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Fox News Sunday Sun Sep 24 21:01:15 2006
>> Back in Washington with our enter view with former president Clinton. 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 climb gnat change. As part of the conference Mr.. Clinton agreed to his firs one-on-one interview ever on fox news Sunday. The ground rules were simple. 15 minutes split evenly between the global initiative and anything else we wanted to ask. As you will see now the full unedited interview that's not 
how it turned out.
>> Mr. President welcome to knocks news Sunday -- fox news Sunday.
>> Thanks.
>> In a recent issue of the New Yorker you say i am 60 years old and i dam near died and i am 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? 
>> Yes. I really -- but I don't mean -- that sounds sort of more bid when you say it like that.
>> You said that.
>> But the way i said it the tone in which i said it was actually almost whimsical and humorous humorous. That is this is what I love to do. It is what I think I should do. I have had a wonderful life. I got to be president and live the life of my dreams, i dodged the bullet with the heart problem and I really think I should -- I think I owe it to my fellow country men 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 feel it's a great gift, it's a rewarding way to spend my life.
>> Someone asked you, and I don't want to again be too more bid 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. You said, only if I live a long time. 
>> That's true:
>> How do you compare the powers of being in office as president and what you can do out of office as a former president?
>> When you are president you can operate on a much broader scope. For example you can simultaneously be trying to stop a genocide in Kosovo, make peace in the middle east, pass a budget that gives millions of kids to have after school programs has a huge increase in college aid at home, in other words, you have a lot of different moving parts and you can move them all at once. You are 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 will give you a much more mundane example. Once I looked at the economic data the new data after i won the election I realized I would have to work much harder to reduce the deficit and would have less money in my first year or two to invest in things i wanted to invest in. 
>> What is it you can do as a former president?
>> What you can do as a former president, 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. If I say look we are going to work on economic empowerment of pour people on fighting aids and other diseases on trying to bridge the religious and political differences between people and on trying to avoid the worst calamities of climate change I can actually do that. 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. 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.
>> When we announced you were going to be on fox news Sunday i got a lot of e-mail from viewers and I 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 out, you 
may -- i suspect you have already read called the looming tower. It talks about the fact when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993 bin laden said I have seen the fatality and weakness and coward ness of U.S. Troops then the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack objection the pole -- let me say -- 
>> Let me finish. After that the book says bin laden separated his leaders spread them around and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is always 2020/20. The question is why didn't you connect the dots and put him out of business?
>> I will answer all of those things on the merits. First I want to talk about the context in which this arises. I am being asked this on the fox network. ABC just had a right wing conservative running 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. I think it's very interesting that all of 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 neo cons thought I was too obsessed with bin laden. They had no meetings on bin laden for 9 months after i left office. All of the right wingers who say I did didn't do enough say i did too much. They were all try to go get me to root from Somalia in 1993, the next after we were involved in "black hawk down" and I refused to do it altered and 
stayed 6 months and had an orderly transfer to the united nations. Blackhawk down in Somalia there was not a living soul in the world who thought Osama bin laden had anything to do with Blackhawk down or even knew al Qaeda was a growing concern in 93. 
>> I understand.
>> Don't tell me -- you asked me why didn't I do more to Bin Laden. There was not a living soul. All of the people who criticize me wanted to leave the next day. You brought this up. So you will get an answer.
>> I am happy to. Secondly Bin Laden says it showed the weakness of the united states. 
>> It would have hone the weakness if we left right away. He wasn't involved in th. That's just a bunch of bull. That was about Mohammad Adid murdering 200 Pakistani Muslim Muslim troops. We were there on a humanitarian mission. We had no mission to keep anybody out. He was not a religious fanatiC. 
>> With respect, if i may instead of going through 93 and --
>> No you asked it. You brought it up.
>> May I ask a general question and you can answer. The 9-11 commission, you talk about, and this is what they did say and not what NBC pretended they said 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. 
>> First of all that's not true with us and Bin Laden.
>> The 9-11 commission said this.
>> Let's talk about what Richard CLARKE said? Do you think he has a vigorously attitude -- vigorous attitude about bin laden?
>> Yes. 
>> He worked for Ronald Reagan he was loyal to him he worked for George Bush he was loyal to he worked for me he was loyal to me. He worked for president bush he was loyal for to him. They downgraded him and in the terrorist operation. 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 -- 
>> You --
>> Wait a minute. I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him. E CIA was run by George tenet president bush gave the metal of freedom to. The country never had a comprehensive antI-terror operation until I came there. 
You want to criticize me for one thing criticize me for this. After the Cole I had plans to go into Afghanistan over throw 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 fib refused to certify that bin laden was responsible while i was there. They refused to certify. That meant I would have had to have sent a few hundred special forces in hell copters refuel at night even the 9-11 commission didn't do that. The 9-11 commission was a political document, too. Anybody that wants to say I 
didn't do nothing you read Richard Clark's book.
>> You did i think you did enough?
>> No because i didn't them. At least i tried. That's including all of the right wingers they ridiculed me for trying they had 8 months to 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 Richard Clark got demoted so you did fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me -- 
>> Wait a minute. You don' think that's a legitimate question?
>> It's a perfectly legitimate question, I want to know how many people in the bush administration you asked ths question of. I want to know how many in bush administration y didn't you do anything a the coal. I want to know how many you fired Richard Clarke. 
>> Do you ever watch fox news Sunday. We asked plenty of questions.
>> You didn't ask that. Tell the truth.
>> About the USS . With Iraq and Afghanistan there's plenty of stuff to ask.
>> Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you are going to get a l of criticism from your voters. You came here under false pretenses said you spent half the time talking about -- you said you would spend half the time talking about what w did out there to raise$7 billion plus in three-days from 215 different commitments and you don't care. 
