Clinton brings it
 

I was not a big Clinton fan back in the day, but I am more of one over time.

My favorite Clinton moment was when he went to China and delivered a brilliant speech to the Chinese students. It was all about what they had to do to succeed. He aced it so well, it was one of those speeches that might change the world.

It turns out he delivered another knockout speech last month at an Arab summit in Qatar. It's summed up very well here. I read the whole thing, and yeah it did rock.

Clinton is like the bad boyfriend of America. He makes you love him even though you know he's sometimes so wrong. He's brilliant but he will cheat on you and waste all that potential. Then he'll come back and, with his smooth talk and implied sincerity, make you love him again.

Being non-partisan is fun for me because I get to see the good and bad in all of these pols.

OK now, we can't stop here. If Clinton is our ne'er-do-well boyfriend, where do all the other politicians fit in?

At this point I ought to offer my own witty example ("George W. Bush is like America's . . . . . " "John Edwards is like America's . . . . . ") but, unfortunately, I'm fresh out.

I have to say, that's the most dead-on Clinton simile I've seen. I'm not awake yet, so I'm afraid all I have to contribute is a Clinton smiley:

:doit:

Good job, Bill!

Y'know, I think he'd make a damn good Secy. of State.

(The Secretary of State is not necessarily in line for the Presidency, so there wouldn't be a legal problem with that.)


- Pie

Word around the campfire is that Clinton will be very involved in helping the Dem candidate get elected this time around.

If true, Mr. Bush may very well be fucked...

I'm not sure it matters anyway. The 22nd Amendment doesn't say you can't SERVE more than twice.... just that you can't be ELECTED more than twice. In fact, I'm not even clear on whether someone who had served two elected terms would afterwards be barred from being elected vice-president.

Re: Clinton brings it
 

One must give Clinton credit. A wide ranging speech that addresses the perspectives of many. As a master politican, if anyone needed to volunteer for holding the middle ground; to become a moderator among various arch adversaries; to find a common link among all regional people and parties, friend and foe - then this speech was the keynote. In the Middle East, virtually everyone else who could take this 'moderators' position has either been loudly silent or compromised by recent events. Suggests that Clinton has identified a void and offered to fill it.

Rather curious what the future objective or true intent of that speech could be. Was it just a speech or was he offering to do more? A speech like this in a region where almost no one else would or could even take such a 'friend to all' position does offer some interesting new possiblities.

I hope I haven't posted this before, but my favorite Clinton moment was seeing him speak in LaCrosse WI, and shaking his hand afterward. He was so dripping with charisma, we were all taken in.

A friend who was with, said something like, "I feel like such a groupie!" We all felt that way. It was really sick.

He'll be his wife's Secretary of state.

^^^

I just don't get Clintonmania. Those 8 years were like living in a home where your stepdad is diddling your sister and you can't do a damn thing about it.

And the fact that Hillary, being The Smartest Woman In The World (tm), coupled with her coronation by the ruling party as Health Care Goddess (tm), couldn't get her initiative out of the starting gate, doesn't bode well for a successful run at the WH.

In a sensible world she wouldn't be a senator from a state with which she has no actual connection ...

That's actually an interesting scenario. Would WJC be happy being a subordinate to ............Hill?

He has been so far ...

Clinton reminds me of a perrenial politician we had here in Louisiana, The Silver Fox, Edwin Edwards. The man was as crooked as the day was long, but he was so charismatic you couldn't help but like him.

There was one important difference though. He got his share, but the state did better under him than under many before him and all of the ones after.

And he kept it to himself. The IRS took so long getting him that his case is older than most of the people in my classes on campus.

Now, all of that being said, Clinton needs to go away and take his wife with him. He is so indicative of the lowest common denominator and how easy it is to convince them of what they want that it sickens me.

To borrow a line from Spider Robinson:

"I'll never understand people. Even being one doesn't seem to help."

