Chris Wallace regrets baiting Clinton on Fox News.
I agree with the poster on Metafilter that this was "deeply satisfying."
CLINTON: All I’m saying is, you falsely accused me of giving aid and comfort to bin Laden because of what happened in Somalia. No one knew Al Qaida existed then. And…
WALLACE: But did they know in 1996 when he declared war on the U.S.? Did they know in 1998…
CLINTON: Absolutely, they did.
WALLACE: … when he bombed the two embassies?
CLINTON: And who talked about…
WALLACE: Did they know in 2000 when he hit the Cole?
CLINTON: What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to 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’ve never criticized President Bush, and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq.
And you ask me about terror and Al Qaida with that sort of dismissive thing? 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 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 entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaida was responsible while I was president.
And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time. They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that’s strange.
Think Progress � VIDEO: Clinton Sets The Record Straight On Terrorism, Smacks Down Fox News
Gen once again your grasp of history and foreign affairs is...Clintonesque. Clinton was spin spin spinning during that interview like a top from start to finish.
Putting 20,000 troops into Afghanistan is a terrific idea...how about 100,000? Ask the Russians how well that worked out for them...our strategy in Afghanistan was excellent and was among the only moderately successful military ventures EVER in that country, outside of some half-hearted punitive expeditions launched by the British between about 1880 and 1900 or so.
I'd similarly ask you to review the record on Clinton's "counter-terrorism" a little more thoroughly. He makes some pretty startling assertions in that interview, most of which aren't outright lies per se, but are misdirection. "What color is your shirt?" "Why, my shoes are dark brown." I see Mr. President.
Take Somalia. Why was that even a problem? Mohammed Aidid was a two-bit, tin-pot gang lord that we should have been able to take down with no issue. Because Clinton didn't want to use real armor or air support, and took the substantial presence of a Marine Expeditionary Unit away (20,000 troops), we're left with a handful of highly exposed commandos working a weird mission outside of their basic operational strengths. No wonder the mission was a disaster.
All the rest of his remarks are similar: it wasn't me, it was the mean Republicans. He's real long on excuses and real short on results - at least the kind I like - North Koren nuclear weapons? Check. Ooops. Okay, well how about the Palestinian two-state solution? Check. Ooops - turns out Arafat was still a "kill all the Jews" guy even after their agreement - and even staged an incident to justify his continued recalcitrance. Some partner for peace. Okay okay I got one. How about cooperation between the FBI and CIA? What do you mean Clinton's Justice department raised the barrier from high to completely impenetrable? Okay...hang on...I got one...how about $100MM in cruise missiles to take out a tent camp? Yeah, sweet...
Gen, the bottom line is that Clinton is full of himself and didn't want to take on confrontations that required the real use of force. He was squeamish. Every one of his major foreign policy initiatives, with the possible exception of Bosnia about which I know nothing, was a complete and utter failure. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has been a success. Gitmo has been a success, even if it's a PR disaster. Iraq is 1/2 of a success so far (Saddam Hussein taken down in an initially relatively bloodless war) - the war was won, and now establishing stability is up in the air.
Oh yeah, and Matthews hammered Rumsfeld on Iraq, Afghanistan and terrorism in the interview that Clinton claims didn't occur. The questions weren't nice. You can find the transcript. The problem is that Clinton is used to getting softballs from a friendly press or answering harder questions about utterly inconsequential matters (sexually harassing interns, and yes that's what his behavior would be classified as at any real company in the U.S.). Hard questions about real issues involving the security of the nation make him mad because he's frustrated, weak and clueless in that arena, for all of his intelligence and nuance in other domains.
cdg
By the way, Reagan and Bush senior were both weaker on Islamic terrorists than they should have been as well - the only mitigating factor is that they had to deal with, in the first case, a much, much bigger conflict (USSR, in case you forgot, which makes the Islamic kookoos look like the embarassing and impotent, but deadly in a small way, nuisance that they are), and in the second, post-Cold War chaos, which was substantial. Bush pre-9/11 was similarly ineffective. Post 9/11, however, his policies are more difficult to assail when you dig past CNN Headline News, unless you come to the conclusion that he could be doing MORE.
"Oh yeah, and Matthews hammered Rumsfeld on Iraq, Afghanistan and terrorism in the interview that Clinton claims didn't occur. The questions weren't nice. You can find the transcript."
Cite/URL please :)
For anyone interested, I posted some of my thoughts about this interview at my blog.
I didn't spend time looking for the Wallace (my error - I referenced Matthews, but Chris Wallace was the interview) - but I did stumble across a National Review interview with Rumsfeld - what I think we can agree is a "friendly" publication to the Administration.
Among the questions asked of him were:
1) Is there an Iraq civil war (a direct and pointed question)
2) Do we have enough troops in Iraq (similar to the Clinton question - did you do enough on terrorism - which prompted his outburst)
3) Can the Iraq war be won at all (I disagree with the question - the war was one; now it's a different conflict)
Those are hard questions from a very friendly interviewer. Wallace lobbed Clinton a fairly slow-pitch softball in comparison and he blew up.
Maybe you haven't been around, but the going rumor has been that Clinton ignored the Bin Laden threat or didn't "connect the dots", but that's simply not true, and Clinton has the right to be angry about it. It's one thing to make hardball questions, but it's another thing to insist on something that's not true. Admittedly Clinton didn't (or couldn't) react to all of the terrorist attacks or opportunities to capture terrorists, so there's plenty to criticize him (and the rest of us) for. But don't forget that he did take the threat seriously or he wouldn't have bombed Afghanistan and Iraq and actively perused Bin Laden. He spent $billions in counterterrorm measures. Conservatives love to say that Clinton ignored the threat, when it was actually he that started to fight terrorists and he did more about it than the previous presidents.
In regards to Wallace asking Rumsfeld hard Iraq question...I mean...c'mon. Any question about Iraq nowadays will be hard for obvious reasons, and it's only fair that way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN1OCrRrgVw
I was looking for the Arsenio Hall show video too when Clinton was on it.
Back in my day, we had a cool President.
Although I don't agree with Christian Gates' optimism regarding Afghanistan and Iraq, he does have a strong argument regarding Clinton's neglect of the growing threat of Islamic terrorism. Richard Miniter provides a timeline in a recent Wall Street Journal article: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009001