The FOX Ambush Interview

I normally have a great deal of respect for Chris Wallace, the son of Mike Wallace, who are both very fine journalists. But on FOX NEWS SUNDAY it was deeply regrettable that FOX News did not live up to their side of an agreement that half of all questions in an interview granted by former President Bill Clinton were to be about his charitable Clinton Foundation which just last week raised $7.3 billion to fight aids, global warming and poverty. Instead the interview was used as an absurd right wing ambush to promote the absurd notion that because Clinton failed to kill Osama Bin Laden during his administration, then somehow he left this problem for the current President Bush.

Clinton was not interested in promotting politics on Sunday, only charity. Jimmy Carter set the standard for good works by expresidents, and raised the public expectation that expresidents should use their clout long after leaving office for good works. It was absolutely inappropriate that FOX News abused this interview to promote the absurd notion that because Clinton failed, then Bush is failing as president.

Islamic terrorism didn't begin during the Clinton Administration. During the 1960's radical acts by the PLO were increasing until in 1972, the first dramatic act of Islamic terrorism took place outside of the MidEast at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when Israeli athletes were killed by these terrorists. Islamic radicalism continued to grow through the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush and Reagan Administrations. During the Reagan Administation despite some terrorism connected with Libya, the Reagan Adminstration expanded on the 1979 Carter Administration support for a covert and illegal war to fund Mujahadeen fighters to battle the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia helped to find Islamic radicals such as Osama Bin Laden and others to establish terrorist training camps to battle the Soviet soldiers.

While in Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden met Egyptian born radical, Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, who encouraged him to give him his personal fortune to promote world terrorism against the Western world once the Mujahadeen and eventually the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. The new Al Qaeda organization grew out of this. Most of the Iraqi Al Qaeda leaders are former Reagan era CIA supported fighters, who all too well learned the fine arts of killing from the CIA.

About the same time, the Reagan Administration illegally used Agriculture Department CCC funds intended food relief to disaster stricken states to help Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein , spend billions to build up the largest MidEast military during the 1980's Iran-Iraq War. On both cases of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, the Reagan Administration built up two "Frankenstein's Monsters" that have caused the U.S. and world community nothing but problems since about 1990.

Building Islamic terrorism has existed long before Bill Clinton was either President, or even Governor of Arkansas. It is only because Hillary Clinton is running for the Senate this year or possiby President in 2008, that some on the political right feel obligated to use every opportunity to prove some political point, no matter how historically or factually ignorant these views actually are. Certainly Bill Clinton got made and lost it. He wasn't there to talk about politics, but to promote his charity which took in over $3 billion from British billionaire Sir Richard Branson alone last week. Bill Clinton expected the questions to revolve around his charity work on AIDS, global warming, ending poverty or other worthy goals, not some absurd right wing political ambush that is historically and factually ignorant on the subject of terrorism. According to some very juvenile minds on the right, Islamic terrorism some how started during the Clinton Administration. Nothing could be more ignorant of the history of growing Islamic terrorism since the late 1960's. Even the 1968 murder of Senator Robert Kennedy was likely an early act of MidEast terrorism by a radical Jordanian. Shame on FOX News for their participation in this type of political garbage and helping tp spread ignorance about the growing history of MidEast terrorism since the 1960's. The political right seems willing to blame Bill Clinton for developing problems with MidEast terrorism back when he was just a college student, and not a world leader. No right wing arument could possiby be more absurd than this argument.