I wasn't willing to parse it for him. Good that you did.

My supposition is that, by now it is possible for most people who want to: to separate out a (perhaps unfamiliar and certainly uncomfortable) re-view, that famous 20/20 hindsight - of US actions in neighboring countries and elsewhere.

It is hardly a record of rapine and pillage, quite more the opposite - but with many naive and some stupid errors of judgment. Some of those caused such egregious harm as in Chile, and our complicity in the killing of Allende. Then there were the Contras: Freedom Fighters to a Patriot-Reagan; terrorists to those murdered by them and with our assistance. More and mere fucking with language. Keep it black & white for the simplistic minded, but things rarely are other than.. *grey*, with tissues of overlapping 'interests' and scheming and - agitprop for the masses on all multi-sides.

None (or all?) of these activities came close to the mass murder of thousands of 'pure civilians' as was 9/11. Calling that tit-for-tat is malevolent hyperbole, not of the same class as trying to face some of the sources of others' discontent with our periodic ignorant or even ugly behavior.

Power *does* corrupt and we are not immune from that 'law'. I'd settle for our simply recognizing generally: that indeed we do screw up, have screwed up and.. will again. It is human and it's a Gaussian - not White hats / Black hats nearly so often as our internal propaganda would ever portray any event.

Anyway.. to take Clinton's words out of context as being some "justification for 9/11" is at the juvenile rant level of a Rush and a Drudge - suitable for children you want to warp into little conspiracy theorists. But it makes adults puke.


A.