I am MOST interested in the inference that he tried to get Blair to betray President Bush. At the time he visited Chequers, we surmised that he might be up to no good. Apparently, he was.
My local public radio station carries the BBC. Was listening to the interview just after 8pm Eastern. Went pretty well until he did become agitated over a question saying the press used the story and that it helped Starr and Starr's team went to Arkansas and tried to destroy folks, took children from school to get people to talk, put Susan McDoougle in a Hannibal Lecter type cel.
Hannity has Beckel on an all they are talking about is Lewinsky.
Me, too. I hightlighted that, myself, and posted about it on another thread.
It goes to show we DO know how to connect the dots and we most certainly know what makes Bill Clinton tick.
Working against a siting President and admitting to it is not too smart
Other then Carter .. has any other President done this?
From the link lainie gave
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/clintoninterview.txt
DIMBLEBY: It’s reported that you went privately to
Chequers to see Tony Blair before the invasion. Is that
true and presumably if it is true you didn’t urge him
to support President Bush?
CLINTON: Well I have sa.. I don’t.. you’re asking me
a question and I’m not sure exactly when I was at
Chequers, vis a vis the Iraq date. I’ve been there several
times since I left office. Tony Blair and I are friends. Mrs
Blair and Hillary and all, we’re all friends and I stayed in
touch with him and I urged him to try to work with the,
with the incoming Bush administration because I think the
partnership for the British and the Americans is important
it should transcend party politics and personal differences.
DIMBLEBY: But did you share your doubts about the
wisdom of invading…
CLINTON: Well I…
DIMBLEBY: …without a UN backing.
CLINTON: But here’s the problem Tony Blair faced.
Blair had a problem unique in Europe and that’s why I
went to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool and
defended him …he had a problem unique in Europe.
Britain, the UK, had been the bridge between the US in
Europe but when America moved to the right after the
2000 election there was nobody to be the bridge between
the US and Europe but the UK. Blair also believed as I
did that we had to open Iraq to inspections, which all the
rest of Europe agreed to after 9/11. They agreed with that.
And that if Saddam Hussein blocked the inspections and
didn’t finish, we should be prepared to attack. I agreed
with that.
So in other words I basically had the same position that
Prime Minister Blair did. That is, not where the Bush
administration was which is we want to attack anyway,
whether there’s weapons or not there and not where the
Europeans were, which is even if there are weapons there
or even if he won’t let the inspections proceed, he’s too
weak to do any harm. We’re helping America and the
world in Afghanistan, let’s don’t fight regardless.
So here was Blair stuck in the middle, same place I was.
And the ground that he wanted to stake out was
represented in the last gasp UN Resolution, if you
remember, that failed, it said let’s give him six more
weeks, or however much time it was, and it collapsed.
So Prime Minister Blair was left in an unenviable
position. He either had to go with the American position,
which he didn’t entirely agree with or go with the
European position, which he didn’t entirely agree with.
And in the end I believed he thought that there was still
some risk that Saddam had the weapons, that if he stayed
involved, he could have an impact on the post-Saddam
Iraq. But if he stayed involved, he could keep America
and Europe, closer together than they otherwise would
have been, and so he made the decision he did. I can’t
quarrel with that; he was in a very difficult position.
DIMBLEBY: But had it been you there, in the White
House or Al Gore there in the White House, this
wouldn’t have arisen, there wouldn’t have been an
invasion of Iraq on these terms.
CLINTON: No. But we might have had to invade
anyway. It would just depend on what happened – with
the wea, weapons inspection. But keep in mind, I had no
problem with that. I never liked Saddam Hussein, we
bombed him several times but I just didn’t think he was as
big a threat as Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and I was
more concerned with diverting and dividing our resources
until we had finished that job.
DIMBLEBY: But you back in the ‘60s over Vietnam
endorsed what your mentor at the time, Senator
Fulbright, said about American power. That ‘Nations
get in to trouble when they’re arrogant in use of power
and pursue a foreign policy rooted in missionary zeal’.
Did you wonder, do you wonder whether that’s what’s
happened with the use of American power in Iraq?