Do Presidents lie? Of course, they do

To the disappointment of some, I’m sure, this column, at least today, doesn’t refer to our La Presidenta. Nor to former United States President Bill Clinton, who once said: "I never had sex with that woman."

Bill flunked his Orals, but whaddya know, his autobiography My Life has been Number One on the non-fiction bestseller lists in America for five weeks – ever since it first hit the bookstands last month and, on the first day, sold 400,000 copies.

Would you believe? Over here, Bill’s book – although never identified the brand of cigar he used – has been selling like hotcakes. It’s not an easy read, all of 957 pages, but it picks up speed after the first chapter, even if it doesn’t get Monica Lewinsky until page 773. Bill observes, in his latter-day wisdom that "becoming a good person is a lifelong effort that requires letting go of anger at others and holding on to responsibility for the mistakes I’ve made. As it requires forgiveness. After all the forgiveness I’ve been given from Hillary, Chelsea, my friends and millions of people in America and across the world, it’s the least I can do".

Some book reviewers have chided Clinton, even scoffed nastily at him for not having been contrite enough. But you can never hope to please everybody. I thought the Comeback Kid in his latest comeback (can’t turn your back, by the way, on a pre-publication fee of almost $10 million) was terrific, even if kilometric.

Clinton quoted St. Paul, saying the tough saint of the Epistles (the letter-writer of all time), had it right when he said that in this life we "see through a glass darkly" and "know in part". That’s why, Clinton noted, "he extolled the virtues of ‘faith, hope and love’."

"I’ve had an improbable life, and a wonderful one full of faith, hope and love, as well as more than my share of grace and good fortune," he exclaimed. Earlier he’d admitted: "Do I have regrets? Sure, both private and public ones . . . I leave it to others to judge how to balance the scales."

He explained that "I’ve simply tried to tell the story of my joys and sorrows, dreams and fears, triumphs and failures".

There’s much more than this heart-tugging, even schmaltzy, stuff in this volume, a book heavy enough to give you, if you lift it, hernia – but you’ll be enriched by his anecdotes about the powerful and the poor, the way the world moves, and who were the movers and shakers he encountered. This is an impressive Clinton, a leader, when all is said and done, shorn of the smutty narratives of his sexcapades, finally emerges into the sunlight as a man of vigor and vision.

And the reading public, even here, has responded to Clinton’s candor by snapping up the book. On your private bookshelf, it may serve as a decoration. But if you bother to read it, you will do so with personal profit and pleasure. One bookstore alone in Rockwell first ordered 200 copies, and these were sold out within a week. A second shipment of 200 volumes "disappeared" within eight days. Another 100 books, in a second re-order arrived. Now, only a few volumes are left.

Other bookstores, in the Glorietta, and elsewhere in Makati, have experienced the same surprising demand for My Life, which looks so daunting in size – yet, once you get cracking, begins to read like a novel. Clinton truly, as he demonstrated anew when he stole the show at the Democratic Party convention in Boston last week, in a spellbinder, not just because he oozes charm and charisma from every pore but because he can marshal his thoughts like a Greek phalanx, and propel them like a shaft into the ranks of both his enemies and the unbelievers.

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A Cable News Network panel, assessing the convention happenings that day, had one of the panelists asking whether the new candidate, Sen. John Kerry, could match Clinton. To which another panelist remarked: "Nobody can be like Clinton."

Clinton has been lampooned, hooted at, made to look ridiculous, demonized by cartoonists, sneered at by the media – but he’s come through as one of America’s still most popular, and forceful, Presidents.

If you’ll recall, Clinton was serially humiliated by the probings and media releases of Justice Kenneth Starr, the world-televised Grand Jury inquiry into Oval office sex with Monica, his battering in Senate and House, and on TV, by the Republicans. Yet after all, he was "the last man standing".

Now it can be told: He was earlier scheduled to come here to Manila, in the course of a swing through Asia to promote his book. I was even asked whether I’d like to interview him on Impact 2004 on ANC/ABS-CBN in an exclusive. Sayang. Clinton has had to cancel his projected tour because the Democratic Party, and in particular Kerry himself, asked him not just to keynote the convention, but to campaign vigorously for Kerry.

It’s seen, at last, that it might have been a mistake for his former Vice President Al Gore to have snubbed Clinton in the past election, and tried to distance himself from Bill’s "disgrace".

Impressed by the sales of Clinton’s book, Kerry and the Democrats have at last enlisted him in their drive to topple George W. Bush from the White House. After all, Kerry remembers how Bill had energetically campaigned for him in 1996 – helping him win again in Massachusetts.

However, Dubya won’t be toppled easily for all the heavy flak he’s taking over Iraq. Even that rah-rah Democratic Party convenient didn’t seem to give Kerry the "bounce" they had expected after all the flag-waving and hoopla.

Clinton, on page 734 of his book, pronounces the danger of counting a besieged President down and out. He recalled: "After the 1994 elections, I had been ridiculed as an irrelevant figure, destined for defeat in 1996. In the early stages of the budget fight, with the government shutdown looming, it had been far from clear that I would prevail or that the America people would support my stance against the Republicans. Now I was the first Democratic President to be elected to a second term since FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) in 1936."

Can battered Dubya be a Comeback Kid, too? Or be gunned down in November as we said yesterday, like Billy the Kid?

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What’s disquieting is the cynicism with which the Bush Administration last weekend hyped up an "imminent" al-Qaeda terrorist threat against New York, Washington DC, and – for Chrissakes – even New Jersey – putting Americans in a state of jitters, and battalions of policemen and security forces on the street – when it turned out later that "much of the information that led to the heightened alert is actually three or four years old . . ." Sanamagan.

