maven&meddler

The conservative sound and moving lips machine is loudly proclaiming that Bill Clinton done did our country wrong by smoothly managing the release of hostage journalists, Laura Ling and Uuna Lee. Pundits like Charles Krauthammer, John Bolton and the Faux News gang would have you believe that he must have sold state secrets and the Coca-Cola formula to earn their release. A grip and grin with North Korean strongman, Kim Jong-Il ( soothing his failing and fragile ego) just couldn’t have been all there was to it.

“…there was obviously a quid pro quo. The first of it we saw because we had Kim Jong-Il, who has had a stroke- - he’s been wobbly and unsteady, and you can understand in a dictatorship like his how that begins the rumors of succession — so by standing up in the photos that we just saw, obviously engaged with Clinton, he looks like he is back in charge. That helps him personally.” Charles Krauthammer

“It comes perilously close to negotiating with terrorists, ” Bolton said. Even after news of their release, Bolton still called the move a mistake. “[T]his is a classic case of rewarding bad behavior, ” he complained.

“John Bolton is right,” declared the Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes. “This is a lifeline to a regime that is a terrorist regime that has proliferated nuclear technology,”

Fox News’ Dick Morris called Clinton’s trip “awful” and “ridiculous” and suggested that Ling and Lee should “live with the consequences of their decision to go” to North Korea.

Former Bush press secretary, Dana Perino weighed in with “Al Gore is responsible if he made the order, but ultimately, he’s responsible, and I think we need to hear a little bit more about that.”

There’s obviously no pleasing these people, but let’s all take a deep breath and look back for a moment.

Do you remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis that the Ronald Reagan Fan Club has managed to use to great effect in telling us that American presidents should never, ever negotiate with terrorists?

A lot of the neo-cons, having spent so much energy spinning that warm and fuzzy yarn, have forgotten the real backstory to that one.

As I remember it, Reagan and his cronies had set into motion a plan to get those hostages released even before he took office, in an effort to further discredit then President Jimmy Carter’s failed attempt. Reagan White House wheelers and dealers got immersed in the incredible plan that later became the Iran-Contra story. And, I seem to remember some real quid pro quo from that one … like a bunch of missiles that went to Iran.

It was the stuff of legend, unless you’re a firm believer in the Constitutional right to rewrite history.

These people wouldn’t be happy if they were hung with a new rope. They’re even whining about the airplane that Clinton used for the mercy mission. It’s a Boeing 737 owned by a Hollywood mogul and friend to the Democratic cause. So what? Can you imagine the howls that would have set up had he done the deed on a government owned aircraft …. at, horror, taxpayer expense?

What I want to know, is how far along were they in their grand plan to get those women released?

Probably about as far as they are on a real plan for health care reform.

maven