Hillary Using Fear Tactics Ala Bush... And New Hampshire Bit On It!

[DaLittle Kitty]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/senator-clintons-fearmon_b_80782.html

Senator Clinton's Fearmongering Won The Day

Posted January 9, 2008 | 05:56 PM (EST)
Read More: Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Fear, Hillary Clinton National Security, Hillary Clinton New Hampshire, New Hampshire Polls, New Hampshire Primary, Breaking Politics News

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Senator Clinton didn't win New Hampshire because she cried. Yet here's how the very serious cable news logic (which is on the same deductive level as, say, Pictionary) sussed out Tuesday night: Senator Clinton went all soft-serve on television; women turned out and voted for Senator Clinton; therefore all of the weak, hormonorific dames, who are suckers for a tear-jerker, won the day for the senator.

Even if the crying wasn't a calculated news cycle grabber, narrating the entire victory as some kind of romantic chick-flick represents a misogynistic low point in non-FOX cable news punditry (FOX News punditry is quarantined within its own private phantom zone of hellish awfulness).

It's a low point for punditry -- not specifically in the context of Senator Clinton herself, but much more so in terms of the women of New Hampshire -- all of them -- who were unfairly painted as easily-manipulated hooples. (I'll get into the equally creepy "every black voter in South Carolina is waiting to see how white people vote" concept some other time.)

But let's rewind here. The presidential campaign coverage has been whipping the enthusiasm out of us for more than a year now. In that interminable length of time, Senator Clinton has been widely pegged as the front runner.

Being a shamelessly overzealous supporter of Senator Obama, even I will concede that there's no damn way anyone, however superhuman, could realistically reverse that trend in the span of what amounted to a long weekend between Iowa and New Hampshire.

Remember that Senator Obama remained in second place in the New Hampshire polls as recently as Sunday. Zogby, for instance, didn't really show Senator Obama in the lead until Monday -- a matter of hours before Dixville Notch. Couple that with an extraordinarily popular ex-president on the ground in New Hampshire attacking Senator Obama for that entire time, and you have to wonder how in the world Senator Obama came within a miraculous 2 percentage points (and a tie in terms of delegates) on Tuesday.

But wait. There's one other catalyst in Senator Clinton's victory which I believe carried more weight than is being discussed. It definitely carried more weight than the "crying."

When I wrote my endorsement of Senator Obama last month, I noted Senator Clinton's penchant for being a little too Cheney-ish to receive my primary season support. This week, she proved me accurate when she made with the Cheney-ish fearmongering just in time to scare the White-Mountain-sized-cockadoody out of New Hampshire voters.

"I don't think it was by accident that al-Qaeda decided to test the new prime minister. They watch our elections as closely as we do, maybe more closely than some of our fellows citizens do. Let's not forget you're hiring a president not just to do what a candidate says during the election, you want a president to be there when the chips are down."

In other words, the terrorists will surely attack us if a "less experienced" president is elected. So vote for Senator Obama if you want the evildoers to kill us all.

We've heard this line before:

"If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again -- that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States." -Vice President Dick Cheney, 9/07/04

Or...

"Whoever is elected in November faces the prospect of another terrorist attack. The question is whether or not we have the right policies in place to best protect our country. That's what the vice president said." -Cheney spokeswoman Anne Womack "clarifying" the vice president's fearmongering

We know the record. It's not just Cheney. Karl Rove, Rudy Giuliani, and President Bush himself have all engaged in this kind of manipulation -- this kind of political terrorism -- to achieve their political goals -- especially when times and polls are tough.

"Shouting 'fire!' in a movie theater" has been an effective Bush administration strategy for many more years than should have been allowed by law. And when the tide was turning against Senator Clinton this week, she inaugurated herself into the elite He-Man Fearmongers Club with what was, for me, one of the most shocking moments on the Democratic side of the campaign. She even nailed the "it's no accident" Cheney line, i.e. "it's no accident there hasn't been another attack."

