Bill Clinton outFOXes journalistic jackass

Here's the much ballyhooed interview between Chris Wallace and former President Bill Clinton. I'll put all three parts on here, and comment below. Above is part I - part II to follow...



Above is part II



And part III.

What a sad commentary on American, um, "journalism." In short, Chris Wallace is nothing short of a fucking hack - dispatched to bully Clinton with Fox's right-wing agenda. This entire interview was staged to get to Clinton; to rile him and to get him to lose his temper. Mission accomplished, Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch.

But, I'm not criticizing the former president. I'm offering lots of praise for his reaction. These mother fuckers deserve the scorn the president so rightfully heaps on them - Clinton has been castigated by the right-wing media for years - since long before he was elected in 1992. My only crit of Clinton is this - it's about time, Mr. President. You should have done it long ago.

Seems like a million years ago when the worst this country had to worry about was whether Bill Clinton had an affair with Ms. Lewinsky. We should be so lucky now. And it's a good time to once again briefly bring up this inconvenient GOP fact - the Republicans who were out to get Clinton were every bit as hypocritical as Clinton - Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston, Newt Gingrich & Tom DeLay, to name a few (the first three all having had extra-marrital affairs of their own).

Thank you, Mr. President, for trying to get bin Laden. I love it that Clinton mentions how he tried to get Osama after the African embassy attacks, but was accused of diverting attention away from his own troubles. I also enjoyed his references to Richard Clarke - if you haven't yet read his book, Against All Enemies, I urge you to do so. It's as relevant today as it was nearly three years ago when it was released.

And lastly, I applaud the president for publicly calling bullshit on the strategy that Rove and Co. will employ this fall to try to retain power in Congress - trying to scare the living shit out of us all. It certainly won't work with me, but the unfortunate thing is that it will work for millions of Americans who would rather make the "safe" choice by voting Republican.

I have two other quick thoughts on Wallace. 1. I've never heard such disrespect of a former president, regardless of party, by another would-be reporter. Unreal. 2. At various points in the interview, it almost sounds as if Wallace is working for the Bush White House, as he challenges Clinton, with a dismissive smirk on his face, about "launching cruise missiles" to get bin Laden. I'm sure Wallace is a legend at Fox News now, or should I say ITAR-TASS.

I urge everyone to take the time to examine the issues thoroughly from a variety of sources to really make an informed decision. I'm reasonably confident that most, if they've done any homework at all, will make the wise choice, and that's to kick the idiots out of office who have done nothing but politicize the war on terror since September 12, 2001.

Go get 'em, Bill. Our country is lucky to have you.

Update: YouTube has been pulling off the video clips of the interview because evidentally FoxNews has been bitching and complaining that they are being posted without permission. There seems to be a tug of war going on - some of these clips get pulled down, then people repost them to YouTube, so hopefully the three that I link to stay up, but just in case they aren't available when you click on them, here's the complete transcript of the interview. Yes, it's long, but in lieu of being able to see the real thing, trust me, it's worth the read. I will keep trying to repost the videos if these one's get pulled. The transcript follows...

MR. WALLACE: I'm Chris Wallace. U.S. intelligence has said the Iraq war has spawned new terrorists. Next on "Fox News Sunday," the interview everyone will be talking about: former President Bill Clinton in a combative discussion about his attempts to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. He says his right-wing critics are giving President Bush a free pass.

Our interview with former president Bill Clinton. This week he hosted his second-annual Global Initiative Forum in New York. More than $7 billion was pledged to tackle some of the worst problems in developing countries, such as poverty, disease and climate change. As part of the conference, Mr. Clinton agreed to his first one-on-one interview ever on "Fox News Sunday."
The ground rules were simple: 15 minutes for our sit-down, split evenly between the global initiative and anything else we wanted to ask. But as you'll see now in the full, unedited interview, that's not how it turned out.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. President, welcome to "Fox News Sunday."

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thanks.

MR. WALLACE: In a recent issue of The New Yorker, you say, quote, "I'm 60 years old, and I damn near died and I'm worried about how many lives I can save before I do die." Is that what drives you in your efforts to help in these developing countries?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Yes. I really -- but I don't mean -- that sounds sort of morbid when you say it like that.

MR. WALLACE: No, you said it.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I actually -- but yeah -- but the way I said it, the tone in which I said it was actually almost whimsical and humorous, that is. This is what I love to do. It is what I think I should do. That is, I have had a wonderful life. I got to be president. And I got to live the life of my dreams. I dodged a bullet with that heart problem. And I really think I should -- I think I owe it to my fellow countrymen and people throughout the world to spend time saving lives, solving problems, helping people see the future.

But as it happens, I love it. I mean, I feel that it's a great gift. So it's a rewarding way to spend my life.

