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FULL TRANSCRIPT: Clinton Takes On Fox News

By Judd Legum on Sep 22, 2006 at 8:43 pm

Today, President Bill Clinton taped an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, which is scheduled to be aired Sunday. He was told the interview would focus on his nonpartisan efforts to raise over $7 billion to combat the world’s biggest problems.

Early in the interview, Wallace attempted to smear Clinton with the same kind of misinformation contained in ABC’s Path to 9/11. Clinton was having none of it.

ThinkProgress has obtained a transcript of the interview. Here are some highlights –

Wallace repeats Path to 9/11 misinformation, Clinton fights back:

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 Qaida out of business when you were president?

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: 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…

CLINTON: No, let’s talk about it.

WALLACE: … but the question is, why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

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.

Clinton takes on Fox News bias:

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, 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…

WALLACE: We asked — we asked…

CLINTON: I don’t…

WALLACE: Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday, sir?

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.

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.

Clinton on his priorities and the Bush administration priorities:

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.

Read the full transcript HERE.

Politics

REPORT: Bush Family Compound At Kennebunkport Could Be Submerged By Global Warming

By ThinkProgress on Sep 22, 2006 at 5:05 pm

The Natural Resources Council of Maine this week released “one of the most complete depictions ever done of the potential impacts on Maine’s coastline from rising sea levels due to global warming.”

Using the latest available science, NRCM’s analysis shows that coastal businesses, homes, wildlife habitat, transportation systems, and some of the state’s most treasured places are highly vulnerable to sea-level rise.

One “treasured place” in extreme risk is the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport (noted by the yellow arrow below). The area in orange shows land that will be submerged by a sea level rise of 6 feet; the area in red will be underwater after a rise of just 3 feet.

Numerous studies on the future impacts of global warming, including the International Panel on Climate Change, have predicted a sea level rise of up to roughly 3 feet by the end of the century. In other words, unless the problem of climate change is taken seriously, the Bush vacation retreat will under water during the adult lives of Jenna and Barbara’s kids.

The Bush family aren’t the only ones who should be worried. “The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that no fewer than one in four U.S. buildings within 500 feet of a coastline will be destroyed by erosion by mid-century, with rising sea levels a big factor.” More on global warming at Climate Progress.

UPDATE: Correction: This post previously stated that the IPCC report predicted a sea level rise of “3 feet or more” by 2100. In fact, the report predicts a rise of up to 88 cm, or 2.85 feet, by 2100. Also, the original post incorrectly suggested that Barbara and Jenna’s would “grow up” by 2100. That has been corrected to note that the year 2100 could occur “in their adult lives.”

We regret the errors.

Digg it!

Politics

A “scorching internal review”

By ThinkProgress on Sep 22, 2006 at 3:05 pm

of the Bush administration’s $1 billion/year reading program “says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted.” The report says the program — described as the “jewel of No Child Left Behind” — is “beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement” and “suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use.”

UPDATE: Rep. George Miller (D-CA), ranking member on the education committee, is outraged:

“Corrupt cronies at the Department of Education wasted taxpayer dollars on an inferior reading curriculum for kids that was developed by a company headed by a Bush friend and campaign contributor,” said Miller. “Instead of putting children first, they chose to put their cronies first. Enough is enough. President Bush and Secretary Spellings must take responsibility and do a wholesale housecleaning at the Education Department.”

“Everyone at the Department of Education who was involved in perpetrating this fraud on school districts should be fired — not suspended, not reassigned, not admonished, but fired.”

Yglesias

Update!

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 22, 2006 at 2:20 pm

Ezra says the item below is based on a story that’s basically inaccurate. Well . . . that makes a difference!

Politics

New O’Reilly Book: Osama Bin Laden Supports American Progressives

By Judd Legum on Sep 22, 2006 at 12:48 pm

Culture WarriorThinkProgress has obtained an advance copy of Bill O’Reilly’s new book, Culture Warrior. In it, O’Reilly claims that Osama bin Laden supports American progressives. Some excerpts from Chapter 7:

Who do you think Osama Bin Laden supports in the American culture war: the traditionalists or the secular-progressives?

