Welfare reform. NAFTA. The crime bill. Prisons. Aides wondered if Bill knew who he was. His legacy is sadly clear

Excerpted from Thomas Frank's new book, Listen, Liberal

Everyone remembers the years of the Bill Clinton presidency as good times. The economy was booming, the stock market was ascending, and the mood was infectious. You felt good about it even if you didn't own a single share.

And yet: What did Clinton actually do in his eight years on Pennsylvania Avenue? While writing this book, I would periodically ask my liberal friends if they could recall the progressive laws he got passed, the high-minded policies he fought for—you know, the good things Bill Clinton got done while he was president. Why was it, I wondered, that we were supposed to think so highly of him—apart from his obvious personal charm, I mean?

It proved difficult for my libs. People mentioned the obvious things: Clinton once raised the minimum wage and expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit. He balanced the budget. He secured a modest tax increase on the rich. And he did propose a national health program, although it didn't get very far and was in fact so poorly designed it could be a model of how not to do big policy initiatives.

Other than that, not much. No one could think of any great but hopeless Clintonian stands on principle; after all, this is the guy who once took a poll to decide where to go on vacation. His presidency was all about campaign donations, not personal bravery—he basically rented out the Lincoln Bedroom, for chrissake, and at the end of his time in office he even appeared to sell a presidential pardon.

An Al-Qaeda branch has claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 16 people at the Grand-Bassam beach resort on Cote d'Ivoire, which is known for being popular with Westerners. Reports claim that four of the victims are Europeans. Two gunmen opened fire on a beach, injuring several people, a local tourist guide told France24. According to Reuters, there were four gunmen involved in the attack.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for the assault, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

Six assailants have been neutralized in the police operation so far, Cote d'Ivoire's Interior Ministry said."Three hotels in Grand Bassam were attacked this Sunday by armed men. Security and defense forces intervened immediately and were able to neutralize six terrorists. The clean-up operation is under way," Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko said on state television.

The assailants, who were "heavily armed and wearing balaclavas, fired at guests at the L'Etoile du Sud (Southern Star), a large hotel which was full of expats in the current heatwave," a witness told AFP.

A combined total of sixteen people, including fourteen civilians and two soldiers, were killed in the attack, Cote d'Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara said. "Six attackers came onto the beach in Bassam this afternoon ... We have 14 civilians and two special forces soldiers who were unfortunately killed," said Ouattara, who visited the site where the assault took place.

Iraqi Kurdistan parliament speaker and Peshmerga leader Kemal Kerküki was nearly assassinated in an attack by the Daesh terrorist group, he told Sputnik Turkiye.

"Daesh fighters planned to blow up booby-trapped cars around where our units were located, but Peshmerga forcess prevented the terrorist attack," Kerküki told Sputnik Turkiye.

He added that of the six Daesh fighters planning the attack, one blew himself up, while the rest were killed by Peshmerga soldiers.

The Russian Defense Ministry jointly with domestic defense contractors is developing demountable auto bridges invisible for the potential enemy's detection systems, Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Bulgakov said on Monday.

"The bridges must be invisible for [the enemy's] modern detection means to raise the survivability of bridge-crossing," he said.

According to Bulgakov, the new structures are being developed of composite and other innovation materials to facilitate the bridges' assembly and reduce their weight while the carrying capacity and the length of the bridge spans will be increased.

An Islamic State fighter from the US was arrested in Iraq after emerging from territory controlled by the militant group in Syria, a local commander told Kurdish media. The man reportedly mistook the area for the Turkish border.

A local commander told Kurdish news outlet Rudaw that the arrested man was Muhammad Jamal Amin, a Virginia-born US citizen of a Palestinian father and an Iraqi mother.

The commander said that Kurdish forces fired on the man before he reached their base near Sinjar, and later detained him.

A number of cell phones, some money, and ID cards were seized from the militant.

The US embassy in Turkey issued a security warning to American citizens two days before a blast caused by a suicide car bomb hit the center of Ankara on Sunday evening. At least 37 people were killed and 125 injured in the explosion.

The American embassy had warned on its website about a "potential plot to attack Turkish government buildings and housing in the Bahcelievler neighborhood," in Çankaya District, where the Turkish National Library is located among other landmarks. "US citizens should avoid this area," the embassy stated.

"We advise US citizens to review their personal security plans, remain aware of your surroundings and local events, monitor local news stations for updates, and follow local authority instructions," it added on Friday.

Kurdistan National Congress spokesman Selahattin Soro said that Turkey has plans for some military actions in neighboring countries.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was not complicit in carrying out the recent terror attack in Ankara, but the blast may be used by the Turkish government as a pretext for interfering in the foreign affairs of neighboring states, Kurdistan National Congress spokesman Selahattin Soro said Monday.

Turkish warplanes bombed camps belonging to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the north of Iraq early on Monday, Turkey's army has confirmed. The strikes come less than 24 hours after a car bomb in Ankara killed at least 37 people.

A total of 11 fighter jets were involved in the bombardment of the PKK positions. Some 18 targets were hit, including ammunition depots and shelters, the Turkish military said in a statement, as cited by Reuters.

I love this country. Not for what it's become, of course - a fascist police state with a rabidity and penchant for lashing out that can only be compared to the Third Reich. No, that's definitely my least favorite part about it. What I love is what it is conceptualized as, and what it ostensibly stands for: freedom, democracy, opportunity, a melting pot of cultures and civilizations.

Growing up, studying the history book version of America inspired me. Granted, we glazed over the Native American holocaust and lionized slave owners and oligarchs, but at the core there was an American mythos worth believing in: the right to be secure in our persons and property, the freedom to believe in and practice whatever religion we wanted, a 'free market' in which we could survive, thrive and prosper. In this America, we had the right to defend ourselves from violence, and to speak our minds when we thought there was something worth speaking about.

Sadly, that America doesn't exist, and worse - I doubt it ever did. Since its inception, America has been controlled by the money men. Those who have the most wealth also have the most power. They control and influence public opinion because they have the ability to talk louder than anyone else. They own the media. They buy politicians and legislation. Laws are selectively enforced based on whether or not the populace is aware that they've been violated, and even then this 'elite' usually get away with it. Bribery and corruption are nothing new - in fact, Citizens United legalized it to a whole new level by proclaiming that a corporation's ability to spend money on political campaigns could not be impugned because to do so is considered a 'violation of free speech' because, as everyone knows, corporations are the most important and privileged of all 'people'.

Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary in Libya. Hillary Clinton's recently published emails confirm that it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing African economic sovereignty.

The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a "victory lap."

"We came, we saw, he died!" she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature.

Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, "as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain."

US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring. As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, "the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as 'thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,' and 'kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant'."

Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world's largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.

But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. Today the situation is so dire that President Obama has asked his advisors to draw up options including a new military front in Libya, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with "the full spectrum of military operations required."

The Secretary of State's victory lap was indeed premature, if what we're talking about is the officially stated goal of humanitarian intervention. But her newly-released emails reveal another agenda behind the Libyan war; and this one, it seems, was achieved.