This is quoted directly from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

The IHT in an editorial yesterday entitled Bush’s Wrong Solution alleged that ". . . authorities have found no concrete evidence that a terror plot was actually under way. This news does nothing to bolster the confidence Americans need that the Bush administration is not using intelligence for political gain."

The editorial said there are now "suspicions of political timing, suspicions the administration has sown by misleading the public on security".

And where, once more with feeling, are those Weapons of Mass Destruction?

The reason I cite the above is that, it appears, our government may also be willfully misleading us about the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Islamic rebel force with which the GMA government desperately wants to forge a "peace agreement", not being in cahoots with the murderous bombers of the Jemaah Islamiyah, the bunch responsible for the LRT "bombing" in Metro Manila on December 30, 2000, which killed 22 hapless commuters – men, women, children and babies – and were, in addition, responsible for the Bali Bombings which wiped out 190, mostly foreign, especially Australian tourists.

Presenting to media two captured Muslim terrorists, Mamasao Naga and Abdul Pata (nabbed by Army and Marine intelligence agents), Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita revealed the two had been established as belonging to the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah and had done their dirty deeds under the command of the now-slain bomb expert, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi. Admittedly, the two – who "confessed" to having planted those bombs in the LRT coaches – were also connected with Muklis Yunos, the special operations chief of the MILF, who is now in jail for his participation in the December 2000 "Rizal Day" bombings.

Yet, by golly, General Ermita – as I heard him to my astonishment while watching TV – categorically declared that those JI terrorists had absolutely "no connection" with the MILF, so, he purred, the peace negotiations with that rebel group (sponsored by the Malaysians) could go on uninterrupted.

Is Ed Ermita kidding? How could the Jemaah Islamiyah have operated inside MILF "territory" in Mindanao, even run terrorist training camps in the Maguindanao-Cotabato and Central Mindanao area, without the protection and connivance of at least powerful elements in the MILF?

If the MILF rebels, as they brag, are 10,000 strong, how could these armed cadres not have detected the comings and goings of the JI – and fulfilled their "promise" to the government that they would report the presence of JI "terrorists"?

They are obviously cut of the same cloth. For that matter, what use would a "peace treaty" with the MILF top command be, if powerful rogue elements in the MILF – as the JI-connection clearly demonstrates – could disregard their own high command? Or scornfully spurn that "peace deal"? As long as there are bands of armed insurgents in Mindanao, there can be no peace. A treaty or agreement would only be a mere piece of paper – a scrap of useless toilet tissue.

Equally strange was the statement of former Armed Forces Vice Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, whom I used to regard as a level-headed gentleman. Garcia was quoted as asserting he believes the Jemaah Islamiyah is operating in Southeast Asia independently of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Come again? How did Garcia jump to this fantastic conclusion? I hope Garcia was misquoted when he added: "I don’t believe that al-Qaeda is operating in the Philippines."

Salamabit, General! Ramzi Youssef, the original failed Twin Towers would-be bomber, came here on behalf of Osama to try to train the Abu Sayyaf in bomb-making and terror techniques in Basilan itself, then Osama’s own brother-in-law came here – and you think al-Qaeda isn’t operating in the Philippines? We’re a natural base for that international terrorist organization, which is a network far more computerized and modern than its primitive "cave-based" image.

We’ve got a society easily corrupted, venal policemen, and a financially-vulnerable bunch of military officers – hence all that fooforaw over whether the hostage-victim, Missionary Gracia Burnham, had cleared, or failed to clear our military of alleged "collusion" with the murderous Abu Sayyaf.

Fertile ground, in truth, for al-Qaeda to set up one of its major bases.

Al-Qaeda is still fighting on in Afghanistan, and in the Pakistani Tribal areas and borderlands. Al-Qaeda is fighting in Iraq. Why not in the Philippines? Even the Americans (though furiously disappointed) probably still covet acquiring "access" – somewhat resembling a military (air and naval) base in strategic places like Gen. San.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . How can we prevent Filipinos from seeking work in the troubled and dangerous Middle East? Applicants are still lining up to sign up for jobs in war-wracked Iraq, despite the recent bomb attacks now being directed at Christian churches, including Chaldean Catholic and Armenian Christian communities. Nurses are being recruited to work in Saudi Arabia. Filipino girls are eagerly queuing up to work as air stewardesses. If given "permission" – or without permission – thousands of our woefully unemployed are all set to rush over to the Middle East . . . I heard Senator Manny Villar on TV yesterday declaring that we must review our foreign policy, and, by the way, restrain our OFWs from signing up for employment in the Middle Eastern countries ringing Iraq unless their protection can be "guaranteed". Who’ll guarantee their protection? Not our government, since we don’t have a single police, military, or security agency in that region. Their prospective employers? Why, even the Americans with 140,000 armed personnel in the area can’t even guarantee their own protection. There are no guarantees in the battle for life – and livelihood. We talk about nationalism, sovereignty, self-dignity and pride. Only if we’re self-sufficient, ready to pay our own way in the world, maintain our own police and military, arm ourselves, impose law and order, employ and feed our own people, can we boast of being independent, sovereign and proud. If we’re chest-thumping one moment, and the next slithering around the world with our begging bowls held out, who’ll believe us? We won’t be able to believe in ourselves. National dignity and self-respect have their prices: our undivided loyalty and our checkbook. In a sense, one depends on the other.