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.
Has anyone ever heard a President say that he authorised the CIA to kill someone? I never have. Most claim the CIA doesnt do that type of thing. Is Clinton saying he ordered a political assasination?? Is that legal. Democrats practically crap their pants over George bush wanting to listen in on phone calls from terrorists and here we have Bubba ordering a hit??
Of course we all know its a da,mned lie. Just like all the rest of the interview, but ya know what??? Bubba probably has convinced himself its the truth. What a sorry POS he is.
Your excellent points bear repeating, sarge.
Maybe for the good of the country he should have let Al Gore work on it while he was fighting the evil Republicans
"Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes..."
Well Bill, that depends on what the definition of "is" is.
All those years waiting for justice to catch up to him, and he goes and demolishes HIMSELF!
How in the world did Rove pull that one off?
I was reading your post quickly and read "fake veneer" as "fake wiener" . . . oh, well . . .
Clarke is the chief witness for the Clinton Administration.
I think he's been spending too much time hanging out with Maverick POW John McCain. He's picked up Maverick's angry paranoia.
Actually, there's been a campaign to blame Bush and exonerate the Clinton Administration from the get-go. Witness Richard Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 Commission.
But when he starts this crap -- pretending it was his top priority and his eight years didn't count as much as Bush's eight months -- he burns his free pass.
Fox News Sunday comes on in the morning on the regular Fox network, and on the Fox News Channel in the afternoon. The afternoon time is 5 Central.
And it's on video tape!!! I love it!
So does anyone think Clinton will be back on Foxnews?
A joke about James Woolsey and a single-propped plane sticking out of the side of The White House comes to mind.
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