Fact Check
A few of you might remember the recent incident where Clinton got pissed off in a Fox News interview, and Condoleeza Rice's response the next day. Apparently a lot of people made requests that Fact Check do an analysis on Clinton's assertions in that interview. This led to a really wonderful read:
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In an extraordinary interview with Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace on Sept. 24, former President Bill Clinton took on critics who have questioned why he didn't do more during his time in the White House to eliminate Osama bin Laden. Wallace raised the question because, he said, viewers had demanded that he do so, and Clinton let loose. His responses were a mix of assertions about what his Administration did to rid the world of bin Laden and blasts at conservatives who have criticized his efforts as insufficient. He took a few shots at his host in the process.
Since Wallace's interview, we've received a number of e-mails requesting that we look at Clinton's claims and those of some who have responded to him. We find Clinton's specific factual assertions to be mostly correct, though we neither endorse nor dispute his statements of opinion. It is true for example that Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden, and probably missed him only by hours with a cruise-missile barrage in 1998. But we can’t judge whether that means Clinton came “closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since,” given the Bush administration’s near-miss at Tora Bora, Afghanistan in 2001, and the possibility that there have been other, still-classified attempts.
We’ll leave it to our readers to judge the accuracy of Clinton’s statements that Wallace wore “a little smirk” during the interview, or whether the ABC movie “The Path to 9/11” was the product of a “right-wing conservative.”
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The entirety of the analysis is here. I definitely suggest reading this and would be happy to see it passed around as well. It's great to see political analysis that seems to be built upon fact instead of bias.
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In an extraordinary interview with Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace on Sept. 24, former President Bill Clinton took on critics who have questioned why he didn't do more during his time in the White House to eliminate Osama bin Laden. Wallace raised the question because, he said, viewers had demanded that he do so, and Clinton let loose. His responses were a mix of assertions about what his Administration did to rid the world of bin Laden and blasts at conservatives who have criticized his efforts as insufficient. He took a few shots at his host in the process.
Since Wallace's interview, we've received a number of e-mails requesting that we look at Clinton's claims and those of some who have responded to him. We find Clinton's specific factual assertions to be mostly correct, though we neither endorse nor dispute his statements of opinion. It is true for example that Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden, and probably missed him only by hours with a cruise-missile barrage in 1998. But we can’t judge whether that means Clinton came “closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since,” given the Bush administration’s near-miss at Tora Bora, Afghanistan in 2001, and the possibility that there have been other, still-classified attempts.
We’ll leave it to our readers to judge the accuracy of Clinton’s statements that Wallace wore “a little smirk” during the interview, or whether the ABC movie “The Path to 9/11” was the product of a “right-wing conservative.”
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The entirety of the analysis is here. I definitely suggest reading this and would be happy to see it passed around as well. It's great to see political analysis that seems to be built upon fact instead of bias.