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Banned
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Has Foxnews' Chris Wallace Questioned Bush admin. officials like he did to Clinton?
Do you think that Clinton is correct when he told Chris Wallace that Bush admin. officials have not been questioned in the aggressive and confrontational manner, by Foxnews.....over the same conflicts in what they said about Bin Laden vs., what they did to pursue and to apprehend him, as Wallace used in his Clinton interview?
Is there a different standard regarding what Clinton has to offer as proof that Clarke was competent in his role anti-terroism chief in at least two administrations, vs. what the current Bush administration has been pressed to offer, by the U.S. press, to justify it's marginalizing and demotion of Clarke?
Has the Bush admin. been asked by Foxnews to explain the shifting focus by that admin. on the priority of "getting Bin Laden", before or after 9/11, as has been asked of the Clinton administration? Has the Bush admin. even been asked why Bin Laden has not even been indicted for any crimes related to the 9/11 attacks, or more recently, or why the decision was made to invade Iraq before Bin Laden or Mullah Omar were apprehended, or why the security in Afgahnistan was allowed to deteriorate to it's present level, why the opium crop was permitted to start from zero in 2001, to record levels, now, or how four terrorists, including the mastermind of the "Bali Bombing", which was featured just a month before the US 2002 mid-term elections....al-Qaeda's "top man in Asia", could have escaped from a US prison in Afghansitan in 2005, and all still be loose, today?
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/in...rssnyt&emc=rss
Qaeda Operative in Southeast Asia Has Fled U.S. Jail in Afghanistan
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: November 3, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 - Omar al-Faruq, a confidant of Osama bin Laden who was one of Al Qaeda's senior operatives in Southeast Asia, escaped from an American military prison in Afghanistan in July, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.
Military authorities acknowledged in July that four suspected Qaeda terrorists had escaped from the heavily fortified prison at Bagram Air Base, apparently by picking the locks of their cells and slipping past a careless Afghan guard. They remain at large.
Omar al-Faruq was captured in 2002 but escaped this July.
The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage
Mr. Faruq was one of Mr. bin Laden's top lieutenants until he was captured in Indonesia in June 2002 and turned over to the United States. Pentagon officials confirmed that he was one of the fugitives only after the information was disclosed this week in Texas at a military trial of an Army sergeant charged with maltreating detainees in Afghanistan. Mr. Faruq was identified by an alias at the time of the jailbreak.
His disappearance, a major source of embarrassment to American officials at the base, came to light on Tuesday when defense lawyers for Sgt. Alan Driver demanded to know where he was so that he could testify at the trial.
Commanders in Afghanistan said security at the prison had been redoubled after the detainees escaped.
American intelligence officials say that they believe that Mr. Faruq set up the Qaeda network in Southeast Asia in 1998, and that they were convinced at the time he was captured that he knew a great deal about pending attacks. At the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation center at Bagram, Mr. Faruq initially provided little useful information, intelligence officials said.
Most details of his interrogation are unknown, except that the questioning became prolonged, extending to around-the-clock sessions, American officials said. Some interrogation specialists have said he probably was left naked most of the time, with his hands and feet bound.....
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More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_escape
Is their a different standard required of Patrick Fitzgerald, to prove that he is conducting a fair, justified, unbiased, non-partisan, and discreet (leak free) investigation of the white house in the Plame CIA leak crime and conspiracy, than there was for the six year long investigation of the Clinton white house by special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr?
I see the same kind of co-ordinated attack against Clinton, renewed recently on the eve of the ABC 9/11 "docudrama", as I see being carried out against Joe Wilson and special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.
In the <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=108832">"Is Bin Laden Dead?"</a> and in <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=108084&page=3">"The Plame Affair....."</a> , the same exchanges are repeated. One side posts the spin; "Clinton was offered Bin Laden on a platter, twice, and refused to take him"....and "Armitage confessed that he was the leaker of Plame's CIA employment, so now, "the left" owes Rove, Bush, Cheney, and Libby apologies, and Patrick Fitzgerald is a rogue prosecutor, who has to reported to the OFP at the DOJ"....and the bullshit above is now seen all over the internet and in "the news".
