Andy McCarthy at NRO’s The Corner neatly turns Hillary’s comments about Vice President Cheney against her:
If the Secretary of State really doesn’t think Vice President Cheney is a reliable source, she is smart enough to know the obvious thing to do: declassify and disclose the intelligence reports he’s talking about so all the world can see exactly how unreliable he is. Here’s her big chance to put her money where her mouth is and truly embarrass the guy she so effortlessly trashed in a public hearing today.
McCarthy goes on to note that she probably won’t do it – because everyone who knows about these things is confirming Vice President Cheney. All Hillary was doing was following the Obama Administration game plan – keep running against the Bush Administration and hope that no one notices that Bush isn’t in office anymore (I didn’t say it was a smart plan – though it will be eaten up by leftists here in the United States who, also, want to keep going after President Bush).
I don’t recall from Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Bush II the level of condemnation of the previous Administration that we’re getting from Obama and his Administration. Certainly, each of these previous Presidents talked himself up and allude to the presumptively worse times under the other guy, but this relentless campaign of slander against people who hold no office is startling – and disturbing. The kindest face we can put on it is that Obama and Co are just floundering around and don’t know what to do so they are in default attack-mode. The more worrisome prospect is that they are attempting to demonize the Bush Administration in order to set them up for kangaroo courts preliminary to a general legal offensive against all right-of-center opinion.
When Bill Clinton left office, forgiveness from me was almost as automatic as breathing. I was glad to see him go, but I felt no continuing rancor towards him – even after the accounting scandal and 9/11 exposed the miserable incompetence of his Administration. There was no point in indulging in hatred or attempting to witch-hunt him or his subordinates. It was over – whatever he did, for good or ill, was in the history books and all we could do is the best we could with what we had day by day. To attempt to rehash the past helps no one (this is why I was opposed to the 9/11 Commission – I just wasn’t interested in a post-mortem except as much as we could learn from mistakes). Love Bush or hate Bush, there is nothing he can do – all he can do has been done. One might like or hate the results, but liked or hated, the results have to be dealt with as they are…putting him in the dock won’t change our predicament. In fact, it would make it worse as it would drive massive wedges of disunity into the American body politic.
You people on the left really need to let go – and get Obama and Co to let go, too. Your long, national nightmare (if that is how you choose to view it) is over. You can breath again. So, lay off. Unless, that is, you’re just consumed with hatred…then what you need is the grace and mercy of God.