In an MSNBC exit poll, New Hampshire voters were asked the usual terrorism question: "How worried are you that there will be another major terrorist attack in the United States?"

73 percent responded "very / somewhat worried."

If the Clinton campaign didn't have similar polling information in hand leading up to the senator's ooga-booga! remarks on Monday, the senator's campaign strategists weren't doing their jobs. I would be shocked if the most poll-driven political campaign in the race didn't have New Hampshire data on terrorism. Nothing is said that isn't polled for effect. That's modern politics, especially within the Clinton Loop. Without the proper intel, she never would have stood up at that Dover rally in front of live television cameras and leaned on the jolly, candy-like panic button: a vote for Senator Obama is a vote for another terrorist attack -- because the evildoers are watching!

And we're somehow expected to believe that Senator Clinton's almost-crying, voice-crackling soundbyte catapulted her to victory on Tuesday? That's rich. As much as I'd like to believe that fear mongering doesn't work anymore, it just isn't possible that the senator's "al-Qaeda is watching" toe-monster moment didn't have a more significant effect on the election results than her misty "this is very personal for me" remarks.

The too-close-to-call results from Tuesday night indicate that this whole fracas is just about to get uglier (quoting Patton: "God help me I love it so!"). And, like it or not, they're going to smack us with the Fear Stick while leaning down hard on the panic button all along the way. Just keep a mental tab of who's doing it and how. Then vote against those candidates. Make them the scaredy-cats. Al-Qaeda might be watching -- but so are we.

--
Bob Cesca's Goddamn Awesome Blog! GO!

[AX10]

1. Should Obama...

get the nod, I will vote Democratic down ticket but abstain from voting for President.

This anti-Hillary shit has gotten out of hand.

[Cameron27]

3. Yes indeed,

I'll vote for whoever the nominee is, but the ant-Hillary shit has gotten RW nasty now.

[1corona4u]

4. I'm not voting for him....

I don't know anyone here (in my city) that is.

[AX10]

10. It's not just his supporters, but it is him too.

Obama is full of shit. He says one thing than does another. He speaks of unity and then goes off on the baby boomers and the people who have been fighting the right wing for a generation. He lumps us in the same boat with Gingrich and the hard right, claiming that we are just as guilty of partisanship as they are. This is not a battle on equal ground Barack. This is a battle of what is right and what is wrong.

Obama reminds me too much of the Bush of 2000.

[1corona4u]

22. Yep, yep, and yep.

Dead on.

[goldcanyonaz]

9. I'm with you, I wasn't a few weeks ago but his supporters have made it ABO for me.

[Joe the Revelator]

12. So the three of the more vocal Obama-Haters are having a circle jerk, to deflect from the article

figures.

[cali]

40. Should Clinton get the nom, I'll gladly vote for her.

I support Obama. He's been attacked here too- though not yet to the degree that Clinton has. I will not let assholes on DU influence my vote. Sad that you will.

[Adelante]

41. The OP is an Edwards supporter

The writer of the article apparently is a Clinton endorser.

The first post in the thread is you swearing never to vote for Obama should he get the nomination?

This anti-Obama shit has gotten out of hand.

[niceypoo]

.

.

[niceypoo]

43. Yes, Obamas following has turned into a sewer

all this mud being slung in his name.

[1corona4u]

2. Question;

How many wars did we have during the Clinton years?.....go ahead, I'll wait....

[rAVES]

5. Depends what you mean by "war" really

[1corona4u]

8. So,, you can't answer. Thanks.

[FrenchieCat]

13. Well, we didn't bother rescuing the 800,000 Rwandans.....

being macheted to death.......so that is one less war.

[madrchsod]

30. gee i thought i was the only one who knew this.....

i`ve restrained from even mentioning this. you know the lady who wrote the article about clinton`s "problem" now works for obama...

[Joe the Revelator]

16. Someone asked for more information to your red herring

and now you try to shout 'em down? Grow up a bit.