It would almost be worth it to vote in Hill to have Bill as Sec'y of State.

Like him or hate him, he is the master politician. If you loved him, it was because you saw him work his magic in your favor; if you hated him, it was because you saw him work his magic against you.

When I saw that Chinese speech, I'm tellin' ya - he was using that magic to advance the American cause. He was Reaganesque. If he did that from that position, it would be perfect. And he wouldn't have to set policy!

But we'd have to look at the bastard.

Ok, Bill would be great. If you agreed with his politics ( or hers ). Give everyone nuclear materials and tech so they can build a modern society with electricity ( or hold us all hostage ) Negotiate with all the nations of the world regardless of their history with us and what they are up to.

The man is a world class politician. I would even dare say the best but that doesnt make him good for us.

I'm glad the guy's gone and I wish he'd just start his own damn cable show or something and just plain stay the hell away from any position of authority.

We all know he isnt going to though, his ego wont allow him to.

Can you say S-U-R-P-L-U-S, or are you too busy obsessing about his blowjob?:p

Bubba as US representative to the UN...perfect.

My favorite Clinton moments
 

Ah, theres so many to choose from, but lets start with Vince Foster. Any man who is tough enough to shoot himself twice to commite suicide is da man. He was even nice enough to clean up the mess at the scene, so as not to scare the paramedics when they arrived.

Also can't forget Mena, although that was going on during his governship of the state. Gotta train them contras somewhere.

The only blowjobs I obsess about are my own.

Something that a lot of people forget is that the president doesn't really do anything as far as the economy goes. The congress handles all of that.

While the President doesn't have much to do with the economy, he is ultimately held responsible for it come election time.

You're from that area? That's like 1 hr from here, or is it Winona (checked out your site), always get that mixed up with Wabasha, gah, now I'm confusing myself.

Re: My favorite Clinton moments
 

People won't bat an eye before accusing Clinton of murder, but suggest that Bush skipped out on his Guard service, and it is the "dirtiest" campaign in history.

Re: Re: My favorite Clinton moments
 

Taking for granted that all the dates presented are true, judge for yourself...

Brothers in Arms?

George W. Bush and John Kerry both spent their mid twenties in uniform. The similarities end there.
February 8, 2004

http://www.motherjones.com/news/upda...02/02_400.html

I have to wonder...why is there still so much animosity towards Clinton, 3 years after he left office? And why do so many people still like him a great deal?

For me, Clinton was a masterful politician. He took the Republican takeover of Congress in stride and worked with them on a variety of issues. As I see it, the Republicans went after him and his wife for the sole purpose of trying to bring them down...the GOP just did not like them and their popularity. It reeked of dirty politics. Did Clinton make fuck ups? Of course...many politicians do. Did he pay the price for his fuck ups? In the end, I'd say so.

So, I can't help but like the guy. He stood up to the forces against him, played the game and took his punishment when necessary. He's one tough hombre...and I don't think anyone can deny him that, not even his worst detractors.

I can only speak for myself of course. What some people saw as charm, I saw as snake-oil salesmanship. If you've ever spent time in the (U.S.) South, you know that most of those towns have at least one person - sometimes a group of people - whose only skill is that they can make other people do what they want. Some achieve this through muscle (if you ain't a Mason, boy, you ain't workin' in this town), some through Dale Carnegie (well, mizz Smith, I sure do hope I can count on you in this month's election. I declare, your apple pie is just like my mama's.)

For whatever reason, these people literally OWN whole cities/counties. Clinton's one of the slick ones, hence his apt nickname. Another is Bernie Evers, the Worldcom CEO. We have good friends from Mississippi who remember when Evers' main claim to fame was that he owned a small chain of motels throughout the deep South. He would come into their little restaurant and people would almost lay palm leaves in his path. Kathryn to this day still can't believe that the church-attending, friendly, loves-his-mama Evers would ever be capable of dishonesty in business. I would imagine that most of those people still support him - they're not kooks, they just figure that if someone meets the criteria for pleasant conversation on the porch, they must be good leaders.

