Bill Clinton Takes On Fox News

As for my comment that set Lash off on such a tear - I stand behind it.

Perhaps someday 'snake will explain why he uses 'kkk' exclusively against Democrats.

On second thought, don't bother....

You don't know from "tear." I was merely continuing the same rudeness you introduced. We can all type *******.

Moi? Rude?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092300928_pf.html

"A Combative Clinton Defends Record on Fighting Terrorism
Former President Faults Neocons for Inaction on Bin Laden

By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 24, 2006; A09



Former president Bill Clinton angrily defended his administration's counterterrorism record during a Fox News interview to be aired today, while accusing "President Bush's neocons" and other Republicans of ignoring Osama bin Laden until the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Clinton had planned to discuss his climate change initiative during his appearance on "Fox News Sunday," but he turned combative after host Chris Wallace asked why he hadn't "put bin Laden and al-Qaeda out of business." Clinton shot back that "all the conservative Republicans" who now criticize him for inattention to bin Laden used to criticize him for over-attention to bin Laden.

Clinton said he authorized the CIA to kill bin Laden, and even "contracted with people to kill him." He also said he had a plan to attack Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban and hunt for bin Laden after the attack on the USS Cole, but the CIA and FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible, and Uzbekistan refused to allow the United States to set up a base. By contrast, Clinton said the Bush administration's neoconservatives "had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months," believing he had been "too obsessed with bin Laden."

"At least I tried," Clinton said. "That's the difference [between] me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, [Richard] Clarke, who got demoted."

Clinton seemed particularly irked by Wallace's reference to his decision in 1993 to pull troops out of Somalia, a move bin Laden later described as a sign of American weakness. Clinton argued that even though many Republicans demanded a withdrawal from Somalia the day after the downing of a Black Hawk helicopter, he kept a U.S. presence there for another six months to ensure an orderly transition to United Nations forces.

That's when the interview got testy, as a Fox transcript reflects:

Clinton : There is not a living soul in the world who thought Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it, or even knew al-Qaeda was a going concern in October '93.

Wallace : I understand.

Clinton : No, no, wait. Don't tell me that -- you asked why didn't I do more to bin Laden, there was not a living soul, all the people who now criticize me wanted to leave the next day. You brought this up, so you get an answer. But you -- secondly,

Wallace : -- Bin Laden says, but it showed the weakness of the United States.

Clinton : Bin Laden may have said it -- but it would have shown the weakness if we left right away. But he wasn't involved in that, that's just a bunch of bull. That was about Mohamed Aideed, a Muslim warlord, murdering 22 Pakistani Muslim troops. We were all there on a humanitarian mission; we had no mission, none, to establish a certain kind of Somali government or keep anybody out. He was not a religious fanatic --

Wallace : Mr. President --

Clinton : -- there was no al-Qaeda --

Wallace : With respect, if I may, instead of going through '93 and --

Clinton : No, no -- you asked it. You brought it up.

Wallace, a 30-year broadcast veteran who worked at NBC and ABC before Fox, is not usually considered part of the network's conservative commentariat, but Clinton accused him of doing "Fox's bidding" by preparing a "conservative hit job."

He attacked Wallace for failing to ask Bush administration officials why Clarke was demoted from his counterterrorism job: "Tell the truth, Chris. Tell the truth, Chris. Did you ever ask that?" He also complained that Wallace had lured him to the interview "under false pretences," but when Wallace offered to discuss his climate change project, he replied: "No, I want to finish this now."

And so he did, attacking President Bush for focusing on Iraq instead of Afghanistan, urging Americans to read Clarke's book and accusing Republicans of "a serious disinformation campaign" to blame the Clinton administration for losing bin Laden.

"I got closer to killing him than anybody's gotten since," Clinton said. "And if I were still president, we'd have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him. . . . 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." "

Wait. Am I misunderstanding something? You mean the footage of the Clinton interview? You are claiming that

- Partisan Dem reporters do [the same thing] on a regular basis to Republicans (and one has to be out of one's **** mind to think otherwise)

- When that Irish reporter interviewed Bush and Dan "yelled at Bush I", it was the "same thing"

- Couric e.a have done "the same thing" to Republicans

- Clinton just yelped and thats only how this was made to look much worse than when it happens to other people

But you havent actually seen the interview? Or were you referring to some other footage?

the "theatre" is irrelevant.

The substance is what is important from that interview.

Bottome line is to quote Bubba..." I tried and I failed"

As opposed to Bush who didnt try and failed - yes, we know.

If either of them had succeeded, there wouldnt have been a 9/11. Respect to the guy who at least tried. Who tried even in the face of Republican ridicule that he was just playing "wag the dog".

GWB did little of anything in those first 9 months of his presidency, he didnt think it was a priority.

This is amusing.

Clinton was nearly apoplectic about wanting to kill bin Laden.

Do you think he got off on the killing of people in the Balkans, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq the way Bush gets off?

Why dont you just watch the interview for yourself? Its unedited footage is easy to find on www.foxnews.com .

What a joke this thread and our entire political establishment has become. The two-party system is a joke.

Yeah... If you make Dick Cheney the head of your terrorism task force, make sure he calls at least one meeting prior to the worst terrorist act on American soil.

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 ?- as opposed to, say, order ?- 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 **** 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 writes. "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 ****** 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.

?- Byron York, NR's White House correspondent, is the author of the book The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President ?- and Why They'll Try Even Harder Next Time

Because Walter likes links to the original source:

Source

Does this mean the ABC "docudrama" was innaccurate in saying those same military and intelligence servicws were ready to go and kill Bin Laden but the Clinton administration stopped them?

Any one who could write a book with as idiotic a title as "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President ?- and Why They'll Try Even Harder Next Time" is not to be taken seriously...

The issue is not comparing who did what better or worse than anyone else.

The biggiest problem in the political dialoge is the extreme STUPIDITY of those who refuse to look at their actions (or the actions of those they support) except to compare them to what others may or may not have done.

The question that Wallace tried to ask (but he was not clear enough) was "What could he have done differently, if anything".

Clinton did a good job in trapping Wallace, but any objective observer could have read through the theatrics and come to the same conclusion that Bubba did.

He tried and he failed in trying to capture OBL.

So has GW to date failed. That was not the question that was asked.

tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.....

In the quoted piece above, Byron Yorkk starts out his arguments by stating:



I beg his pardon?

He's actually saying that Clinton had no knowledge or memory of his own?

No he's actually saying that Clinton based nearly his entire defense on one source: Clarke's book. If you saw the interview or read the transcript you would know that Clinton was effectively saying that everything one needs to know about this subject is contained in that book.

Could be.

I think most people agree that the ABC show played fast and loose with the truth in certain instances. If Clinton had limited his tirade to that show, his outrage might have seemed more sincere. However, FOX is so much more an object of the scorn of his party's base than ABC, it was necessary to focus his outrage on them.

I did see it, and that is what Clinton said. He referred listeners to a complete historical accounting from Clarke.

But that is not what York was saying - or implying. He also used the word "defense". Of what need does Clinton have to defend?