Posted on 09/24/2006 7:12:46 AM PDT by slowhand520
Bill Clinton’s Excuses No matter what he says, the record shows he failed to act against terrorism.
By Byron York
“I worked hard to try and kill him,” former president Bill Clinton told Fox News Sunday. “I tried. I tried and failed.”
”Him” is Osama bin Laden. And in his interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, the former president based nearly his entire defense on one source: Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, the book by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke. “All I’m asking is if anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book,” Clinton said at one point in the interview. “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,” he said at another. “All you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s findings and you know it’s not true,” he said at yet another point. In all, Clinton mentioned Clarke’s name 11 times during the Fox interview.
But Clarke’s book does not, in fact, support Clinton’s claim. Judging by Clarke’s sympathetic account — as well as by the sympathetic accounts of other former Clinton aides like Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon — it’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden. Rather, he tried to convince U.S. military and intelligence agencies to kill bin Laden. And when, on a number of occasions, those agencies refused to act, Clinton, the commander-in-chief, gave up.
Clinton did not give up in the sense of an executive who gives an order and then moves on to other things, thinking the order is being carried out when in fact it is being ignored. Instead, Clinton knew at the time that his top military and intelligence officials were dragging their feet on going after bin Laden and al Qaeda. He gave up rather than use his authority to force them into action.
Examples are all over Clarke’s book. On page 223, Clarke describes a meeting, in late 2000, of the National Security Council “principals” — among them, the heads of the CIA, the FBI, the Attorney General, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the secretaries of State, Defense. It was just after al Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole. But neither the FBI nor the CIA would say that al Qaeda was behind the bombing, and there was little support for a retaliatory strike. Clarke quotes Mike Sheehan, a State Department official, saying in frustration, “What’s it going to take, Dick? Who the shit do they think attacked the Cole, fuckin’ Martians? The Pentagon brass won’t let Delta go get bin Laden. Hell they won’t even let the Air Force carpet bomb the place. Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?”
That came later. But in October 2000, what would it have taken? A decisive presidential order — which never came.
The story was the same with the CIA. On page 204, Clarke vents his frustration at the CIA’s slow-walking on the question of killing bin Laden. “I still to this day do not understand why it was impossible for the United States to find a competent group of Afghans, Americans, third-country nationals, or some combination who could locate bin Laden in Afghanistan and kill him,” Clarke writes. “I believe that those in CIA who claim the [presidential] authorizations were insufficient or unclear are throwing up that claim as an excuse to cover the fact that they were pathetically unable to accomplish the mission.”
Clarke hit the CIA again a few pages later, on page 210, on the issue of the CIA’s refusal to budget money for the fight against al Qaeda. “The formal, official CIA response was that there were [no funds],” Clarke wrote. “Another way to say that was that everything they were doing was more important than fighting al Qaeda.”
The FBI proved equally frustrating. On page 217, Clarke describes a colleague, Roger Cressey, who was frustrated after meeting with an FBI representative on the subject of terrorism. “That fucker is going to get some Americans killed,” Clarke reports Cressey saying. “He just sits there like a bump on a log.” Clarke adds: “I knew he was talking about an FBI representative.”
So Clinton couldn’t get the job done. Why not? According to Clarke’s pro-Clinton view, the president was stymied by Republican opposition. “Weakened by continual political attack,” Clarke writes, “[Clinton] could not get the CIA, the Pentagon, and FBI to act sufficiently to deal with the threat.”
Republicans boxed Clinton in, Clarke writes, beginning in the 1992 campaign, with criticism of Clinton’s avoidance of the draft as a young man, and extending all the way to the Lewinsky scandal and the president’s impeachment. The bottom line, Clarke argues, is that the commander-in-chief was not in command. From page 225:
Because of the intensity of the political opposition that Clinton engendered, he had been heavily criticized for bombing al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, for engaging in ‘Wag the Dog’ tactics to divert attention from a scandal about his personal life. For similar reasons, he could not fire the recalcitrant FBI Director who had failed to fix the Bureau or to uncover terrorists in the United States. He had given the CIA unprecedented authority to go after bin Laden personally and al Qaeda, but had not taken steps when they did little or nothing. Because Clinton was criticized as a Vietnam War opponent without a military record, he was limited in his ability to direct the military to engage in anti-terrorist commando operations they did not want to conduct. He had tried that in Somalia, and the military had made mistakes and blamed him. In the absence of a bigger provocation from al Qaeda to silence his critics, Clinton thought he could do no more.