So we're "reduced" to the spectacle, IMO, of "one side" of the argument, being....out of the argument. Repetition and saturation are all that they bring to the argument.....but all of it whithers when placed alongside the facts, the reported record. Yet here it comes....over and over....."the platter", vs. determinations in the 9/11 Commission report, and in the statements of Clinton, Tenet, and Clarke....the same realities that Foxnews' Chris Wallace bumps up against when he launches the "talking points", at Clinton.
"One side" posts and saturates all media with "Plame was not "under cover" or covert, therefore Libby committed "no crime", and "it's Wilson's fault, he's a scumbag", and "Fitzgerald has no case, and he should have dropped the investigation, after Armitage testified that he was the leaker".
The "spin" above is repeated everywhere, but in the next few months, we will see that it is not true. The republican controlled DOJ, agreed that the CIA's complaint about Plame's public exposure, in July, 2003, was enough to launch an FBI investigation, and Fitzgerald has told several courts that revealing Plame's employment was a crime. Libby was indicted for intentionally obstructing justice and misleading the FBI and a grand jury. There are a myriad of reports, including in Fitzgerald's own pleadings to Libby's criminal trail court judge, that administration officials from Ari Fleischer, to Bruce Bartlett, to Karl Rove, Libby, and now Armitage, all told the press to ask them who sent Joe Wilson to Niger.
The Senate Select Intel. committee, the former CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, and Patrick Fitzgerald, all say that "Wilson's CIA wife" did not "send him to Niger", but an entire sizeable segment of the population believes that she did,
and this lie works to Rove's and Cheney's intended effect; to convince people that Wilson was not credible, because he was sent on "a junket", by his "CIA wife".
So it all works....we're polarized because "one side" has been convinced, solely by a repetitive narrowcast of propaganda, that Clinton intentionally failed to "get Bin Laden", that Richard Clarke was not competent or trustworthy, that Foxnews is "fair and balanced", even without Foxnews asking Bush admin. officials why Clarke was demoted, or why
Quote:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...AB0894DA404482
or http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/trans...ice%20Dept.htm
........But in his Sept. 10 submission to the budget office, Mr. Ashcroft did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators.
Mr. Ashcroft proposed cuts in 14 programs. One proposed $65 million cut was for a program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants for equipment, including radios and decontamination suits and training to localities for counterterrorism preparedness.
Last August, before he proposed cutting the program to $44 million from $109 million, Mr. Ashcroft went to Dayton, Ohio, and watched a preparedness exercise and announced grants totaling $1.8 million to Ohio. He said: "All of these domestic preparedness efforts have one overarching goal: to ensure that those of you at the state and local levels build the critical capacity to adequately respond to domestic terrorism. At the Department of Justice, we recognize that the threat of terrorism here at home is a serious and growing challenge for our nation."
Mr. Ashcroft justified the cut to Mr. Daniels by saying that states had been slow to develop the statewide plans needed to qualify for federal money. Congressional critics of the attorney general said the Justice Department was not really interested in the program and did not help states develop the required plans.
In various listings of priorities for his department issued between May 10 and Aug. 9, made available to The New York Times by Congressional officials critical of Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general did not single out counter-terrorism. ..........
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...400310_pf.html
Bill Clinton Defends bin Laden Handling
By KAREN MATTHEWS
The Associated Press
Sunday, September 24, 2006; 1:55 PM
NEW YORK -- In a combative interview on "Fox News Sunday," former President Clinton defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden, saying he tried to have bin Laden killed and was attacked for his efforts by the same people who now criticize him for not doing enough.
"That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said in the interview. "They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try."
Clinton accused host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job" and asked: "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 people you asked, 'Why did you fire Dick Clarke?'"
He was referring to the USS Cole, attacked by terrorists in Yemen in 2000, and former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke.
Wallace said Sunday he was surprised by Clinton's "conspiratorial view" of "a very non-confrontational question, 'Did you do enough to connect the dots and go after Al Qaida?'"
"All I did was ask him a question, and I think it was a legitimate news question. I was surprised that he would conjure up that this was a hit job," Wallace said in a telephone interview.
Clinton said he "worked hard" to try to kill bin Laden.
"We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody's gotten since," he said.
He told Wallace, "And you 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 interview was taped Friday during Clinton's three-day Global Initiative conference.