[1corona4u]

19. I specifically asked how many wars there were....

during the Clinton years. I thought it was pretty clear. What's the need for more info? How many??

[Joe the Revelator]

21. The Vietnam "war" wasn't actually a war. There were many skirmishes and uses of force under Clinton

But you want to dumb it down and make it black and white.

[1corona4u]

24. So, name them...

that's all I'm asking.

[Joe the Revelator]

25. Are you too young to remember the 90's or too lazy to do your own work?

They didn't have flashy names that I can bring to mind without changing the course of my evening around to suit your whiney request to fulfill your red herring. If you're denying that they happened however, you're an idiot.

[1corona4u]

26. So, you can't answer. Thanks for playing.

[rAVES]

27. There was ongoing bombing raids in Iraq throughout Clintons Presidency

And though that might not constitute a war to you, sitting in your US Ivory tower, to the people on the ground, it very much was. There was also interventions in Haiti, Kosovo, Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan..

Total US service people deaths between 1993-2000 = 7500 (non combat included)

Need we even start with the CIA's activity between those years?

[1corona4u]

34. Ok, so how do you account for this;

Clinton left office with a 65% approval rating, the highest end-of-presidency rating of any President that came into office after World War II.


Two notable military events occurred during Clinton's second term. The first was Operation Desert Fox, a bombing campaign designed to weaken Saddam Hussein's grip on power over Iraq. The four-day campaign lasted from December 16 to December 19, 1998. It began after Clinton signed H.R. 4655 into law on October 31, 1998, which instituted a policy of "regime change" against Iraq, though it explicitly stated that it did not speak to the use of American military forces.<40><41> The law was signed months after his State of the Union Address to Congress where Clinton warned Congress of Saddam Hussein's pursuit of nuclear weapons:

“ "Together we must also confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons, and the outlaw states, terrorists and organized criminals seeking to acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade, and much of his nation's wealth, not on providing for the Iraqi people, but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The United Nations weapons inspectors have done a truly remarkable job, finding and destroying more of Iraq's arsenal than was destroyed during the entire gulf war. Now, Saddam Hussein wants to stop them from completing their mission. I know I speak for everyone in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats, when I say to Saddam Hussein, "You cannot defy the will of the world," and when I say to him, "You have used weapons of mass destruction before; we are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again.<42> ”

The second was Operation Allied Force, a 1999 NATO bombing campaign against the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Clinton authorized the use of American troops in the mission to stop the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Albanians at the hands of the nationalist Serbians. General Wesley Clark was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO at the time and oversaw the mission. The bombing campaign ended on June 10, 1999, with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 adopted that same day, placing Kosovo under UN administration and authorizing a peacekeeping force. NATO claimed to have suffered zero deaths in combat, and two deaths total from an Apache helicopter crash. Opinions in the popular press criticized pre-war genocide claims by Clinton and his administration as greatly exaggerated. A U.N. Court ruled that genocide did not take place, although it did recognize, "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments". The term "ethnic cleansing" was used as an alternative to "genocide" to denote not just ethnically motivated murder but also displacement, though critics charge there is no difference. Slobodan Milošević, the President of Yugoslavia at the time, was eventually charged with the "murders of about 600 individually identified ethnic Albanians" and "crimes against humanity".

In the closing year of his administration, Clinton attempted to address the Arab-Israeli conflict. After initial successes such as the Oslo accords of the early-1990s, the situation had quietly deteriorated, breaking down completely with the start of the Second Intifada. Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat together at Camp David. However, Barak and Arafat could not find common ground, and the negotiations were ultimately unsuccessful.

In November 2000, Clinton became the first president to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War. Clinton remained popular with the public throughout his two terms as President, ending his presidential career with a 65% approval rating, the highest end-of-term approval rating of any President since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Clinton also oversaw a boom of the U.S. economy. Under Clinton, the United States had a projected federal budget surplus for the first time since 1969.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton



Aditionally, the numbers you quoted were from a freeper site.(the first listing in Google...)

