Bill Clinton Angrily Defends bin Laden Handling (Clinton's Paranoid and Obsessive Rant)

Clinton to Chris Wallace: 'You Got That Little Smirk on Your Face and You Think You're So Clever'

WASHINGTON (Sept. 24) - In a combative interview on "Fox News Sunday," former President Clinton defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden, saying he tried to have bin Laden killed and was attacked for his efforts by the same people who now criticize him for not doing enough.

"That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said in the interview. "They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try."

Clinton accused host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job" and asked: "I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, 'Why didn't you do anything about the Cole?' I want to know how many people you asked, 'Why did you fire Dick Clarke?"'

He was referring to the USS Cole, attacked by terrorists in Yemen in 2000, and former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke.

Wallace said Sunday he was surprised by Clinton's "conspiratorial view" of "a very non-confrontational question, 'Did you do enough to connect the dots and go after Al Qaida?"'

"All I did was ask him a question, and I think it was a legitimate news question. I was surprised that he would conjure up that this was a hit job," Wallace said in a telephone interview.

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"We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody's gotten since," he said.

He told Wallace, "And you got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever, but I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it, but I did try and I did everything I thought I responsibly could."

The interview was taped Friday during Clinton's three-day Global Initiative conference.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," also taped Friday and aired Sunday, Clinton told interviewer Tim Russert that the biggest problem confronting the world today is "the illusion that our differences matter more than our common humanity."

"That's what's driving the terrorism," he said. "It's not just that there's an unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict. Osama Bin Laden and Dr. al-Zawahiri can convince young Sunni Arab men, who have - and some women - who have despairing conditions in their lives, that they get a one-way ticket to heaven in a hurry if they kill a lot of innocent people who don't share their reality."

Clinton was full of crap when he said:

"The people on my political right who say I didn't do enough spent the whole time I was president saying, "Why is he so obsessed with bin Laden? That was "wag the dog" when he tried to kill him."

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From Newsday, August 21, 1998:

Washington - Congressional leaders strongly supported President Bill Clinton's decision to strike targets in Sudan and Afghanistan yesterday, although a Republican senator raised questions about the timing and the motive of the attack.

Some of Clinton's most consistent critics endorsed the decision to retaliate for the Aug. 7 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.Ca.), who had been alerted by the White House before the attack, praised the operation.

"I think the United States did exactly the right thing. We cannot allow terrorist groups to attack embassies and do nothing," Gingrich said.

Lott called the action "appropriate and just."

Helms struck a rare bipartisan chord: "Sooner or later, terrorists will realize that America's differences end at the water's edge and that the United States political leadership always has, and always will, stand united in the face of international terrorism."

Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who has called for Clinton's resignation in light of his admission of an improper relationship with a White House intern, said the "timing is certainly suspect."

"I believe, given the extraordinary situation we're now in, these are the questions that are on the minds of the American people," Coats said. "I'm raising questions . . . on what was the president's role on this, and whether the president was in a position to make a sound judgment call in light of the speculation that would arise worldwide and the consequences of that in calling for this strike . . . a day and a half after his speech," a reference to Monday's televised speech on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

But Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who has been aggressively investigating Clinton's campaign-funding practices, took the opposite view. "I take the action for what it was - to stop the terrorists and to make them pay for what they did," Burton said. "And that was the right thing to do. That's coming from one of the president's severest critics."

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Then Speaker Newt Gingrich, interviewed on CNN, August 28, 1998:

ALLEN: We are interrupting that story because we have now on the phone with us Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Speaker Gingrich, your reaction to the U.S. attacks today on Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: Well, I think the United States did exactly the right thing. We cannot allow a terrorist group to attack American embassies and do nothing. And I think we have to recognize that we are now committed to engaging this organization and breaking it apart and doing whatever we have to to suppress it, because we cannot afford to have people who think that they can kill Americans without any consequence. So this was the right thing to do.

We have not yet gotten assessments of the damage, but I hope that it's been very decisive. And I think it's very important that we send a signal to countries like Sudan and Afghanistan that if you house a terrorist, you become a target. And if you want to get rid of the target, you've got to get rid of the terrorist.

ALLEN: So you say the right thing to do at the right time? Senator Arlen Specter said a moment ago he question the timing of this.

GINGRICH: I think based on what I know, it was the right thing to do at the right time. And I think that it — I've been involved in briefings for the last two weeks, and I think it's been done in a methodical, professional way. And I strongly support the United States government having acted that way.

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Bill Clinton in his interview today seemed to be suggesting that conservatives uniformly opposed and denounced him when he launched his "wag the dog" strike in 1998. For the record, here's the NR editorial in response to the attacks, dated9/14/98:
COMEDY Central's The Daily Show called it "Operation Desert Shield Me from Impeachment." Funny, but too cynical. The U.S. missile strikes against terrorist facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan were a response to a real threat: They targeted the operations of Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind who, according to U.S. intelligence, was responsible for the brutal bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and was plotting further attacks on Americans.

Congressional leaders were therefore right to support President Clinton's action. The last thing Republicans should do is add to the inhibitions and hesitations of an Administration congenitally averse to the forthright use of American military power. The White House's blatant exploitation of the crisis for its own political purposes-dragging Mr. Clinton back from vacation for a portentous Oval Office address to the nation-should be a source of amusement only. Richard Nixon, too, tried to claim indispensability for his foreign-policy expertise-a much more valid claim in his case, and at the height of the Cold War to boot. It didn't help him.

Launching 75 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the training camp in Afghanistan and the chemical-weapons plant in Sudan was, by Clinton standards, a strong performance. In June 1993, responding to an Iraqi assassination attempt against ex-President George Bush, Mr. Clinton launched 23 cruise missiles at a military-intelligence headquarters in Baghdad-in the middle of the night, so that no one would get hurt! This time, the strike in Afghanistan was aimed at a gathering of terrorist leaders reported to be taking place on that day. Admirably cold-blooded, that.

Bin Laden, the terrorist kingpin, is a new phenomenon, but we should not exaggerate either his novelty or the difficulty of defeating him. (There is a canard that he is an American creation. There is no evidence that he is. He did win his spurs in the Arab world's equivalent of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade-the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan-but U.S. money and arms went to the Afghan freedom fighters through the Pakistani military.) While he is a freelancer, bin Laden is dependent on the support of renegade governments, such as Afghanistan's and Sudan's, against which we have leverage. We can target his physical assets by military or covert means and his financial assets through other controls (as Mr. Clinton has also done). His Islamist revolutionary ideology is increasingly discredited in the Muslim world, even in Iran. Defeating him will take time, but it will be done.

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From the AP coverage, August 21, 1998:

Lawmakers from both parties rallied behind Clinton's decision. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., called it "the right thing to do."

"We just had to do it, we just had to," said Rep. Ike Skelton, ranking Democrat on the House National Security Committee. "We're quite sure the attacks in Africa came from these two places, and we had to strike back."

Clinton telephoned several congressional leaders before the strikes, including Gingrich and Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. En route to Washington, Clinton again called congressional leaders as well as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said White House press secretary Mike McCurry.

In a confluence of dramatic moments, Clinton announced the U.S. bombings on the same day that former White House intern Monica Lewinsky testified for a second time to the grand jury investigating her relationship with Clinton. On Monday, Clinton had made a nationally televised admission of having had sexual relations with Ms. Lewinksy.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., suggested that Clinton may have acted precipitously in an attempt to "focus attention away from his own personal problems."

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