For GOP only

[kapkomet]

Good. Maybe we can start sending our brave men and women home soon and let them solve their own problems.

All hyperbole and other assorted crap aside, I sure hope so. I really hope that they are going to be able to stand up on their own soon.

[Texsox]

All hyperbole and other assorted crap aside, I sure hope so. I really hope that they are going to be able to stand up on their own soon.

 

I've always believe the quickest way out of this, is by actually completing the mission, whatever the hell that is. That is the only option that both parties will agree on. Once we can't do anymore, we're outta there. Now if we could just define what our mission is.

[NorthSideSox72]

This is great news, but I sure as heck hope that BushCo realizes WHY its happening. It has zero to do with the surge. Its about a different, positive thing going on - US and Iraqi military officers striking new relationships with tribal leader-types (sometimes insurgents), trying to get them involved. The insurgents are waiting that out, seeing a possibility for getting things right. Its a great thing, and I hope it sticks. But remember that those same people have made it clear that if the US doesn't fulfill its promises in those discussions, we're going straight back to hell in a handbasket over there.

 

[Texsox]

Do they have the political smarts, or can obtain it, to be thinking, we play nice for a year, the US leaves, then we can get back to fighting with each other?

[southsider2k5]

This is interesting... Hillary is up on the stump talking about being open and honest, yet her camp won't release anything to do with her work in the White House, dispite her referring to it all of the time. My favorite part is where Bill blames Bush, as usual. It gets pretty old when everything bad that happens to the Clinton's is the Republicians fault.

 

http://www.newsweek.com/id/57351

 

Under Cover: It's not likely that Clinton's papers will be public before the election

By Michael Isikoff | NEWSWEEK

Oct 29, 2007 Issue

 

When author Sally Bedell Smith was researching her new book about Bill and Hillary Clinton's White House years, she flew to Little Rock to visit the one place she thought could be an invaluable resource: the new William J. Clinton Presidential Library. Smith was hoping to inspect records that could shed light on what role the First Lady played in her husband's administration. But Smith quickly discovered the frustrations of dealing with a library critics call "Little Rock's Fort Knox."

 

An archivist explained to Smith that the release of materials was tightly controlled by the former president's longtime confidant Bruce Lindsey. Could she look at memos detailing the advice Hillary gave Bill during debates over welfare reform? Smith asked. No, the archivist said, those memos were "closed" to the public because they dealt with "policy" matters. What about any records that show what advice Bill gave his wife about her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign? Those, too, were closed, the archivist said, because they dealt with "political" matters. "He essentially told me I had no chance of getting anything," says Smith, whose book, "For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton, the White House Years," hits the bookstores this week.

 

The response Smith got isn't unusual. Nearly three years after the Clinton Library opened—and more than 21 months after its trove of records became subject to the Freedom of Information Act—barely one half of 1 percent of the 78 million pages of documents and 20 million e-mail messages at the federally funded facility are public, according to the National Archives. The lack of access is emerging as an issue in Hillary's presidential campaign: she cites her years of experience as First Lady as one of her prime qualifications to be president. Like other Democratic candidates, she has decried the "stunning record of secrecy" of the Bush administration; her campaign Web site vows to bring a "return to transparency" to government. But Clinton's appointment calendar as First Lady, her notes at strategy meetings, what advice she gave her husband and his advisers, what policy memos she wrote, even some key papers from her health-care task force—all of this, and much more documenting her years as First Lady, remains locked away, most likely through the entire campaign season. With nearly 300 FOIA requests pending for Clinton documents, and only six archivists at the library to process them, Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper says it is "really hard to predict" if any of this material will be released before the election.

