Posted on 07/05/2004 4:00:58 PM PDT by HAL9000
PHILADELPHIA — Former President Bill Clinton took aim Monday at Kenneth Starr and the Republicans who pressed for his impeachment, telling a sympathetic audience in Philadelphia that he was sorry for his personal mistakes but "proud" for having stood up to his political adversaries.
"I am ashamed to this day for the personal mistake I made, but I am proud I did not break under what they tried to do to me for seven years, because you would be worse off. You would be worse off," Clinton told hundreds of cheering fans during the latest stop of his book tour.
"We were just in the grip of madness," he said.
Clinton, taking questions submitted ahead of time by audience members during an hourlong interview session with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., became animated when asked to justify the time and money spent on the impeachment process.
"I don't have to justify anything with the people for the time and cost of impeachment. It wasn't my decision," Clinton said. "It wasn't my decision to spend $70 million of taxpayers' money that (special counsel) Ken Starr spent. ... They knew there was nothing to Whitewater. But they spent all that time trying to find somebody who would say something that would put Hillary or me in jail."
He criticized Starr for using FBI agents to scrutinize his life and accused Republicans of attacking him because he had beaten them in two presidential elections — and because they desired power.
"Their first value is getting power and when they get power they'll do as much with it as they can. And if you don't know that after the last three and a half years, I don't know what I can say to show you the evidence of it."
Clinton's affair with one-time White House intern Monica Lewinsky led to his impeachment by the GOP-controlled House in 1998. He was acquitted following a Senate trial.
The former president is touring in support of his million-selling memoir "My Life." About 900 people attended the sold-out event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, bringing along copies of the book for Clinton to sign.
On other matters, Clinton said he believed Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were worse threats than deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and that United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq should have been given more time to work before the United States launched an invasion.
The Democrat also accused President Bush of trying to push the country too far to the right following the Sept. 11 attacks.
He said his greatest regrets in foreign policy were his failure to "get" bin Laden and al-Qaida and the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at Camp David in 2000.
Especially on April 8, 1998 - when the FBI discovered that Bill Clinton is a rapist.
Especially, his willie.
I wonder how much Billy Boy spent on his good-time vacation to Africa, with his entourage of 1000 and diverted USAF airlift. I suspect that was a bit more than $70 Million. But, lest I forget, he did it for the "little people".
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