…[T]hink about what I am about to put forth: From his hideout somewhere in the Mulism world, Osama bin Laden and his coheorts have got to be cheering on the S-P [secular-progressive] movement…

Why does Osama bin Laden support progressives in America? O’Reilly explains that they both hate America:

…[I]t is rooted in the one thing that the secular-progressive movement and Al Qaeda have in common: Both outfits believe that the United States of America is fundamentally a bad place.

…The bedrock belief that America is, and has been, an evil country is crucial to understanding the secular-progressive point of view when it comes to the war on terror.

O’Reilly, ends the chapter with the logical conclusion: join him in the fight against progressives or die:

All clear-thinking Americans should become opponents of the S-P [secular-progressive] movement for the simple reason of self-preservation.

Meanwhile, according to O’Reilly, bin Laden is out to get him. In an interview with Barbara Walters, O’Reilly claims that the FBI informed him he was put on an al Qaeda “death list.” The claim was disputed by an FBI officer.

Digg It!

Security

VIDEO: Branson Discusses How Al Gore Convinced Him To Lead on Global Warming

By Payson Schwin on Sep 22, 2006 at 12:13 pm

Earlier today on Good Morning America, Virgin CEO Richard Branson, who yesterday pledged $3 billion to invest in alternative energy to combat global warming, appeared alongside Al Gore. Branson explained that he was once a global warming skeptic, but after meeting with scientists, reading books, and talking over breakfast with Gore, he became “convinced that the world has a real serious problem.”

Gore praised Branson for having the “guts” to show such “courage and leaderhip” on the issue. Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2006/09/branson.320.240.flv]

Digg It!

Transcript: Read more

Politics

Listen to Arianna!

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 22, 2006 at 12:05 pm

Oh, Christ. Arianna Huffington notes that Democrats have somehow once again convinced themselves that “the economy” will be the key issue in the midterm elections and this is what Democratic candidates need to focus on. Pardon me while I go vomit. I mean, look, people who feel their economic circumstances are super-dire are going to vote for the Democrats one way or the other. They will, that is, unless they’re convinced that voting Democratic will get their family killed by terrorists. And the latter, obviously, is what the GOP is going to say.

Nor is ducking the question going to somehow get people to fail to notice that this is what the Republicans are saying. People pay attention to that sort of thing — it’s kind of a big deal. One has to convince the voters that the Republicans are wrong about this and that, instead, the Bush administration’s dangerous conduct of national security policy is imperiling the country. It’s not as if the opposition party has nothing to work with here. One might note the fiasco in Iraq, for example. Or OBL’s still-at-large status. Our bizarre herky-jerky stumbling into wider regional conflicts that will further take the focus off of al-Qaeda and others directly trying to kill Americans. This isn’t brain surgery.

On the other hand, it’s not so easy that voters are going to believe it if Democrats don’t even try to make the case. What’s more, ducking security fights looks weak. It looks weak because it is weak. It demonstrates a lack of confidence in the party’s own ideas and people. It re-enforces everything the GOP is trying to say. Democrats need to knock this off and engage with what’s pretty clearly the central issue of our time.

Climate Progress

Climate Progress Kudos to …

By Joe Romm on Sep 22, 2006 at 11:52 am

The Aspen Skiing Company for launching their anti-global warming “Save Snow” campaign.

The Natural Resources Council of Maine, for releasing probably the most comprehensive depiction of how global warming would devastate Maine’s coastline – “President Bush’s family home on Walker’s Point could be completely submerged.” Note to self: Look up cosmic irony in Wikipedia to see if there is a link to this study.

Billionaire Richard Branson for making a pledge of $3 billion for climate solutions at the Clinton Global Initiative.

The Economist magazine for the kind of in-depth coverage of global warming that is all-too-rare in major general-interest magazines (other than Time magazine).

Katie Couric and CBS News, for running a story on global warming and arctic melting that doesn’t give precious airtime to misinformation from global warming Deniers.

James Hansen, for telling it like it is to CBS: “I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change, no longer than a decade at the most.”

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