Amway is really popular around there, too.

Clinton is just a well-coached, well-practiced, uppity version of what he used to be, which is why he makes such excellent speeches. Remember, diplomacy is just telling someone to go to hell in such a way that they will enjoy the trip. *(quote's paraphrased)

You and I are on the same page on this one.

The plain fact is that anyone who believes Clinton is telling the truth is too dense to realize that anything that does you any good is either:

a) doing him a whole lot more good or;
b) not really doing you any good in the first place.

Are you still a resident of the South? We may be neighbors.

So let him sell OUR snake oil!

I must admit, he's qualified. But he would no longer be the most bestest president ever, because he'd have to drill snakes to get the oil. The snake rights vote is very important to him.


TS, I actually have never resided in the south for longer than a year at a time. Raised in Colorado. But all my relatives are from down there. They think we live in the Arctic Circle up here.

I lived in the pseudo-south for a year (southeastern Missouri)...that was enough.

I spent two years in New England. Just north of the Manson Nixon line is where the Arctic Circle starts.

The same could be said for Bush. There are some politicians who, for all their attempts at unity, end up polarizing.

If Clinton had gotten us to this point in the Iraq war, with the body count and attendent mismanagement, people would be marching on the White House with torches and rope. The amount of slack people are giving Bush is astounding. The way the Right is spinning Kerry, with a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and 3 Purple Hearts into some kind of honorary draft dodger, is amazing.

Clinton was an effective politician. He was the Democrats equivalent of Ronald Reagan, who was the smoothest orator I have ever heard and who successfully propped up an incredibly flawed economic policy on charm alone. I was amazed how Reagan could look at members of the press, who are asking serious and substantive questions, and admonish them like children for having doubts. Also how he can use the brilliant 'I don't remember' defense to defuse the Iran-Contra investigation.

To be fair, I don't think he did remember. I personally think the Alzheimers began in his second term and his advisors led him through it.

It seems that we are now at the point where %40-50 of this country will now have to put up with a president they dislike because both sides will play to the extreme right or left to garner the 'radical minorty who always votes' vote. Clinton was much more centrist than most people believe.

For all of the conspiracies about Clinton, he left us in better shape than Reagan did and did not get us bogged down in a two-front war in the Middle East costing hundreds of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

I have an 18 year old son who just got his selective service notice. I personally believe that thanks to GWB, there is a %20 chance that we will have the draft reappear in the next 8 years, when he will be eligible. By that single measure, Bush has failed where Clinton, and almost any other modern president, would have succeeded. Mr. 'tax rebate' is responsible for the greatest loss of US servicemen and women since Vietnam.
So millions of American families get 100 rebate checks, and hundreds of American families get death notices. This is not an acceptable trade.

So I would be more than happy to have Clinton, sneak and all. Because having an effective, if sneaky politician in office is better than having a moralistic fuckup who hears only what he wants to hear and is happy to start a 'crusade' against 'evildoers' by spending the lives of men and women who signed on to 'support and defend the Constitution'. I never served, and neither did a lot of these self-righteous assholes on talk radio and TV. And to hear them criticize Kerry for his 'last man to die for a mistake' remark galls me. Because that remark was nothing if not prophetic given our current situation.

As for the 'dirty' campaign about Bush's guard service. I wonder at people who can buy all of the conspiracy theories about Clinton but who are shocked...shocked.. at the suggestion that Bush was a 'fortunate son' who got preferential treatment during the Vietnam War. That's what I hate about a lot of the arguments. People write about how entertainers should stay out of politics, or how biased the media is, but only when they hear something that they don't like or disagree with the speaker.

Bush politicized the war the moment he stepped on that aircraft carrier in his flight suit playing 'warrior king'. Considering the sacrifice he is asking others to make, and the 'dirty tricks' his own side is playing at painting liberals as draft dodgers and wimps, his record is part of the story.