The actual numbers are below, and do not represent what you suggested. The largest percentages were accidential or self inflicted.




http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/Death_Rates.pdf



Case closed.

[mac2]

39. Bosnia?

[niceypoo]

44. I will name them

First there was Somalia, which Clinton inherited from Bush, and the republicans wanted to abandon the second there was a sustained firefight.

There was the Iraq no fly zones, which werent really a war, thought they were a military action and were UN mandated.

Bill Clinton stopped the genocide in Bosnia without a US soldier being killed by hostile fire.

Clinton ordered 350 soldiers into Macedonia to help stablize Yugoslavia

Operation uphold democracy in Haiti, which George Bush reversed upon coming into office.

Nato bombed the Bosnian Serbs which the US participated in

The US along with UN partners bombed Iraq in Desert fox

Clinton bombed terrorist camps in Afghanistan multiple times in attempts to kill Bin Laden

The US participated with NATO in bombing Serbia when they, against warnings that their country would be bombed, invaded Kosovo

there were a few other minor actions, protecting embassys, evacuating people, etc

[mac2]

45. Sanctions against Iraq

killed old and young many over the years.

[AtomicKitten]

6. Her invocation of al-Queda was way out of line and, yes, reminiscent of the GOP war-mongers.

Enough of the politics of fear.

[mac2]

11. Americans have had it

with the lies and hate...torture, robbery, devistation, debt, fear, removing our democracy, etc.

[AtomicKitten]

14. That is the truth!

Enough!

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

31. I'll third that

Playing the 9/11 card so shamelessly is something straight out of the Giuliani playbook. Shameful that the Clinton campaign would also adopt it.

[Essene]

42. false hope. fake MLK. muslim extremist. male chauvinist. al qaeda!!!!.

[mac2]

7. Fear mongering by candidates

If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again -- that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States." -Vice President Dick Cheney, 9/07/04

Cheney (and Bush..Rumsfeld) should know they did the first one. They refuse to investigate 911 properly.

Impeach.

[jgraz]

15. they were just scared she'd start crying again

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

17. The fearmongering about al-Qaeda wrt Obama, worse than her MLK comment

Fear of terrorism is a big issue in New Hampshire, which has many cultural and economic ties with NYC. Hillary played on those fears with her comments. As bad as Rethuglican fearmongering, and it's being done by a DLC Democrat.

[Joe the Revelator]

18. This was the move that disgusted me the most...I wish we talked about it more

Because it is just so counter to everything we have stood up against the last 7 years.

[David Dunham]

20. What do you think the Repugs would do to Obama?

[Joe the Revelator]

23. This is not an excuse for Hillary turning into a republican. Either we have principals, or we do not

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

28. Agree.

The fact that Hillary would stoop to such Swift Boat-worthy tactics, coupled with her political expediency on things like Iraq and workers' rights, makes her unsuitable as a nominee.

[Hieronymus]

32. Not much more than they'll do to Hillary. Edwards is a clean slate...

[mac2]

36. Bush created him and he may be dead

what can they do to him?

[madrchsod]

29. if the democratic voters believed obama

would let the bad guys get us because he`s inexperienced then we are all in trouble.

you know there once was a democrat that in the one of the darkest hour in this country said

"all we have to fear is fear itself"

eight words that restored the people`s hope for a better future....

[mac2]

37. They are reverse FDRs

They want fear for profit and power.

[Tveil]

33. Hillary is not much better than Bush

That's why I want Edwards.

[Lucinda]

35. The notion that we shouldn't evaluate our candidates in regard to national

security issues or the ability to handle unforseen disasters is the stupidest thing I've seen in quite a while.

[mac2]

38. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton

just doesn't work for me. I oppose globalism since it's anti-democratic. These wars for Empire are destroying us.

What's after Hillary as President...Jeb Bush?

[Lucinda]

46. ?

Not sure how that relates to my post....