MR. WALLACE: Someone asked you -- and again, I don't want to be too morbid -- but this is what you said: He asked you if could wind up doing more good as a former president --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Yeah.

MR. WALLACE: -- than as a president. And you said, "Only if I live a long time."

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Yeah, that's true.

MR. WALLACE: How do you rate, compare, the powers of being in office as president and what you can do out of office as a former president?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, when you are president you can operate on a much broader scope. So, for example, you can simultaneously be trying to stop a genocide in Kosovo, you know, make peace in the Middle East, pass a budget that gives millions of kids a chance to have after-school programs and has a huge increase in college aid at home. In other words, you've got a lot of different moving parts, and you can move them all at once.

But you're also more at the mercy of events. That is, President Bush did not run for president to deal with 9/11, but once it happened, it wasn't as if he had an option. Once I looked at the economic -- I'll give you a much more mundane example. Once I looked at the economic data, the new data, after I won the election, I realized that I would have to work much harder to reduce the deficit and therefore would have less money in my first year to invest in things I wanted to invest in.

MR. WALLACE: So, what is it that you can do as a former president?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: So what you can do as a former president is, you don't have the wide range of power, so you have to concentrate on a few things. But you are less at the mercy of unfolding events. So, if I say, look, we're going to work on the economic empowerment of poor people on fighting AIDS and other diseases, on trying to bridge the religious and political differences between people, and on trying, you know, to avoid the worst calamities of climate change and help to revitalize the economy in the process, I can actually do that.

I mean, because tomorrow when I get up if there's a bad headline in the paper, it's President Bush's responsibility, not mine. That's the joy of being a former president. And it is true that if you live long enough, and you really have great discipline in the way you do this, like this CGI, you might be able to affect as many lives or more for the good as you did as president.

MR. WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on "Fox News Sunday," I got a lot of e-mail from viewers. And I've got to say, I was surprised. Most of them wanted me to ask you this question: Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were president? There's a new book, I suspect you're already read, called "The Looming Tower." And it talks about the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said, "I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S troops." Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa, and the attack on the Cole.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Okay, let's just go through it.

MR. WALLACE: Let me -- may I just finish the question, sir? And after the attack, the book says that bin Laden separated his leaders, spread them around because he expected an attack, and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is always 20/20 --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Let's talk about it.

MR. WALLACE: -- but the question is, why didn't you do more, connect the dots and put him out of business?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: All right, let's talk about it. I will answer all those things on the merits. But first, I want to talk about the context in which this arises. I'm being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative running their little "Pathway [sic] to 9/11," falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicting the 9/11 commission report.

And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say I didn't do enough claim that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush's neocons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office -- all the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much, same people. They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993, the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk Down. And I refused to do it, and stayed six months, and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.

Okay, now let's look at the all the criticisms. Black Hawk Down, Somalia: 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 growing concern in October '93.

MR. WALLACE: I understand that. And I --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No, wait. No wait. No wait. Don't tell me -- you ask me why I didn't 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 can't --

MR. WALLACE: I'm perfectly happy to -- (inaudible).

PRESIDENT CLINTON: All right, secondly --

MR. WALLACE: Bin Laden says --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: But bin Laden may have said --

MR. WALLACE: Bin Laden said that it showed the weakness of the United States.

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

MR. WALLACE: But Mr. President --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: There was no al Qaeda --

MR. WALLACE: With respect, if I may. Instead of going through '93 and --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No, no. You ask it. You brought it up.

MR. WALLACE: May I ask a general question --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: You brought it up.

MR. WALLACE: And then you can answer? The 9/11 commission, which you talk about -- and this is what they did say, not what ABC pretended they said.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: What do they say?

MR. WALLACE: They said about you and President Bush, and I quote, "The U.S. government took the threat seriously, but not in the sense of mustering anything like the kind of effort that would be gathered to confront an enemy of the first, second, or even third rank."

PRESIDENT CLINTON: First of all, that's not true with us and bin Laden.

MR. WALLACE: Well, I'm talking about the 9/11 commission.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: All right, let's look at what Richard Clarke said. You think Richard Clarke has a vigorous attitude about bin Laden?

MR. WALLACE: Yes, I do.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: You do, don't you?

MR. WALLACE: Yes, he has a variety of opinions and loyalties, but yes.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: That's right. He has a variety of opinions and loyalties now, but let's look at the facts. He worked for Ronald Reagan; he was loyal to him. He worked for George H.W. Bush; he was loyal to him. He worked for me, and he was loyal to me. He worked for President Bush; he was loyal to him. They downgraded him in the terrorist operation. Now, look what he said. Read his book and read his factual assertions -- not opinions; assertions.
He said we took vigorous action after the African embassies. We probably nearly got bin Laden. I authorized -- now, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. Now, wait a minute.