Command-in-Chief is a civilian position. It is one which justs happens to have been held at times by men who were in the service, and most of them were under fire at one point. Bush is a rarity in a president, he was technically a soldier during a war but never made it to combat.

I do not believe that it is necessary for a Commander-in-Chief to have been active military, but I do believe it gives them a good insight into the sacrifice they expect of others. Eisenhower's farewell speech is an example of an ordered military mind evaluating and criticizing the political and economic power structure it had to deal with.

Clinton, for all of his faults, knew he was a fortunate son. He was overseas in school during Vietnam and never had to risk his life. For him, I believe that soldiers would be the 'them' whose deaths would underscore a choice he did not have to make. This may be why he was so successful in keeping casualties low.

Bush, I think, believes the big lie. In his mind he served and was ready to put himself in harms way, and could have been forced to do so at any time. He may not believe that there was ever a safety net provided for him. For him the soldiers are an 'us', and the sacrifice they make is one that he was perfectly willing to make at the time. They can share his crusade because he is one of them.

So yes, I liked Clinton as a president. And if he was preachy, it was a leave them alone kind of preachy. And while he may have nibbled on the Second Amendmant with gun control, it does not compare with the assault on the Constitution we must now endure. He appeared to have a good group of advisors, to whom he appeared to listen. And they were able to keep themselves away from the 'best and brightest' hubris that got us into Vietnam, were able to negotiate internationally, and keep domestic policy on track.

A nicely written, coherent response :beer:

But I can't agree on several key points in your argument. First of all, attacking Bush's service record is one thing. Degrading service in the National Guard is another thing altogether. And that's exactly what the liberals are doing, whether intentionally or not. There are Guardsmen getting shot at right now in Iraq, yet the liberal side wants to paint Guard service as some kind of 'military lite' for people afraid to get their hands dirty. That's just plain untrue and insulting.

It's also dirty campaigning. Bush might or might not have missed a couple of monthly meetings, training sessions, etc. while helping someone run for a Senate office. People opt out of Guard meetings all the time for various personal reasons, and it's never met with this kind of scrutiny. If there's any wrongdoing there, it's an administrative foulup on the part of the Guard, not some conspiracy.

And as you said, Kerry's valor in combat, while admirable, doesn't equate to an ability to administrate the most powerful military force in the world. I think both sides are kind of missing the mark by even bringing up ANY of this. Kerry did what he was told, Bush did what he was told. Kerry was active duty, so that meant a different set of orders, hence a different outcome for the two.

Secondly, Reaganomics WAS GOOD ECONOMIC POLICY. I'm not going to back down on this. The economic prosperity during the Clinton years was a direct result of what was implemented during the 80s: global trade initiatives, deregulation of the industries that drive our country, restoring the strength of the dollar and the stock market. The tech sector experienced HUGE growth, allowing us to play in the same sandbox as Japan, who had dominated us for the previous decade. All of this created jobs. No, it didn't help raise the minimum wage, but it provided opportunity to grow out of minimum wage jobs.

Thirdly, the war on terror (I'm sick of the term as well) was dumped on Bush's head. Previous administrations, both Dem and Republican, are to blame for the fact that there even EXISTS an al-Quaeda. While we obsessed over Milosevic's penicillin factories, a far more dangerous threat was building under our noses. Now we have to deal with it, and as terrible as war is, it's the only language terrorists understand. You can't negotiate with someone who straps bombs to himself and runs into a shopping center screaming something about Allah. Bush's foreign policy is exactly what we need to remain safe. The UN would have us believe that diplomats wringing their hands and rending their garments is going to protect us from countries led by despots. They're sheep, plain and simple. And Kerry has said in the past (I can't find the quote, but I'm working on it) that he feels that American forces should be deployed internationally ONLY under the direction and approval of the United Nations. Oh-en-ell-wi.