 

Bill Clinton has tried to cast blame for the backlog on the Bush White House. "Look, I'm pro-disclosure," Clinton said in a testy exchange with reporters during a recent press conference. "I want to open my presidential records more rapidly than the law requires and the current administration has slowed down the opening of my own records." But White House spokesman Scott Stanzel tells NEWSWEEK the Bush White House has not blocked the release of any Clinton-era records, nor is it reviewing any. (Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act, the former president and the current president get to review White House records before they are disclosed. Either one can veto a release.) Ben Yarrow, a spokesman for Bill Clinton, says the former president was referring "in general" to a controversial 2001 Bush executive order—recently overturned, in part, by a federal judge—that authorized more extensive layers of review from both current and former presidents before papers are released. (Hillary's campaign didn't respond to requests for comment.)

 

But documents NEWSWEEK obtained under a FOIA request (made to the Archives in Washington, not the Clinton library) suggest that, while publicly saying he wants to ease restrictions on his records, Clinton has given the Archives private instructions to tightly control the disclosure of chunks of his archive. Among the document categories Clinton asked the Archives to "consider for withholding" in a November 2002 letter: "confidential communications" involving foreign-policy issues, "sensitive policy, personal or political" matters and "legal issues and advice" including all matters involving investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and independent counsels (a category that would cover, among other matters, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky and the pardons of Marc Rich and others). Another restriction: "communications directly between the President and First Lady, and their families, unless routine in nature."

 

Archives officials say Clinton is within his legal rights. But other Archives records NEWSWEEK reviewed show Clinton's directives, while similar, also go beyond restrictions placed by predecessors Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, neither of whom put any controls over the papers of their wives. This undoubtedly reflects the larger policy role Hillary played in her husband's administration. Still, some analysts are surprised at the broad range of documents Clinton asked the Archives to withhold. "It does sound pretty expansive. You start to wonder what's not included," says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group suing the Clinton library for failing to respond to its FOIA requests, is struck by the former president's restriction on records relating to his and his wife's families. That, he says, blocks disclosure of records relating to Roger Clinton, the former president's half brother, and Hillary Clinton's two brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, both of whom were involved in controversial business deals and efforts to secure last-minute pardons later investigated by Congress. But John Carlin, a former Archives chief (and a Clinton appointee) who got the 2002 letter from Clinton, didn't blame the former president. "Given all that they went through in office," he says, the restrictions Clinton placed were "not surprising." Who knows, he asked, how the papers might be used by political foes? That's a question the Clintons don't want answered—at least not before next November.

 

© Newsweek, Inc.

[BigSqwert]

Do they have the political smarts, or can obtain it, to be thinking, we play nice for a year, the US leaves, then we can get back to fighting with each other?

Holy crap. That was a difficult sentence to read.

[Texsox]

I wonder how this went for other Presidents.

[kapkomet]

I wonder how this went for other Presidents.

Other Presidents don't find a backdoor way BACK into the office 8 years later.

 

[Texsox]

Other Presidents don't find a backdoor way BACK into the office 8 years later.

 

Really?

 

[kapkomet]

It's a LOT different. The father-son thing is totally different then the same exact people running the country again.

[Texsox]

It's a LOT different. The father-son thing is totally different then the same exact people running the country again.

 

So you think Hillary would just allow Bill to run the country, or was Hillary running the country back then?

[kapkomet]

So you think Hillary would just allow Bill to run the country, or was Hillary running the country back then?

Both. I'm not kidding, either.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

It's a LOT different. The father-son thing is totally different then the same exact people running the country again.

I actually thought he meant Bush I having been VP for 8 years, then Prez.

 

[Texsox]

Both. I'm not kidding, either.

 

So you accept she has Presidential experience because she was First Lady? I've rejected it, I just didn't see her sitting in with the Pentagon, etc. I put her and Nancy, Barbara, Rosaline, in about the same position. There was some early window dressing, but in the end, she was a First Lady.

[Texsox]

I actually thought he meant Bush I having been VP for 8 years, then Prez.

 

I was thinking both when Kap mentioned it. I never thought about how much access he had to the President(s), for so long. Perhaps the most influential non_president ever. 16 years of being able to pick up the phone and clearly listened to and respected, then another 4 as President. That's a pretty amazing run.

