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.
Rapist42 grew up hearing this thrown at him countless times... hence the pathetic habit of biting his upper lip. The mark of a true, human worm.
The interesting thing is how the bloggers on the Left are responding to Clinton's display of rage and paranoia: they love it!
DU, KOS, and Huffington are falling all over this buffoon.
"Do you realize what this sort of behavior will mean to Hillary's chances?"
Believe it or not, the same idea occurred to me right after I posted. The guy comes off like a partisan hack liar (go figure, right?) and one can only hope 1) she gets nominated by the Marxists in her party, and 2) the rest of the country remembers this kind of behavior. Eight more years? I think not.
I betch if we got a whole bunch of people to stand in front of the venue for the next Clinton appearance and smirk, we could drive him over the edge.
Is that our new nickname for President Bush? I love it!
Let's help make that a reality.
Was he rolling marbles?
Not really. Clinton has a very long history of purple temper outbursts.
Clinton would rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.
I've never forgotten that quote through two terrible presidential elections.
They don't get it. Most sane people will look at that and make the connection between him and Chavez and the rest of the loony left. There's no subtlety to it at all. He comes off as deranged.
That would be Blue dresses from the Gap. He always was sooo high class.
"And you’ve got that little smirk on your face. It looks like you’re so clever… "
Yep, ....he's nothing BUT "comprehensive and systematic", ain't he?
Good catch.
The Democrats had their pants down the entire Clinton years in the WhiteHouse; literally and figuratively.
If, as the left asserts, the Monica embroglio was "only about sex" are we not to also understand that attacks upon the US from AQ were only about The United States getting screwed?
And former President Clinton is lying when he asserts he doesn't believe that speaking ill of President Bush "helps" matters. Why does Clinton speak ill of President Bush when he is abroad in other countries?
Oh! I can hear the subliminal: "It's only about the US getting screwed, and Egads You Right Wingers are so frigid and uptight!".
He looks like he is in more dire need of a b****** than any white man in history.
My first thought too. Going back to Richard Clarke's position is prolly his equivalent of the Great Strawberries Caper.
"DU, KOS, and Huffington are falling all over this buffoon."
It fits in nicely with their alternate view of reality. Were these people on drugs during the 90's? Does that explain why they can't remember any of the terrorist attacks - and the failure to do anything to hurt him, let alone stop him? Or do they just like to wear Bill Clinton kneepads?
Deranged is the best description of how he appears.
For sure, he doesn't look attractive, at all. He looks frightening.
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