No sane person believes in a one-world government. Some pretend to, only because they suffer under the delusion that the US would be in charge of it.

I'm out of steam. lol.

The only place I've heard the degrading of the current National Guard is conservatives attributing it to liberals, or Bush himself trying to deflect a question. But there are a lot of people, and you may have heard something I didn't. Attacking Bush's service record has no bearing on the current National Guard, because at the time Bush was in it, the National Guard didn't get sent overseas. So when Bush jumped the line to get in, he was avoiding the draft. Equating that type of service to today's Guard is what really denigrates the men and women in Iraq. Just ask Colin Powell: "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in the Army Reserve and National Guard units... Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."
If Bush was forgiven more absences than the average Guard member, I sincerely doubt that it was an accident.

"never met with this kind of scrutiny"? Are you kidding? Bush is the president! He should have more scrutiny than some random joe off the street. And Clinton's activities during the war were indeed scrutinized this heavily, but he was upfront about not wanting to go to Vietnam. As with most scandals, Bush's ridiculous attempts to control the release of records is likely to be worse for him than if he just admitted that he "had other priorities" during Vietnam, like Cheney.

You gotta be slick to be in politics, though...even the gruffest of politicians know how to play the game.

Most politicians have their handlers...but you have to be able to make a speech your own. Clinton does that consistently. Reagan did it too.

I agree...and who would you rather see doing that? A slickster or a provoker?

Here is an article that kind of encapsulates the conservative view of this whole thing. It also reinforces my view that the issue is pretty much not going to pan out for either side.

It doesn't matter. In the end, diplomacy is just so much blahblahblah. Both sides always know what the outcome is going to be (at least the front-line diplomats do, even if their handlers don't), and they're just following their lines.

What matters is policy, and in the long view, liberal government is bad for this country. It encourages suckling of the government teat at the expense of taxpayers, vast amounts of money go to programs that never pay off (the notable Clinton exception being Americorps), and the foreign policy has historically been abysmal. Too many people refuse to look at liberalism for what it is because they've been convinced that white people getting rich only happens when black people starve. It's all scare tactics and class envy, and every time this country falls for it, some mean old conservative has to come along and fix everything that the warm fuzzy Marxist has fucked up.

Anyway, at the end of the day, we're more concerned about Janet Jackson's Super Bowl Tittie Extravaganza. No matter who gets elected, we will pretty much live the same lives. For all the talk about rich people, their wealth never hurts us personally. Likewise, I don't know many people who go downtown and write personal checks to the junkie in the cardboard box. Who cares who's president, let's go have a beer.

edit: last graf is smartass comment on voter apathy, which I just realized didn't go over. I'm not adept at thinking prior to talking sometimes, oops.

This is actually scarier than the notion of President Hillary.

US out of the UN now!!!

I want both. I want a John Kerry who advances assertively against ACTUAL danger, and protests when we overstep our bounds. I would prefer one who was against the Iraq war from the get-go, but I'll settle for one who at least realizes now that it was wrong.

Relax, you spazz...the US doesn't give half a shit about the UN anyway. You basically have nothing to worry about.

The US jerking off the UN is part of the reason the UN is losing its validity. Just like the US not signing the Kyoto agreement...

And yes, the UN is nowhere near perfect, but its better than nothing.

Richlevy, you're right about the guard. When you talk about Bush's service in the guard you have to put it in the time frame.
During the Viet Nam War entering the guard WAS DRAFT DODGING. Everybody knew it. It's where connected people hid their spawn.
The only guard members that went to war were volunteers and they were mostly Korean War or shortly there after vets, that joined the guard because there wasn't a reserve unit handy. Some of these guys were chafing to get back into it and volunteered to do so although most were forced to be instructors.