MR. WALLACE: You fought to use cruise missiles.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No, no. I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him. The CIA was run by George Tenet, that President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom; 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. And 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 to 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, 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 you is, anybody who wants to say I didn't do enough, you read Richard Clarke's book --

MR. WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No, because I didn't get him.

MR. WALLACE: Right.

PRESIDENT 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-terrorist 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.

MR. WALLACE: But --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: What I want to know --

MR. WALLACE: But wait a minute, sir. I'm going to ask a question. You don't think that's a legitimate question?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question. But I want to know, how many people in the Bush administration you ask this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you ask, why didn't you do anything about the Cole? I want to know how many people you ask, why did you fire Dick Clarke? I want to know how many people you ask about this.

MR. WALLACE: We ask, we ask -- have you ever watched "Fox News Sunday," sir?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't believe you ask them that.

MR. WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: You didn't ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.

MR. WALLACE: On the USS Cole?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris.

MR. WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there's plenty of stuff to ask, sir.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris. Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you're going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch's supporting my work on climate change. And you came here on false pretenses and said that you'd spend half the time talking about --

MR. WALLACE: I --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: About -- you said you'd spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion plus, in three days, from 215 different commitments, and you don't care.

MR. WALLACE: I -- President Clinton, if you look at the questions --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I thought you'd (have an audience here ?).

MR. WALLACE: You'll see half the questions about it. I didn't think this was going to set you off on such a tear.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: You launched into it. It set off on a tear because you didn't formulate it in an honest way, and because you people ask me questions you don't ask the other side.

MR. WALLACE: Sir, that's not so.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: And Richard Clarke --

MR. WALLACE: That is not true.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Richard Clarke made it clear in his testimony --

MR. WALLACE: Would you like to talk about the Clinton Global Initiative?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No, I want to finish this thing.

MR. WALLACE: All right.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: All I'm saying is, you falsely accuse me of giving aid and comfort to bin Laden because of what happened in Somalia. No one knew al Qaeda existed then.

MR. WALLACE: But did they know --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Now, wait. Wait.

MR. WALLACE: -- in 1996 when he declared war on the U.S.? Did they know in 1998 --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Absolutely.

MR. WALLACE: When he bombed the two embassies?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: And who talked about it?

MR. WALLACE: Did they know in 2000 when he hit the Cole?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: 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 kill him than anybody's 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 Qaeda 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. 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 into Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we got do it otherwise because we could not get the CIA and the FBI that al Qaeda 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 no one ever asked them about it. I think that's strange.

MR. WALLACE: Can I ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: You can.

MR. WALLACE: I always intended to, sir.

PRESIDENT CLINTON. No, you intended, though, to move your bones by doing this first, which is perfectly fine. But I don't mind people asking -- I actually talked to the 9/11 commission for four hours, Chris. And I told them the mistakes I thought I made. And I urged them to make those mistakes public, because I thought none of us had been perfect. But instead of anybody talking about those things, I always get these clever little political deals, where they ask me one set of questions and the others guys another set. And it always comes from one source. And so --

MR. WALLACE: I want to ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative, but what's the source? I mean, you seem upset, and I --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I am upset, because I --

MR. WALLACE: And all I can tell you is, I'm asking you this in good faith, because it's on people's minds, sir.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, there's a reason it's on people's minds. That's the point I'm trying to make. There's a reason it's on people's minds, because there's been a serious disinformation campaign to create that impression. This country only has one person who's worked on this terror. From the terrorist centers under Reagan, to the terrorist centers from 9/11 -- only one, Richard Clarke. And all I can say to anybody is, do you want to know what we did wrong or right? Or anybody else did? Read his book. The people on my political right who say I didn't do enough spent the whole time I was president saying, why is he so obsessed with bin Laden; that was "wag the dog" when he tried to kill him.

My Republican Secretary of Defense -- and I think I'm the only president since World War II to have a Secretary of Defense of the opposite party -- Richard Clarke and all the intelligence people said that I ordered a vigorous attempt to get bin Laden, and came closer, apparently, to anybody that has since.

MR. WALLACE: All right.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: And you guys try to create the opposite impression, when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke's findings, and you know it's not true. It's just not true. And all this business about Somalia, the same people that criticize me about Somalia, were demanding I leave the next day -- the same exact crowd.

So, if you're going to do this, for God sakes, follow the same standards for everybody --

MR. WALLACE: I think we do, sir.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: And be flat, and fair --

MR. WALLACE: I think we do.

MR. WALLACE: One of the main parts of the global initiative this year is religion and reconciliation. President Bush says that the fight against Islamic extremism is the central conflict of this century. And his answer is promoting democracy and reform. Do you think he has that right?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Sure. To advance, advocate democracy and reform in the Muslim world? Absolutely. I think the question is, what's the best way to do it? I think also the question is, how to educate people about democracy? Democracy is about way more than majority rule. Democracy is about minority rights, individual rights, restraints on power. And there's more than one way to advance democracy.

