton, the wife of the former president and current head of the Clinton Global Initiative, is now a Senator from New York State. She has presidential ambitions. It is unlikely, either in her senatorial career, or in her desire for something even bigger, that her husband's casual jettisoning of freedom of speech, his declared support for the Dubai Ports deal when she declared her opposition, and this latest, and most unacceptable, of remarks, will do her any good. Surely he knows that. Surely he knows he is damaging her in all sorts of ways. Surely he cares.

Or does he?

Is this not a case of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, except that they seem to have traded roles, or perhaps they were both playing the role of Lady MacBeth all along, and Bill is working now not to crown Hillary, but rather to undo her. After all, gender is just a "social construct," isn't it?

Posted by: Hugh at April 1, 2006 8:34 AM

"If they made the same assurances that Arafat did.
Yep, we all know how old Arafat honored that promise, don't we?

Posted by: Carolyn2 at April 1, 2006 10:19 AM

Hugh, a masterful summation of the handsome, debonair, and articulate shell called Bill Clinton. You have nailed him to the last nose hair!

Do we have any hope when he and other politicians and carpetbaggers like him are roaming the world making deals to sell us out to the highest bidder?

I fear not.

Posted by: Elad at April 1, 2006 10:32 AM

Can we please pass a law that requires ex Presidents to (1) stay home and (2) STFU?

Posted by: treehugger at April 1, 2006 11:11 AM

Good to see Clinton getting a well deserved tongue-lashing.

Posted by: Interested at April 1, 2006 11:21 AM

That is, as opposed to that legendary and now probably extinct creature: the statesman.

Posted by: Zathras at April 1, 2006 07:41 AM

It is heartning to hear what I have also believed in....

Politicians and Statesmen are as different as a day and night. While Statesmen work for the larger interest of the country, countrymen and even humanity (e.g. Gandhi, Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr etc...), politicians, on the other hand, exploit the civic systems of governmnent, to enrich themselves and their families, all the while, masquarading as statesmen. Much like wolves in sheep's cloathing (and there are too many to list....).

Zarthras has made a subtle but a key observation.

Posted by: Alert at April 1, 2006 12:18 PM

What is with the ex US Presidents (Carter, Clinton, Bush etc..) selling out USA? Makes me wonder if these ex-presidents were sell-outs, to start with (and we were fooled into believing they are patriots).

Posted by: Alert at April 1, 2006 12:26 PM

The only just punishment for a quisling oaf and sell-out weasel like this flapjaw imbecile is to force him to have to remain married to Hillary Clinton. (Possibly the sound of her styrofoam-rubbing-down-plate-glass voice drove him mad.)

And, as he shoots off his globe-trotting anti-Western moronic mouth further, I hear the strains of the Oscar-winning theme song swelling up behind him:

"It's tough out there to be a pimp".

(ALthough, in Bill C.'s case, it seems all-too-easy.)

Posted by: profitsbeard at April 1, 2006 12:47 PM

I guess shaking hands with terrorists is a step up from arming them. This is a man who aided al-queda in Bosnia and the UCK terrorists in Kosovo.

A part of me is wondering is he trying to sabotage his wifes chances at getting elected. If so I am glad the last thing I want is her in.

Posted by: pissedoffcanadian at April 1, 2006 12:49 PM

Clinton continues to turn my stomach - what is WRONG with him! Why would he trust Hamas; why would he even CONSIDER trusting Hamas!

And what a hypocrite! Here he's quoted as saying, "We should deal with Hamas if they lie to us as slickly and effectively as Arafat did." May I LOL at that comment - slickly and effectively - doesn't that describe him?

"I did not have - sexual relations with that woman." Right!

Anyway....hes been caught lying in the past, and he will continue to get caught in the future....don't be too surprised.

Posted by: champ at April 1, 2006 12:58 PM

Is it possible to impeach a former-president, so that Clinton's "presidential" statis can be wrenched from him, and then he can just be the foolish, gluttonous, whore-mongering doofus that he is?

Posted by: yohannbiimu at April 1, 2006 1:09 PM

Will someone please shake Mr. Clinton and awaken him? Once his eyes are open, let him know that he isn't the President anymore.

This guy is getting more press now than he did when he dated Monica Lewinsky.

Posted by: DCWatson at April 1, 2006 2:17 PM

Clinton will NEVER go away, as he's President of the WORLD now!

Posted by: champ at April 1, 2006 2:28 PM

why would he even CONSIDER trusting Hamas!

Posted by: champ at April 1, 2006 12:58 PM

If you remember, Clinton "worked" with Arafat on OSlo 'Agreements". And we all know what it led to.. more terror and bloodshed for Israel. Is it possible Clinton was always a terror supporter? His record surely says so.

Posted by: Alert at April 1, 2006 2:35 PM

Bill Clinton's position on the port deal seems to me to be intentionally muddled. In a recent interview he said that opposition to the port deal was fine, but that the real issue was procedural (he threw in some other vague remarks about national security, but never went so far as to say that a government like the UAE should not be manage the ports); of course, he did not explain beyond that, but he obviously wants to have it both ways, appease the Arabs and support the politically popular position of his wife.

