1.) Clinton's zipper-happy nature had nothing to do with what the investigation originated as: Whitewater (which was ultimately concluded with no criminal wrongdoing). Ken Starr was criticized for going way beyond the scope of the original investigation (a real estate scandal and missing docs) and paying attention to an outside lawsuit in his report. Ken Starr was likely the kid in 3rd grade that did a report on the moon when he was assigned to report on Christopher Columbus.
And yes, when you get down to it, Clinton was impeached for lying over getting his winkey whacked by an intern under oath, like every person put in that situation would do. It doesn't matter that the report that was used to impeach him was origianlly supposed to document an entirely different subject altogether. However, Libby and Rove both obstructed an investigation and lied under oath concerning the actual investigation, not some side-story.
We weren't Nation-building in Vietnam like we are in Iraq. Ultimately, Bush policy in Afghanastan and Iraq has done more to fuel future terrorism and hate towards the US than curb it. The objective in Vietnam was to prevent the North from taking over the South, even though the South Vietnamese government persecuted Buddhists, cracked down on freedom, and was generally an authortarian/totaltarian (no difference, just authoritarian is favorable with the State Dept. for some reason) regime. While you could attempt to draw some paralells with the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam and the phantom WMDs in Iraq, Vietnam action was going to happen simply based on US cold war policy. What Son of a Bush did was demolish 250 years of established US foreign and military policy by saying we would pre-emptively strike anyone we saw fit. While this would be nice if they had a reason in Iraq, they ultimately haven't shown one. What we have done is completely destablized one of the major powers in the region and will ultimately leave a massive power-vacuum for another country to take over in one form or another. We've managed to piss off Sunnis, who are now in the minority and are actively leading the insurgancy, the Kurds who want their own Kurdistan, and the Shi'ites who want to establish some sort of nutball regime that we don't want. Sure, we managed to set up a puppet government that will fall once we leave and they're trying Saddam. Too bad they can't prevent his defense attorneys from being kidnapped and discovered a week later with bulletholes in their bodies. Sure, we've given the Iraqi people an army/police force that may or may not be helping the insurgancy and may or may not be filled with anti-sunni death squads that act as the gestapo for the shi'ite clerics. |