Clinton's Tantrum

I watched parts of this, but it was far to silly to bother with. I got to the Cole part of the response and changed the channel.

CLINTON: But 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. 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, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.

So you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me. What I want to know is ...

WALLACE: Well, wait a minute, sir.

CLINTON: No, wait. No, no ...

WALLACE: I want to ask a question. You don't think that's a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of.

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 you asked, "Why did you fire Dick Clarke?"

I want to know how many people you asked ...

The Cole incident occured on Clinton's watch. Bush wasn't elected, so I don't see what the relevance of that statement is. Frankly, it sounds a bit foolish.

Clinton has very little to bicker about here. If Fox chooses to take the political bend toward the conservative agenda, they are a rarity. Clinton's tirade against Fox is so limited in context that it strikes me as deflection. Could he honestly state that the vast majority of the MSM hasn't asked all his questions and many more that are clearly bent toward a liberal agenda? And I'm fascinated that he took this interview at all considering that he should have known that Fox would ask such a question. His responses make me pause and futher consider his honesty. This sounds like he nearly loses himself in trying to CYA.

Clinton at least stated what he did do:

CLINTON: No, no. I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him.

The CIA, which was run by George Tenet, that President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to, he said, "He did a good job setting up all these counterterrorism things."

The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until I came there.

Now, if you want to 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've 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, anybody who wants to say I didn't do enough, you read Richard Clarke's book.

I have to say, I'd be very skeptical about Clarke's book. Just as I'm skeptical over any of the statements from a person that was involved in the administrations that were involved in the time before 9/11. Too much of the time is spent pointing to what they did right and ignoring what they did wrong. That's why independant analysis will always be better.

I can also understand why the military was strongly against the use of Special Forces in Afghanistan. Dropping them there would have been certain death. No support structure or ability to quickly evac them would have made the risk far too high. And think of the PR coup that Al-Qaeda would have gotten if they had captured or killed a Special Forces unit.

I'm glad that Fox took it there. The press never took Clinton to task for anything more than the Lewinski scandal. It's especially nice to see this reaction with all the books coming out trying to shift all of the blame for terrorism to Bush and their attempts to deny that the previous administrations had anything to do with it.

I also think Dale Franks at QandO has it right.

Now, if the Democrats wanna say that's because OBL is a wily SOB, and they couldn't get it done, then, fine. But that means that George W. Bush gets a pass on that subject, too. On the other hand, if the argument is that Mr. Bush's failure to do so is a case of rank incompetence, then I think you have to re-evaluate Mr. Clinton's performance in that light as well. Either OBL is so devious that getting him is more a matter of luck than skill, or the political leaders we've had are just too timid or stupid to make it happen. One or the other.

You don't get to have it both ways.

And as to Clinton's contention that Fox and Wallace has never asked any of these questions of the Bush Administration, Patterico has some interesting insights.

Wallace replied that such questions had been asked. Clinton replied: “I don’t believe you asked them that.”

I believe he did.

In 2004, Wallace asked almost the exact same question of Donald Rumsfeld that he asked Clinton today.

Here’s what Wallace asked Clinton today:

[H]indsight is 20 20 . . . but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

And here is what Wallace asked Donald Rumsfeld on the March 28, 2004 episode of Fox News Sunday:

I understand this is 20/20 hindsight, it’s more than an individual manhunt. I mean — what you ended up doing in the end was going after al Qaeda where it lived. . . . pre-9/11 should you have been thinking more about that?

. . . .

What do you make of his [Richard Clarke’s] basic charge that pre-9/11 that this government, the Bush administration largely ignored the threat from al Qaeda?

. . . .

Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority.

Nice. I guess I don't put in enough effort to find these types of things. But then, that's part of the reason I read the blogs to find out these little bits.