Principles, contradictions just do not matter to Bill Clinton. It is simply a question of what he can get away with and appearances. And the more speeches he makes as the 'former president', the more he projects the image of 'international stateman', the better it is for him, and, I think he and Hillary must reason, the better it is for Hillary's presidential ambitions. But the content of the views and the speeches, especially on something as complicated as international policy and the so-called war on terror (complicated by general inability to call the war by a name that has any semblance to reality, i.e. a defensive war against global Islamic Jihad in all its forms) simply do not really matter that much. He merely has to appear to a majority of people to talk some positive sense, and, more importantly, to articulate what most people feel is wrong. The merit of what he says is a function of public opinion and that is all.

The sabotage theory of Hugh above seems unlikely, but intriguing: a flim-flam man defines success as getting away with it. and the prizes in this case are money, status and the most powerful office in word, one more time. The Clintons want it all and will say what needs to be said to get it. Could it be as simple as that?

Posted by: JTF at April 1, 2006 2:37 PM

Alert - that is SUCH a good point; one that I had forgotten. Clinton will undoubtedly produce the same result, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere NEAR Hamas!

JTF - you suggested "Hillary's presidential ambitions." That, too, turns my stomach!! I have nothing against a woman becoming president, but with everything that's going on in the Middle East, and throughout the world, Hillary at the helm would be disastrous!

Posted by: champ at April 1, 2006 3:00 PM

Clinton.....treasonous, degenerate. Draft dodging maggot. It figures.

Posted by: THw6kds at April 1, 2006 4:10 PM

Let us make a comparison. Bill Clinton, the tall, handsome, Most Powerful Man In the World, gets stuck negotiating with Arafat. During his weeks with him, he has plenty of opportunity to find out what a slippery weasel his negotiating partner really is. There are rumours of violent bursts of temper, of shouting and slanging matches. Eventually A Fa Rat is cornered into signing an agreement, which he promptly breaks, to the attendance of much bloodshed, turning whatever power base he has gained in terms of territory, educational facilities, broadcasting, etc., into a facility for further murder. A Fa Rat proved a completely untrustworthy negotiator.

A bunch of nameless European diplomats from Britain, France and Germany - the kind of men and women so often blamed here and elsewhere - get stuch negotiating with Iran over nuclear energy for three years. They have every opportunity to find out what slippery weasels their negotiating partners are. In the end, they leave the negotiating table.

What happens? The three European countries concerned refuse to go through the farce of negotiations again and a clear hardening of positions follows. We do not know whether they have seen the light in time, or whether any measures that are now taken will be enough; but clearly the European diplomats have learned something from being lied to and made use of for three years, and have managed to convey what they learned to their respective governments.

Clinton, on the other hand, speaks as if he regarded his work negotiating with A Fa Rat as a diplomatic triumph and as if he were ready to do it again. He seems to consider that he has achieved something at Camp David. From being lied to and made a fool of in public, he has learned - well, precisely nothing.

Posted by: Paolo at April 1, 2006 4:21 PM

RE: They have attacked the Iraq War for all the wrong reasons -- that there was no real threat, that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein had no relations, and so on....

Read "SADDAM'S SECRETS" by Georges Sada
An Iraqi General (whom by the way is a Christian)

An Insider Esposes Plans, To Destroy Israel, Hide
WMD And Control The Arab World.

Saddam was a REAL threat and Jihad had nothing
to do with it. Separate animal all together.

Posted by: learjet0450 at April 1, 2006 7:53 PM

lear - you're being kind - Saddam was a real MONSTER!!

Saddam's Secrets sounds like a must-read for all Americans - thanks for the suggestion.

Posted by: champ at April 1, 2006 9:23 PM

Alert...if you want to cringe...just think of G Bush junior being given the "elder sage" title so often given to expresidents which allows them to pontificate at large via the media on the many great questions of our time(where is Madagascar?).

We have a fool here called Malcolm Fraser" who really sees himself as such, forgetting that many of us who knew him and knew of him are still alive to doubt totally his credentials.

In this country there might possibly be 1 to 3 polticians worth putting out if they were on fire but NONE who could become anything like the statesman that we require.

The whole west needs inspirational leadership and NOW not straw dogs and rice cakes. Pray for a strong man..any strong man will do. I doubt however that the corruption impicit to democracy and the undermining of party honesty and national security by vested interests will ever allow such a man to be elected as he could become too big a threat to the greedy and the dishonest. So all we will get will be a weak or greedy man or one who is both.

Posted by: Zathras at April 1, 2006 11:28 PM

A Man on a White Horse is not coming along. But if enough people in Congress and in the press were to be merely sensible, that would do a lot. And a merely sensible President, flexible, alert to Islam, its tenets and its history, possibly with a little flair in his expression (good for European audiences), and an awareness of his duty to instruct, would be welcome. Lincoln and Washington are not required. Truman would do nicely. Common sense highly desirable.

