Posted on 09/23/2006 1:49:25 PM PDT by Brian Mosely
The liberal website Thinkprogress has published a rough transcript of Bill Clinton's interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, and it appears to be even more contentious than the brief clip that has been released shows. Here are some excerpts from Clinton's angry defense of his conduct of the war on terrorism, beginning when Wallace asked him "Why didn't you do more, connect the dots and put [al Qaeda] out of business?"
I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the Fox network…[note — these ellipses are in the Thinkprogress transcript]. ABC just had a right wing conservative on the 'Path to 9/11' falsely claim that it was based on the 911 commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 commission report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said that I did too much. Same people….
I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him. The CIA was run by George Tenet who President Bush gave the medal of freedom to and said he did a good job.. The country never had a comprehensive anti terror operation until I came to office. If you can criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for this, after the Cole I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full scale attack search for Bin Laden. But we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan which we got after 9/11. The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that Bin Laden was responsible while I was there. They refused to certify. So that meant I would have had to send a few hundred special forces in helicopters and refuel at night. Even the 9/11 Commission didn’t do that. Now the 9/11 Commission was a political document too. All I’m asking is if anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book…
At least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try and they didn’t….. {ellipses in the Thinkprogress transcript]. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke… [ellipses in Thinkprogress transcript] So you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did you nice little conservative hit job on me….
I worked hard to try and kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him. Now I never criticized President Bush and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that think Afghanistan is 1/7 as important as Iraq. And you ask me about terror and Al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive theme when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive systematic way to try to protect the country against terror. And you’ve got that little smirk on your face. It looks like you’re so clever…
Clinton's answers raise many points that call for answers. More tomorrow.
Now, how are all the moonbats going to react to all this killing?
Bingo... The sad part is all the Sheeple that believe his lies.
Screaming? I'm going to be screaming hysterically, ROTFLMAO.
Do you realize what this sort of behavior will mean to Hillary's chances?
Just compare the number of times Slick called the Directors of the FBI and CIA vs. the number of times he called a "low-level, star-struck, flunkie, the age of his daughter" for phone sex.
Or compare the number of times he called (or met in person) the Pentagon or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs vs. the number of time his was being 'serviced' by that same person above.
I think that comparing those numbers would show publicly where his REAL priorities were.
That's what it's always about for the Rats . . . *intentions.*
Richard Miniter: One of the big myths about the Clinton years is that no one knew about bin Laden until Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, the bin Laden threat was recognized at the highest levels of the Clinton administration as early as 1993. What's more, bin Laden's attacks kept escalating throughout the Clinton administration; all told bin Laden was responsible for the deaths of 59 Americans on Clinton's watch.
President Clinton learned about bin Laden within months of being sworn into office. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake told me that he first heard the name Osama bin Laden in 1993 in relation to the World Trade Center attack. Lake briefed the president about bin Laden that same year.
In addition, starting in 1993, Rep. Bill McCollum (R., Fla.) repeatedly wrote to President Clinton and warned him and other administration officials about bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists. McCollum was the founder and chairman of the House Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and had developed a wealth of contacts among the mujihedeen in Afghanistan. Those sources, who regularly visited McCollum, informed him about bin Laden's training camps and evil ambitions.
Indeed, it is possible that Clinton and his national-security team learned of bin Laden even before the 1993 World Trade Center attack. My interviews and investigation revealed that bin Laden made his first attack on Americans was December 1992, a little more than a month after Clinton won the 1992 election. His target was 100 U.S. Marines housed in two towering Yemen hotels. Within hours, the CIA's counterterrorism center learned that the Yemen suspected a man named Osama bin Laden. (One of the arrested bombing suspects later escaped and was detained in a police sweep after al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in 2000.) Lake says he doesn't remember briefing the president-elect about the attempted attack, but that he well might have.
So it is safe to conclude that Clinton knew about the threat posed by bin Laden since 1993, his first year in office.
snip
The Clinton administration simply did not want the responsibility of taking Osama bin Laden into custody. Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger is on the record as saying: "The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States." Even if that was true — and it wasn't — the U.S. could have turned bin Laden over to Yemen or Libya, both of which had valid warrants for his arrest stemming from terrorist activities in those countries. Given the legal systems of those two countries, Osama would have soon ceased to be a threat to anyone.
After months of debating how to respond to the Sudanese offer, the Clinton administration simply asked Sudan to deport him. Where to? Ambassador Carney told me what he told the Sudanese: "Anywhere but Somalia."
In May 1996 bin Laden was welcomed into Afghanistan by the Taliban. It could not have been a better haven for Osama bin Laden.
http://tinyurl.com/eqypl
This is exactly why ex presidents should just keep their mouths shut.
O, Lordy!
bump to the top !!!
Oh, yeah. He just about finished her off with this screed.
The Missus will not be happy.
Plus his blithe use of the term "right-winger" does nothing except remind the nation of MRS BILL CLINTON chalking the Sinkmeister's troubles up to the "vast right-wing conspiracy," and that reference does nothing but remind the nation of the extreme ickiness these two brought to the Office of the President.
The Impeached ex-president just admitted to a felony crime. Most people missed this.
The entire transcript is worth a read. Previously I had only read snippets.
As I posted previously, this has gotta be Rove's best work ever.
Sweet.
Oh, yeah: if this clown wants to bring up his obsessions, well, bring it on!
BJ just opened the door to revisit all the gory details of his ickiness with this one. And MRS BILL CLINTON will not escape the replay of "The Way We Were."
And democrats are livid that Pres Bush has broken the law with phone surveillance....lol
I wonder if he can be prosecuted for ordering a CIA hit in the 1990's?
What a whiner! There's a difference between the facts and what Clinton wants us to believe, as usual. This is what happens when he doesn't let his mouthpieces, Bruce Lindsey and Richard Ben-Veniste, do the talking for him.
Woo-daddy! He sure is pushing Richard Clarke's liar book, isn't he?
Hey Bill, put some ice on it!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.