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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.

I guess that means "I don't recall," and "oh, poor Tony, he was between a rock & a hard place. It's all the fault of the VRWC. Let's talk about something else. Just not Monica."

Parsing the phrases in that exchange, it seems to me that he DID try to undermine Bush, and that Blair wasn't having any of that!

"So here was Blair stuck in the middle, same place I was."

That would be wrong, Slick, because Prime Minister Blair was still the leader of foreign policy for his county. And you were a retired President of the US. You were not in the same place.

I notice the answer was not "I would NEVER undermine my country at time of war".

Nope.

He basically said yes, that is what he did.

And the media laps it up--and some "conservatives", too. Why just tonight Pat Robertson told Campbell Brown that Bill is pathological and this book is an attempt to draw us in to his pathology. But then he ends with an idiotic grin and "but he's a nice guy".