Hominid Views

Bill Clinton was on ABC news this morning discussing some current issues in politics:

“The Republicans should be very careful in trying to play politics with this London airport thing, because they’re going to have a hard time with the facts.”

Clinton said that the London terror plot had raised two questions about the Republicans’ political strategy.

“They seem to be anxious to tie it to al Qaeda. … If that’s true, how come we got seven times as many troops in Iraq as in Afghanistan?” he said. “Why have we imperiled President [Hamid] Karzai’s rule and allowed the Taliban to come back into the southern part of Afghanistan? Why was Iraq deemed to be seven times more important than finding the al Qaeda leaders for the last five years?”

There Bill goes again…talking about “facts.” Why would the Wingnut-branch of the Republicans wait to learn the facts before politicizing this event. I mean, they never let facts get in their way before, did they?

Secondly, Clinton asked why the administration and congressional leadership had opposed tighter security on cargo containers at ports and airports.

As someone who lives and works near a major shipping port, I wonder the same thing.

Rep. Dave Reichert, who Chairs an Emergency Preparedness subcommittee has failed to get legislation out of committee that would protect our ports now:

Another amendment relating to ports was offered by Rep. James Langevin (D-RI), but it, too, was defeated by a 13-16 vote. The amendment would have added $374 million for DHS to buy radiation detection equipment for seaports. Langevin said DHS will not deploy next-generation detectors to all U.S. seaports until 2013 but that his amendment would allow it to be done by the end of F.Y. 2007. In arguing against the amendment, Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) said it would force the Department “to purchase old, outdated” equipment that has high false alarm rates.

Clinton also took Lieberman to the woodshed—sort of—over his inaccurate statements trying to link Clinton to his positions:

Clinton also discussed Sen. Joe Lieberman’s loss in Connecticut’s Democratic primary last week to anti-war liberal Ned Lamont.

Lieberman has characterized his loss — and the need for his subsequent independent run — as liberals in the party purging those with the Lieberman-Clinton position of progressiveness in domestic politics and strong national security credentials.

“Well, if I were Joe and I was running as an independent, that’s what I’d say, too,” Clinton said.

“But that’s not quite right. That is, there were almost no Democrats who agreed with his position, which was, ‘I want to attack Iraq whether or not they have weapons of mass destruction.’”

“His position is the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld position, which was, ‘Does it matter if they have weapons? None of this matters. … This is a big, important priority, and 9/11 gives us the way of attacking and deposing Saddam.’”

Clinton said that a vote for Lamont was not, as Lieberman had implied, a vote against the country’s security.

Think Progress has a video clip.