[kapkomet]

I'm not saying it right, maybe.

 

I don't mean to say that Hillary was president but I am meaning to say that these two have been clamouring for power ever since they left. This is the way to get back into the White House. Bill's not going to be the "First Husband". Come on now.

 

I can't understand for the life of me what people see in this bimbo. Seriously. She's shrill, she's arrogant, she hasn't REALLY done a damn thing, she's running off her husband's credentials, and the Democrat structure is not even challenging her. Why? Why does she get a free pass on essentially everything? Oh sure, she gets the token "tough" questions about "why did you vote for Iraq" and all that s***, but at the end of the day, the woman is NEVER really challenged.

 

[southsider2k5]

So you accept she has Presidential experience because she was First Lady? I've rejected it, I just didn't see her sitting in with the Pentagon, etc. I put her and Nancy, Barbara, Rosaline, in about the same position. There was some early window dressing, but in the end, she was a First Lady.

 

That's just it. She won't authorize the release of her records to see if what she is claiming she did in the White House is true or not. Instead all we have to go on is hearsay, and what her and Bill have to say. The records would clear that up really quickly.

[kapkomet]

That's just it. She won't authorize the release of her records to see if what she is claiming she did in the White House is true or not. Instead all we have to go on is hearsay, and what her and Bill have to say. The records would clear that up really quickly.

That won't happen until about January, 2013, if you know what I mean.

 

[Texsox]

On one hand you say she hasn't done anything, on the other you claim she was practically a co-President with Bill. I'm not a big Hillary fan, but I really don't see her allowing Bill to have much involvement. Look at the adjectives that Kap used, is that the kind of person that would win as President and then turn over the reigns to her husband?

[Texsox]

That's just it. She won't authorize the release of her records to see if what she is claiming she did in the White House is true or not. Instead all we have to go on is hearsay, and what her and Bill have to say. The records would clear that up really quickly.

I thought we were talking about the Presidential records? I can't believe she has that much official authority. National secrets, etc.

[YASNY]

On one hand you say she hasn't done anything, on the other you claim she was practically a co-President with Bill. I'm not a big Hillary fan, but I really don't see her allowing Bill to have much involvement. Look at the adjectives that Kap used, is that the kind of person that would win as President and then turn over the reigns to her husband?

 

Clinton - Puten - Bush. Insert either name in to any sentence about holding on to power and they all work.

[kapkomet]

On one hand you say she hasn't done anything, on the other you claim she was practically a co-President with Bill. I'm not a big Hillary fan, but I really don't see her allowing Bill to have much involvement. Look at the adjectives that Kap used, is that the kind of person that would win as President and then turn over the reigns to her husband?

Again, I guess I'm not being clear. These two have a power trip and a need to soothe their egos. I think that element works hand in hand for both Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton.

 

[Texsox]

Bill, look I ran for president, put up with all the campaign b.s. and Won! Just so I could give you the power like you like!

 

Sorry, I don't see anyone doing that, at certainly not Hillary. I see Hillary telling him to shut up and take the other spouses to tea. In fact, I could see her using, in part, her position to humiliate the former President in that way. Hmm, that just may be something I would like about her.

[southsider2k5]

I thought we were talking about the Presidential records? I can't believe she has that much official authority. National secrets, etc.

 

She is the one on the campaign trail claiming all of this experience from her work in the White House and all of the meetings she sat in on etc. Without the records, who knows.

[Texsox]

She is the one on the campaign trail claiming all of this experience from her work in the White House and all of the meetings she sat in on etc. Without the records, who knows.

 

Which is up to her husband and a rival Pres to jointly release. So pro and con get blocked. Sounds like a nice cozy relationship. I've pretty much discounted any claim of experience from being First Lady, so it doesn't mean much to me. Well perhaps she knows where to tell Bill to stand at state functions and which spouses are fun to hang with.