So don't be fooled by today's standards with no huge standing army and no draft mill humming. I can still see the looks on the draftee's faces as the man went down the line saying army, army, marines, army, army, marines, army.......:worried:

I find a conflict in your arguments. First you defend Bush by stating that people opt out of Guard meetings all of the time, but that it is not 'military lite'. I agree that today's Guard is right in the middle of it all. And the sacrifice that these men are making, thanks to our current president, is inspiring and heartbreaking. But at the time Bush was in the Guard, it was a way to serve with no risk.

That because 'people' don't singlehandedly start wars and overrun countries.


But it does speak to character, the ability to make decisions under pressure, and the ability to manage situations when they begin to fall apart. You don't win silver and bronze starts for just doing what you're told. They are given for actions 'above and beyond' doing what you are told. I cannot even imagine Bush in the same situation as Kerry was in performing on the same level as Kerry.

As far as administrating the most powerful military force in the world, I think most objective views of the war in Iraq past the 'mission accomplished' point set by President Bush would note the lack of planning, supply, organization, etc.

While I admire your gumption, I have to disagree. Some deregulation may have been necessary, but throwing open the doors did not work in the long run. Reagan made a lot of money for some very influential people, which may be one reason they love him so much. However, his policies ignored the reality that enough monopolies and oligopolies existed that regulation was necessary for a fair market. The burnout at the end of the 80's was partly due to the market realizing that there were long term consequences to the short term gains.

You also can't bomb everyplace they might be or invade every country where you think they may be hiding. Bush is basically pointing his finger at almost every country in the middle east. But he's treating North Korea with kid gloves because they have nuclear weapons. This lesson is not lost on any country. GWB has done more to promote nuclear proliferation than Dr. Strangelove.

BTW, a few hours after I wrote my post about presidents who were veterans and Eisenhower, I heard a commentator bring up the same points.

Oh I thought it was because North Korea didn't have anything we wanted. ;)

I have been made aware of this by several people now. I was speaking from the vantage point of someone who has several friends in the National Guard now who are in Iraq. lol interesting sidenote - there is a for sale sign on what used to be their unit HQ. Maybe that's how we're funding this....

Doesn't translate. If he was still in the Guard, then it would be valid. But this was 30 years ago. To me, it's on about the same level of importance as his alleged drug use. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but it's nothing that really matters today. (I actually defended the Slickmeister on that, too - all the ancient history stuff is just dumb)

Battlefield character is a different thing from personal character. Lots of people in combat situations would fall on a grenade for their buddies, but have no problem raping the locals or shooting little kids.

I've heard no evidence of this. What I've heard from one Lt. who got to come home for his wife's childbirth is that you couldn't imagine the squalor until you witnessed it yourself, and that they had already improved the people's lives 100 fold. Some of them were getting electricity for the first time in years. He said he couldn't believe how filtered the media (both conservative and liberal) messages were. Iraq outside the palace walls was essentially a sewage dump before we got there. This was only one man's viewpoint, of course.

A brief google search yielded a bunch of stuff on this, most notably that prior to 1982, we were in recession about 1/3 of the time. Since then, we've been in recession (I'll be generous, since I don't have the exact data) maybe 9 months out of 250. That's about 4 percent of the time. And Reagan is mostly responsible for it. I'll stay with my original comment.

The lesson, if any, is evident in Libya's sudden cooperative spirit. They know we mean business. Of course we're not going to pick nits with Korea. Diplomacy still has a chance there, whereas in Iraq, diplomacy was doomed to fail because of the administration. Not to mention the strategic clusterfuck that would result from trying to fight a 2-theater war with a military gutted by the previous administration. But that aside, Bush has shown every willingness to negotiate. He just has limits. That's strength, not hawkishness.

Damn, you people keep each other on your toes, don't you?

But Kerry didn't. In fact, what he did do was serve out his time, and then testify before Congress about the fact that that was happening.That's the idea.

To quote from President Clinton's speech cited on the first page of this thread:

"Just recently, President Bush and Tony Blair announced that they had reached an accord with Muammar Qaddafi, even. I never thought I'd live to see that.