But do I think, on balance, that in the end, after several bouts with instability -- look how long it took us to build toward democracy. Do I think on balance it would be better if we had more freedom and democracy? Sure I do. And do I think specifically the president has a right to do? Sure I do. But I don't think that's all we can do in the Muslim world. I think they have to see us as trying to get a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

I think they have to see us as willing to talk to people who see the world differently than we do.

MR. WALLACE: Last year, at this conference, you got $2.5 billion dollars in commitments, pledges. How did you do this year?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, this year we had 7.3 billion [dollars] as of this morning.

MR. WALLACE: Excuse me, 7 --

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Point three billion [dollars] as of this morning. But 3 billion [dollars] of that is -- now this is over a multi-year. This is up to 10-year commitments. But 3 billion [dollars] of that came from Richard Branson's commitments to give all of his transportation profits for a decade to clean energy investments. But still, that's -- the rest is over 4 billion [dollars].

And we will have another 100 commitments come in, maybe more, and we'll probably raise another -- I would say at least another $1 billion probably before it's over. We've got a lot of commitments still in process.

MR. WALLACE: When you look at the 3 billion [dollars] from Branson, and, plus the billions that Bill Gates is giving in his own program, and now Warren Buffett, what do you make of this new age of philanthropy?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think that -- for one thing, really rich people have always given money away. I mean, you know, they've endowed libraries and things like that. The unique thing about this age is, first of all, you have a lot of people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett who are interested in issues at home and around the world that grow out of the nature of the 21st century and its inequalities. The income inequalities, the health care inequalities, the education inequalities. And you get a guy like Gates who, you know, build Microsoft, who actually believes that he can help overcome a lot of the health disparities in the world. And that's the first thing.

The second thing that ought to be credited is that there are a lot of people of average incomes who are joining them because of the Internet. Like in the tsunami, for example, we had $1.2 billion given by Americans; 30 percent of our households gave money, over half of them over the Internet.
And then the third thing is you've got all these -- in more countries you've got all these nongovernmental groups that a guy like Gates can partner with, along with the governments. So all these things together mean that people with real money want to give it away in ways that help people that before would have been seen only as the object of government grants or loans.

MR. WALLACE: Let's talk some politics. In that same New Yorker article, you say that you are tired of Karl Rove's B.S., though I'm cleaning up what you said.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: But I do -- but I also say, I'm not tired of Karl Rove. I don't blame Karl Rove. He -- if you've got a deal that works, you just keep on doing it.

MR. WALLACE: So what is the B.S.?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, every even-numbered year, right before an election, they come up with some security issue. In 2002, our party supported them in taking weapons inspections in Iraq, and was 100 percent for what happened in Afghanistan, and they didn't have any way to make us look like we didn't care about terror. And so, they decided they would be for the homeland security bill that they had opposed, and they put a poison pill in it that we wouldn't pass, like taking the job rights away from 170,000 people, and then say that we were weak on terror if we weren't for it. They just ran that out.

This year, I think they wanted to make the questions of prisoner treatment and intercepted communications the same sort of issues, until John Warner and John McCain and Lindsey Graham got in there, and it turns out there were some Republicans that believed in the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, and had their own ideas about how best to fight terror. The Democrats, as long as the American people believe that we take this seriously, and we have our own approaches, and we may have differences over Iraq, I think we'll do fine in this election.

But even if they agree with us about the Iraq war, we could be hurt by Karl Rove's new foray if we just don't make it clear that we too care about the security of the country. But we want to implement the 9/11 commission recommendations which they haven't for four years. We want to intensify our efforts in Afghanistan against bin Laden. We want to make America more energy independent. And then they can all, if they differ on Iraq, they say whatever they want on Iraq.

But Rove is good. And I honor him. I've always been amused at how good he is, in a way. But on the other hand, this is perfectly predictable. We're going to win a lot of seats if the American people aren't afraid. If they're afraid and we get divided again, then we may only win a few seats.

MR. WALLACE: And the White House, the Republicans want to make the American people afraid?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Of course they do. Of course they do. They want us to be -- they want another homeland security deal. And they want to make it about, not about Iraq, but about some other security issue where, if we disagree with them, we are, by definition, imperiling the security of the country. And it's a big load of hooey. We've got nine Iraq war veterans running for the House seats. We've got President Reagan's secretary of the Navy as the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Virginia. A three-star admiral who was on my National Security Council staff, who also fought terror, by the way, is running for the seat of Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania.

We've got a huge military presence here in this campaign, and we just can't let them have some rhetorical device that puts us in a box we don't belong in. That's their job. Their job is to beat us. I like that about Rove. But our job is not to let him get away with it. And if they don't we will do fine.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. President, thanks for one of the more unusual interviews.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thanks.