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Quote:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/23/fox-clarke-demoted/
<b>Chris Wallace Never Asked A Bush Administration Official Why They Demoted Richard Clarke</b>
During his interview on Fox News, Bill Clinton asked Chris Wallace how many times Wallace asked a Bush administration official, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/clinton-interview">“Why did you fire Dick Clarke?”</a> By all accounts, Clarke was one of the people most concerned about al-Qaeda in any administration. Shortly after taking office, the Bush administration <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2097685/">demoted Clarke, eliminated his staff and removed him from the Principals meeting.</a>
Since 2001, Wallace has interview the top national security officials from the Bush administration — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Hadley — 42 times. According to a Lexis-Nexis database search, he never asked any of them why Clarke was demoted.
The one time he brought up Clarke’s name with a Bush administration official — during a March 28, 2004 interview with Rumsfeld — he repeatedly attempted to smear Clarke as political motivated and untrustworthy. Some excerpts:
Quote:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115436,00.html
FOXNEWS.COM HOME > FNS W/ CHRIS WALLACE
Transcript: U.S. Defense Sec'y Donald Rumsfeld
Monday, March 29, 2004
The following is an excerpt from "FOX News Sunday," March 28, 2004.
WALLACE: I think a lot of people in Washington are trying to figure out, to understand Richard Clarke, to make sense of what he has said and of apparent contradictions in his story — is he telling the truth, or is he pushing an agenda.
WALLACE: Let’s switch, if we can, to a different aspect of this. There is a move now by congressional Republican leaders to declassify Clarke’s testimony before one of their panels in 2002 to see whether or not it contradicts what he is telling the commission and what he writes in his book now. As I understand it, the Pentagon has to approve any such declassification. Do you think it’s a good idea?
WALLACE: Do you worry at all that, whether it’s the debate over Dick Clarke’s credibility, his charges, whether it’s the fact that we’re in the political season, that the important work you say the commission could do is going to get caught up in partisanship?
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After Clinton brought up the issue, Wallace claimed “we asked” and shot back <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/clinton-interview">“Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday, Sir?“</a>
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Quote:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215397,00.html
Transcript: William Jefferson Clinton on 'FOX News Sunday'
Sunday, September 24, 2006
WALLACE: Mr. President, welcome to "FOX News Sunday."
BILL CLINTON: Thanks.
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 effort to help in these developing countries?
CLINTON: Yes, I really — but I don't mean — that sounds sort of morbid when you say it like that. I mean, I actually ...
WALLACE: That's how you said it.
CLINTON: Yes, 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. 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 it's a great gift. So, it's a rewarding way to spend my life.
WALLACE: Someone asked you — and I don't want to, again, be too morbid, but this is what you said. He asked you if you could wind up doing more good as a former president than as a president, and you said, "Only if I live a long time."
CLINTON: Yes, that's true.
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?
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 and, you know, make peace in the Middle East, pass a budget that gives millions of kids a chance to have afterschool 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 I would have less money in my first year to invest in things I wanted to invest in.
WALLACE: So what is it that you can do as a former 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 fewer 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 to, you know, 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.
WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on "Fox News Sunday," <b>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?</b>
There's a new book out, I suspect you've already read, called "The Looming Tower." And it talks about how 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.
CLINTON: OK, let's just go through that.
WALLACE: <b>Let me — 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. ...</b>
CLINTON: No, let's talk about it.
WALLACE: ... <b>but the question is, why didn't you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?</b>
CLINTON: OK, let's talk about it. Now, 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 run in their little "Pathway to 9/11," falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by 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, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush's neo-cons 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.
OK, now let's look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Usama 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 of '93.
WALLACE: I understand, and I ...
CLINTON: No, wait. No, wait. Don't tell me this — you asked me why didn't I 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'll get an answer, but you can't ...
WALLACE: I'm perfectly happy to.
CLINTON: All right, secondly ...
WALLACE: Bin Laden says ...
CLINTON: Bin Laden may have said ...
WALLACE: ... bin Laden says that it showed the weakness of the United States.
