There’s No Evidence!
Wednesday, June 30, 2004 3:15 pm Daniel J. Summers
He's at it again. The 42nd President of the United States, William Jefferson Blythe (Slick Willie, Bubba) Clinton, has resurfaced to promote his new book. Some folks fault him for not accepting the Sudan's offer to give us Osama bin Laden several years ago. In his defense of himself, he's providing many of us a reminder of just how grating he is to listen to. Did he admit that he had dropped the ball on that particular occasion? (Come on - are you kidding?) Did he adamantly deny this charge? He tried - he said "There was a story, which is factually inaccurate, that the Sudanese offered bin Laden to us. As far as I know, there is not a shred of evidence of that."
That's not a denial, folks; that's an assertion. “Factually inaccurate” means that the story could have the wrong date, or inaccuracies in the timeline - the phrase sounds nice, but it had a different meaning than “substantively inaccurate,” which is how I would describe something like that. (Actually, I probably would have called it a “pack of lies” or something like that…) And to his next phrase - he can't bring himself to say “I didn't do it,” he uses the cop-out “There's not a shred of evidence of that.” (If you'll recall, he's used that phrase before - when speaking of Mark Rich, the fundraising of Charlie Trie (paragraph 3), even when describing his own life. I saw that one person said “The proper way to parse that statement (“There's not a single shred of evidence”) is 'There are many shredded pieces of evidence.'” And, as if that's not a wishy-washy enough statement, he preceded it by saying “as far as I know.” Does this mean he's not sure whether there are shreds of evidence (or maybe even whole pages his staffers missed)?
This is the sort of pedantic double-speak that makes Clinton so dear to his party, and so frustratingly annoying to those not in his party. I would think that someone who was trying to rehabilitate their reputation would start talking straight. Ladies, think about it - if you accused your husband of having an affair with someone, and he said “As far as I know, there's not a shred of evidence that we ever had an affair,” would you be satisfied with that answer? What you would hear is something like “We did, but we covered our tracks really well, I think.” Back when the Godfather (Rush Limbaugh for those in Rio Linda) came into popularity (way back during Bush 41's presidency), one of his most common themes was that “words mean things.” (Sounds like a no-brainer, right?) Through Clinton's use of terms like this, and his creative narrowing of common terms such as is and sex, he harmed the moral fabric of this country immensely.
This mysogynistic, impeached rapist, who was held in contempt of court while seated as this nation's top executive officer, needs to go back into the shadows from where he came. The policy differences some folks have with our current President are nowhere close to Clinton's pattern of personal corruption, abuse of power, and illegal activities. Let's just hope against hope he doesn't become our first “First Gentleman”…