Gateway Pundit has an interesting story about Bill Clinton allegedly telling a news conference in Pakistan that pubishers who printed the Danish cartoons should be “convicted”.
Jim Hoft contacted the Pakistan Daily News, who broke the story, and was told the following:
- There have been no complaints received from the Clinton Foundation over the article
- The Daily Times will not comment further on the article at this time.
- The Daily Times is not retracting nor making changes to their report at this time
- Part of the Daily Times report was taken from comments after the official news conference
Which raises some interesting questions in my mind.
- Please can we see a transcript of the press conference? We currently only have the word of the journalist who wrote the article. He wasn’t the only journalist at the press conference, so I’m unsure as to why none of the other journalists – professionals with an eye for a story, I’m sure – thought the comment newsworthy. Even the other story Jim quotes, from The Nation, doesn’t repeat the “convict” comment.
- Has the story actually been brought to the attention of the Clinton Foundation yet? They may well not yet be aware of the story – although I guess it’s well and truly ‘broken’ now.
- Does the Clinton Foundation have a policy about not complaining about press reports? Lots of organisations don’t complain on purely practical grounds – it can be far more hassle than it’s worth, and can drag kicking and screaming back into the spotlight a story that would otherwise die a quiet death in a lonely corner.
- Why would Bill Clinton – a reasonably clever man with a law degree – call for a conviction, rather than a prosecution? I mean, if ever there was a man who knew the power of words in a court of law, Bill Clinton is that man – as he proved during the Monica Lewinsky scandal where he was very very careful with his definitions.
Still, despite my scepticism, this is a story to watch. I’ll be interested to see how it develops.
Update: Looking into this story slightly more, I see that, in an earlier post, Gateway Pundit links to Mark in Mexico, who also has worries about the authenticity of this report, and seems to have hit upon why the reporter mentioned above thought that Clinton had called for a conviction:
I think I see what has happened here. The ex-president is quoted in several of the news sources as saying that
“religious convictions of the people should be respected at all costs and no media should be allowed to play with the religious sentiments of people of any faith.”
The Pakistan Daily Times needs an English translator.