CLINTON: But it would've shown the weakness if we'd left right away, but he wasn't involved in that. That's just a bunch of bull. That was about Mohammed Adid, a Muslim warlord, murdering 22 Pakistani Muslim troops. We were all there on a humanitarian mission. We had no mission, none, to establish a certain kind of Somali government or to keep anybody out.
He was not a religious fanatic ...
WALLACE: But, Mr. President ...
CLINTON: ... there was no Al Qaeda ...
WALLACE: ... with respect, if I may, instead of going through '93 and ...
CLINTON: No, no. You asked it. You brought it up. You brought it up.
WALLACE: May I ask a general question and then you can answer?
CLINTON: Yes.
WALLACE: <b>The 9/11 Commission, which you've talk about — and this is what they did say, not what ABC pretended they said ...
CLINTON: Yes, what did they say?
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."</b>
CLINTON: First of all, that's not true with us and bin Laden.
WALLACE: Well, I'm telling you that's what the 9/11 Commission says.
CLINTON: All right. Let's look at what Richard Clarke said. Do you think Richard Clarke has a vigorous attitude about bin Laden?
WALLACE: <b>Yes, I do.</b>
CLINTON: You do, don't you?
WALLACE: I think he has a variety of opinions and loyalties, but yes, he has a vigorous ...
CLINTON: He has a variety of opinion 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.
<b>They downgraded him and 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.</b>
WALLACE: But ...
CLINTON: No, wait a minute.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: ... cruise missiles.
CLINTON: <b>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.</b>
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.
<b>The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible while I was there. They refused to certify.</b> 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, <b>anybody who wants to say I didn't do enough, you read Richard Clarke's book.</b>
WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?
CLINTON: No, because I didn't get him.
WALLACE: Right.
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, <b>I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.</b>
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 <b>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 ...</b>
WALLACE: We asked — we asked ...
CLINTON: I don't ...
WALLACE: Do you ever watch "FOX News Sunday," sir?
<b>CLINTON: I don't believe you asked them that.
WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of ...
CLINTON: You didn't ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.
WALLACE: About the USS Cole?
CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris.
WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there's plenty of stuff to ask.
CLINTON: Did you ever ask that?
You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch's supporting my work on climate change.</b>
And you came here under false pretenses and said that you'd spend half the time talking 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.
WALLACE: But, President Clinton, if you look at the questions here, you'll see half the questions are about that. I didn't think this was going to set you off on such a tear.
CLINTON: <b>You launched it — it set me 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.</b>
WALLACE: That's not true. Sir, that is not true.
CLINTON: <b>And Richard Clarke made it clear in his testimony...</b>
WALLACE: Would you like to talk about the Clinton Global Initiative?
CLINTON: No, I want to finish this now.
WALLACE: All right. Well, after you.
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 Qaeda 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.
<b>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.</b>
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.
<b>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 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 nobody ever asks them about it. I think that's strange.</b>
WALLACE: Can I ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative?
CLINTON: You can.
WALLACE: I always intended to, sir.
CLINTON: No, you intended, though, to move your bones by doing this first, which is perfectly fine. But I don't mind people asking me — 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 yields (ph), where they ask me one-sided questions. And the other guys notice that. And it always comes from one source. And so ...
WALLACE: And ...
CLINTON: And so ...
WALLACE: I just want to ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative, but what's the source? I mean, you seem upset, and I ...
CLINTON: I am upset because ...
WALLACE: And all I can say is, I'm asking you this in good faith <b>because it's on people's minds, sir.</b> And I wasn't ...
CLINTON: Well, there's a reason it's on people's minds. That's the point I'm trying to make. <b>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 incidents under Reagan to the terrorist incidents from 9/11, only one: Richard Clarke.
And all I can say to anybody is, you want to know what we did wrong or right, or anybody else did? Read his book.</b>
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."
<b>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, than anybody has since.</b>
WALLACE: All right.
CLINTON: <b>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.</b>
And all this business about Somalia — the same people who criticized me about Somalia were demanding I leave the next day. The same exact crowd.
WALLACE: One of the ...
CLINTON: And so, <b>if you're going to do this, for God's sake, follow the same standards for everybody ...
WALLACE: I think we do, sir.
CLINTON: ... and be flat — and fair.
WALLACE: I think we do. ...</b>
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