>> President listen if look at the questions you will se half of the questions. I didn't think this was going to set you off on such a tear.
>> You didn't formulate i n an honest way you people ask me questions you di ask the other -- don't ask the other side.
>> That is not true.
>> Richard Clark made it clear. 
>> Would you like to talk about the initiative?
>> No i want to finish this. 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.
>> Did they know in 1996 when he declared for the U.S.? Did they know in 1998 when he bombed the two embassies did they know in 2000 when he hit the toweR. 
>> I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized for the CIA to kill them. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody's gotten since. If I were still president we would have more than0,00 troops there trying to kill him. I have never criticized president bush and I don think this is useful bt we have a government hat thinks Afghanistan is only one seventh as important as Iraq. You ask me about terror and al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive thing he all you have to do is read Richard 
Clarke 'book to look at what we did in a comprehensive systematic way t try to protect a country against terror. U got that little smirk on your face think you are so clever but i had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and failed to get bin laden. I did try. I did everything i thought I responsibly could. E entire military was against spending special forces into Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter and none thought we could do it otherwise because we could not get CIA and t fib to certify that al Qaeda 
responsible while i was president. So I left office. Yet, i get asked about this all of the time. They had 3 times as much time deal with it and nobody ever asked them about it. I think that's strange.
>> Can i ask you about the Clinton global initiative? 
>> You can.
>> I always intended to, sir.
>> No, you tended to move your bones by doing this first which is perfectly fine. But i don't mind peoples asking me. I actually talked to the 9-11 commission for 4 hours, Chris and I told them the mistakes I thought I made. I asked 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 shills where they ask me one set of questions and the other has guy has another set. It always comes from one source. 
>> I want to ask you about the Clinton global initiative what's the source. You seem upset.
>> I am upset because --
>> All I can say is I am asking this in good faith.
>> The reason it's on people's minds. There's a reason it's on people's minds because there have been serious disinformation campaign to create that impression. This country only has one person who is working this terror from Reagan to 9-11 only one Richard Clark. And all I would say toady is you want to know what we did 
wrong or right or anybody else did, read his book. The people on m 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 t dog when he tried to kill him. My republican secretary of defense I think I am the only president since world war II to have a secretary of defense of the opposite party, Richard Clark and all of the intelligent le said I ordered a vigorous attempt to get Bin Laden. I'm trying to create the opposite impression when all you have to do is read Richard 
Clark's findings and you know it's not rue. All of this business about Somalia, the same people that criticized me about Somalia were demanding I leave the next day.
>> I think we . 
>> When we r we finally get back to the Clinton global initiative and you will also hear why the former president says the white house is selling fear in the fall campaign.
>> I don't blame him. If you have a deal that works you keep on doing it.
>> We will be right back.
All of these breaches, as well as others, violate the ACLU’s historic commitment to free speech. We take little comfort from the fact that some were reversed after bad publicity and donor complaints.
We reject the claim that the ACLU is injured not by its unprincipled, anti-libertarian actions, but by those who disclosed or criticized them. Repeated breaches of principle by the ACLU leadership have been fundamental and cannot simply be attributed to isolated lapses in judgment: they reflect basic disrespect for the values that the ACLU was created to defend.
This has gone on for so long, and has become so pervasive, that we now believe that only a change in leadership will preserve the ACLU and insure its future as the nation’s leading civil liberties group.
I went to the Game it was nice to say the least.
Hey what's up with Clinton saying he hired Trained assassins in that interview? What the hell did he say that for? Can you imagine what would happen if Rumsfeld or Rice said that? That would be one of the things that I would prefer that were not stated by a former President even if it is true. He is really working hard to be a bigger traitor than Jimmy Carter. I think that people like Bill and Jim and their buddy Noam for that matter are creating more terrorist by undermining American foreign policy and giving the philosophical underpinnings to the Islamist world wide.
Al-Qaeda is using their written thoughts and Counter Culture as training manuals for Jihad.
FALMOUTH, Maine -- They sat on two frayed chairs in a teacher's lounge, the president and the widow, just the two of them so close that their knees were almost touching.
She was talking about her husband, the soldier who died in a far-off war zone. Tears rolled down her face as she mentioned two children left fatherless. His eyes welled up, too. He hugged her, held her face, kissed her cheek. "I am so sorry for your loss," he kept repeating.
She told him she considers him responsible for her husband's death and begged him to bring home the troops. "It's time to put our pride behind us and stop the bleeding, for all of us," she recalled saying. The president demurred, unwilling to debate a mourning woman. "We see things differently," he said.
But Hildi Halley, a self-described liberal antiwar activist who met with President Bush in Maine last month, said she believes he felt her grief. "It wasn't just a crocodile tear," she said in an interview at her home. "I felt like I moved him. I don't think he's going to wake up tomorrow and say, 'Oh my gosh, I've been wrong this whole time and I'm going to change all my policies because of my meeting with this woman.' I just hope that with each soldier, he remembers my pain."
He has a lot of pain to remember. Now more than five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush has served as a wartime president longer than any occupant of the White House since Lyndon B. Johnson. He has presided over more U.S. military casualties than any since Richard M. Nixon. While he travels the country defending his policy and arguing to stay the course in Iraq, he also confronts the human burdens of wartime leadership.
The two sides of Bush as commander in chief can be hard to reconcile. His public persona gives little sense that he dwells on the costs of war. He does not seem to agonize as Johnson did, or even as his father, George H.W. Bush, did before the Persian Gulf War. While he pays tribute to those who have fallen, the president strives to show resolve and avoid displays that might be seen as weak or doubting. His refusal to attend military funerals, while taking long Texas vacations and extended bicycle rides, strikes some critics as callous indifference.
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