Please do not send resumes. Just show up, and tell us all , in a lecture that will be taped and then broadcast on the Internet, exactly how you see the problem for Infidels with the belief-system of Islam, what you would do to diminish the size of that problem, how you would go about encouraging popular understanding that would, in turn, lead for support for such a program.

No ads. No interruptions. No teleprompter. Just you, your notes, and your mastery -- or lack of it -- of the subject.

And those broadcasts, made by the top ten candidates still standing as of, say, April 1, 2008, two years from today, will have their speeches -- devoid of sound-bites, and there will be no applause permitted so forget about applause lines -- broadcast a dozen times on all major channels, and available over the Internet for cdnstant review.

May the most intelligent candidate win.

Posted by: Hugh at April 1, 2006 11:56 PM

pontificate....pontificate....pontificate....ahhhh!!

Posted by: champ at April 1, 2006 11:56 PM

Hugh I have often defended the use of nuclear weapons to end the eastern part of WW2 and although it opened Pandora's box it was far better to do so versus an enemy with still quite some bite in him and absolutely no intention of surrendering,(not to mention the plummeting morale in especially the US navy) than to wait until an enemy did so. The analysis of the effects done afterwards gave a tremendous boost to not using them again.

Truman made one of the bravest decisions of WW2 and in many respects showed himself to be far superior as an allied statesman than rooseveldt whe allowed his idealism to give Stalin free reign. He is still seen by many as a smalltime backwater politician chosen simply to balance the backwater vote and he was capable of some petty stupidity in his family life, but he had the backbone to stop WW3 by sending B29s to Britain during the Berlin blockade, the guts to help out South Korea and the courage to sack the megalomaniac McArthur when he wanted to "nuke" China.

So you picked a man of the people with the one needed ingredient and we desperately await his spiritual successor.

Posted by: Zathras at April 2, 2006 12:22 AM

Alert sez: What is with the ex US Presidents (Carter, Clinton, Bush etc..) selling out USA? Makes me wonder if these ex-presidents were sell-outs, to start with (and we were fooled into believing they are patriots).

Nowww youre getting smart...

Posted by: duh_swami at April 2, 2006 1:27 AM

Why don't we ask slick Willie if he knows how to spell 'Patriot?'

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at April 2, 2006 9:17 AM

Here's a de-bulled translation of what Bill said:

"My policy toward Palestine has clearly failed. But, both for reasons of obstinance and the unbridled joy of abject mistakedness, I would continue that policy. Look, the proof is in the pudding, and after 40 years of silly speculation we finally got to the other side of the Holy Land situation, and found out beyond any doubt that I and many others were exactly wrong. But it's more complicated than that. We must embrace terror, like it or not, because we must embrace Islam. There are 1.2 billion of them and that's reality. This is the one of the dirty little secrets of political life, and if you can't accept Islam then you're unsophisticated and probably didn't go to Yale and Oxford like I did, or Yale and Harvard like Dubya. I look forward to being back in the White House when my wife is appointed by the MSM, and we'll continue our efforts, which were suspended when Dubya actually started shooting Moslems in Iraq, instead of my more nuanced policy of shooting Christians on behalf of Mosels in Bosnia. I think too much has been made of this 9/11 thing, it's been overdramatized by politicians. We must refocus on core American values, and Moslem citizens and visitors share those rights, too. It would be racist to claim otherwise. This is the Democratic Party's stance.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at April 3, 2006 7:40 AM

Yeah, but would Hamas be willing to shake hands with Bill Clinton? After all, it might leave their hand sticky.

Posted by: Provoslavni at April 3, 2006 10:20 AM

Hey Pissed Off Canadian;
The former "Rapist in Chief" also gave away top secret nuclear technology to the Chinese. So the fact that he would shake hands with Hamas is no suprise. They just better make sure that the former "Rapist in Chief" washes his hands! No telling where they may have been.
And just for the record, Sick Willie became president with only 42% of the vote in 1992 and 46% of the vote in 1996.(I could be off by a few numbers). By no means was the former "Rapist in Chief" elected by the majority of true Americans. Clinton owes his election victories to Ross Perot!!! If not for Ross Perot, Sick Willie would've had to go back to the trailer park waiting to go on the next "Jerry Springer Show!!!" Perot syphoned the conservative vote from both President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Senator Bob Dole in 1996. And trust me, true American are totally embarassed by the 90s.
William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, Rapist in Chief and the single, most national embarassment in this or any other century.

And we apologize for the former "Milksop in Chief" Jimmy Carter, another national embarassment!

Posted by: Ironman Hondo at April 3, 2006 4:09 PM

Bill Clinton had a reputation for spending his time with loose women, even --it is whispered-- with trollops and prostitutes. But ya know, it's kind of funny. You've heard that in an old married couple, both husband and wife come to more and more resemble each other. Well, maybe in Bill's case, after spending so much time with loose women and prostitutes, he's coming to resemble his favorite partners, and now he sure as hell looks like a prostitute.

[by the way, where does that leave Hilary?]

Posted by: Eliyahu at April 5, 2006 6:59 PM