Clinton did it

I'm sure i'm not the only one to notice that whenever the Bush administration is having a hard time defending themselves when they get caught doing anything unethical or illegal they resort to what i call the "Clinton did it" defense. The problem i have with that is that most of the time it's completely false or they're misrepresenting what Clinton actually did. The latest in a long line of examples is this whole spying on americans without a warrant issue. Al Gore hit the Bush administration hard in his recent speech about the illegalities of spying on americans. So good was Al's speech that the Bush administration accused Al Gore of hypocrisy by saying that the Clinton administration was doing the same thing. Well reminiscent of the old Clinton/Gore campaigns of 92 and 96, Al issued an immediate rebuttal. Here is his response:

"The Administration's response to my speech illustrates perfectly the need for a special counsel to review the legality of the NSA wiretapping program.

The Attorney General is making a political defense of the President without even addressing the substantive legal questions that have so troubled millions of Americans in both political parties.

There are two problems with the Attorney General's effort to focus attention on the past instead of the present Administration's behavior. First, as others have thoroughly documented, his charges are factually wrong. Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton/Gore Administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law.

Second, the Attorney General's attempt to cite a previous administration's activity as precedent for theirs - even though factually wrong - ironically demonstrates another reason why we must be so vigilant about their brazen disregard for the law. If unchecked, their behavior would serve as a precedent to encourage future presidents to claim these same powers, which many legal experts in both parties believe are clearly illegal.

The issue, simply put, is that for more than four years, the executive branch has been wiretapping many thousands of American citizens without warrants in direct contradiction of American law. It is clearly wrong and disrespectful to the American people to allow a close political associate of the president to be in charge of reviewing serious charges against him.

The country needs a full and independent investigation into the facts and legality of the present Administration's program."

If only the rest of the Democrats would do the same thing whenever President Bush presented lies as fact. Maybe we'd have a Democrat in the White House right now.

Many times the Bush administration will take a program that the Clinton administration has authorized and take it to extremes. Take the matter of something called "renditioning". Renditioning is when the CIA kidnaps a terror suspect then flies him off to a foreign country that has no laws against torture to be interrogated. While it is true that Clinton and past presidents had authorized this, it was very rare and had many restrictions put into place.

http://rwor.org/a/1271/bush-torture-directive.htm

Before Sept. 11, the C.I.A. had been authorized by presidential directives to carry out renditions, but under much more restrictive rules. In most instances in the past, the transfers of individual prisoners required review and approval by interagency groups led by the White House, and were usually authorized to bring prisoners to the United States or to other countries to face criminal charges.

Of course President Bush loosened up those rules and increased the use of renditioning. The result was an innocent man being kidnapped and taken to a foreign country where he was held for months without his family knowing what had happened to him and without access to a lawyer or the courts. So the next time you hear the Bush administration pull out the "Clinton did it" defense, most likely it's either an outright lie or an extreme misrepresentation of what Clinton actually did.