In the end, Clarke writes, Clinton “put in place the plans and programs that allowed America to respond to the big attacks when they did come, sweeping away the political barriers to action.”
But the bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the will to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the will to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror.
So do I. After all these years I still can't stand to see a photo/video or hear him speak.
I'm surprised no one has talk about who Bill Clinton did focus the FBI and CIA towards, right wing militia. I'm not saying they were or weren't a problem. Early in the Clinton administration, there were a lot of resources looking at right wing militia, Waco, Ruby Ridge.
I wonder if Wallace ask Clinton how often he talked to the CIA head and when did he have his first meeting with the CIA.
Glen Beck made a comment on his TV show late last week about the muslims being warned to leave DC and NYC. I know its off subject but did anyone else hear this and do they have any context?
I guess Clarke thinks were stupid. Those emergency plans have always been in place and modified based on the scenario, hurricane, blizzard, buildings on fire, etc. If NYC was hit by a hurricane that hit NYC, Clarke wants us to believe that NYC has no plans until Clinton came along.
Now a city or state actually following there plan and there plan being realistic is another issue as shown by NO and Louisiana during Katrina.
Bush had handicaps imposed on him by political enemies..
1) Bush did not really get to begin his transition until December 14, 2000.
2) Democrats undermined Bush by calling him "president select," every chance they could
3)Obstructionists Democrats, like Tom Daschle, came to power when Jim Jeffords left the GOP, (Jeffords was negotiating with the Dems about this when Clinton was still President).
Let's put it this way....he did as MUCH as an immature, can't keep his willy in his pants, could do.....
Let's all look into Richard Clarke!!!
I heard it.
BECK: But he told you that — I`m sorry to interrupt. We have such a time delay here. He has told you that he has prepared the next attack, it is ready to happen, and that Muslims should leave the United States immediately, did he not?MIR: Yes. Abu Dawood told me that we are determined to attack America again and that attack would be bigger than 9/11. And he said that the Americans must face the same kind of attacks which they are imposing us in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Precisely.
Gore behaved like he was in a cock fight during the Presidential Debate with Bush.
One minor point (on reflection) - a name is missing on that ballot. Ross Perot received 18.9% of the popular vote (but no electoral votes), making him the most successful third-party presidential candidate in terms of the popular vote since Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election. He split the conservative vote (as Bush I was no conservative) and paved the way for Slick and Mrs. Slick.
I think that the Clintonistas had only one use for the government and that was patronage. To them the presidency was about prestige and power. They showed no executive or legislative ability, and their misuse and mistreatment of agencies has shown up as Bush went back to using them.
Listening to this interview, it is obvious that Clinton wasn't fit to be Commander and Chief. He's acting as if it was the job of others to make the final decisions for him...as if he was just another advisor. This also exposes his obvious narcissism, were his need to be loved by everyone precluded him from making tough decisions that might not be acceptable for some.
An eight year national pustule still being drained.
I'm so glad you mentioned this. Clinton uses his pointed finger to rap Chris' leg and he did it more than once. More than any word spoken, this gesture demonstrates Clinton's out of control inner rage. He's this angry because he's defending what matters most to him...his legacy. Clinton's legacy is what drove his actions/inactions while president too, a fact being exposed more with each passing year, and that is fueling Clinton's out of control temper tantrums.
thanks so much for posting this Byron York column. An excellent rebuttal for Clinton's false statements during the interview. Needed too, since Wallace's panel seemed not to want to overly criticize Clinton's behavior. And they sure didn't challenge Clinton's truthfulness, especially about Richard Clarke.
A little while back I saw a thorough post-election poll of the 1992 election. It actually shows that Bush had strong support among conservatives (over 80% - comparable to Clinton's liberal support), but that he lost too many moderate and independent types to Perot.
You are being too generous to them. This was much worse than just incompetence or benign neglect. The Clinton administration was simply all about Bill Clinton and making him the most popular leader in the world. His delusions of grandeur knew no bounds and still don't. He was desperate to end his presidency with a Nobel Peace Prize won by "solving" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and go from there to being Secretary General of the UN. This man thinks he is God's gift to the world. He refused to do anything that might cost him popularity at the UN or take a percentage off his approval ratings at home.
Clinton was just rude. He told Chris that he was sitting there with a smirk on his face. It was just embarrassing. Bush would NEVER behave like this. Blaming everyone.
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