And, in fairness to him, Mr. Qaddafi's been hawking this deal for two or three years now, as a lot of you know. And I applaud the President and Prime Minister Blair for doing it. They had to see the situation with new eyes." - WJC

This "cooperative spirit" is nothing new. Bush just decided now would be a good time to take him up on it -- now that he needs something to show for his hundreds of lives lost and billions of dollars spent.


- Pie

Clinton always impressed me with his mind. Whatever else you think, he is a very smart man. Smartness as an asset. Smartness, as something you look for in a leader. Never felt that way about Reagan, and certainly not about the Bushes.

Afghanistan.
Iraq.

Supply lines going in same direction.
Special forces in one, 2 divisions of infantry in the other.
Both considered Middle Eastern theater of operations.

Prior to Reagan, recession was traceable to real world events such as:
1) massive spending on military well beyond what we could afford and well beyond what was being spent in other times on the cold war - a war in Vietnam; while government outrightly lied about costs,
2) a spike in energy prices to the highest in the history of mankind combined with a decline in US domestic production and a massive increase in domestic consumption,
3) a sharp reduction of innovation in America as cost controllers took control of most major companies; recession preceeded by, for example, the Science and Technology index in libraries started getting thinner in years preceeding that recession.

Reagan did nothing to make the economy work. Politicians can only create bad economies. Politicians cannot fix an economy. What fixed mid - 1980 America? One could say that Reagan did nothing - permitting the economy to fix itself. But then oil prices went from highest in the history of mankind to the lowest in only two years. Reagan then profited for something he did not do. Oil prices came down so far so fast as to create an economic recovery. Then something else happened. All this computer technology that had been stifled by myopic American companies suddenly took root in companies not dominated by MBA mentalities. Ashton Tate, Lotus, Intel, Microsoft, Compaq, DEC, etc all rescued or introduced early 1970 innovations that had sat stifled by companies such as AT&T, IBM, & Xerox. Reagan only happened to be president when these many companies also developed whole new business concepts - open industry standards, venture capitalists, cooperative competition, etc. Reagan did not invent any of this. He only prospered by accidentally being in office at the right time.

The Libyan situation had been in negotiation long before anyone called for an unjustified attack on Iraq. Negotiations so fruitful that, for example, the first world leader to condemn the WTC attack - Kadaffi of Libya. Like all good and careful negotiations, it took some years to agree and verify what would be necessary to open Libya's entire operation. More was at stake than just admitting to the weapons. It was a very complicated deal that also included TWA 800 and many other events. Did an invasion of Iraq close the deal? Maybe. But the deal had been started during Clinton's time and was clearly going to be completed before George Jr admitted he wanted to attack Iraq.

Diplomacy was working quite nicely in N Korea until someone created a stupid "Axis of Evil" doctrine. That declaration simply made it impossible for reformers in N Korea (including Kim Jung Il) to continue negotiations. However most Americans with preconceived ideas (called hardliners or extremists) never will understand conflict of reformers verses hardliners that is ongoing both in Iran and N Korea. Hardliners see everything in black and white. They see nations as only good or evil. They see everyone inside an 'evil' nation as monolithic. Both nations are chock full of gray shades. That "axis of evil" doctrine only undermined reformers in both Iran and N Korea - making diplomacy difficult.

Those same hardliners were promoting the same 'good and evil' concepts about China only ten plus years ago as a major battle there was also being waged between reformers and hardliners. Today people forget the Buchanan speeches about how we would go to war with China (which George Jr almost did anyway) and why the Cold War really was not over. Good thing that George Sr rather than Buchanan types were in the White House.

And the second Arafat, who wasted no time getting a photo op giving blood for the cause.

It takes some pretty hard spinning not to find Libya to be a success of the Iraqi approach. Even ex-Presidents and foreign leaders are trying to spin it differently. But when Quaddafi said "I saw what the Americans did in Iraq, and I was scared." That's kinda difficult to spin.