PRESIDENT CLINTON: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO TALK ABOUT TERRORISM AND NATIONAL SECURITY? RUTH KING
Exclusive: President Clinton – Do You Really Want to Talk about Terrorism and National Security?
There he was, a little long in the tooth, graying hair, open shirt and a nose grown slightly more bulbous…like Pinocchio’s nose but fuller, not longer. Last Sunday on ABC, Bill Clinton gave a not-so-subtle peroration on Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bombing, and those pesky “tea-bagging†critics of the Obama administration who sometimes cuss.
He followed this with an editorial warning about dissidents and domestic terror and the consequence of mean words. Frankly, given his legacy, he should stay away from the topics of terror and national security.
Isn’t he the President who sent Rangers and Special forces to capture Mohammed Aidid the brutal warlord of Somalia in 1993? In a subsequent investigation, when the mission failed, it was disclosed that his administration denied our forces the heavy gunships, Abrams tanks and armored vehicles crucial to their safety. In October 1993 two Black Hawks were shot down, 18 American troops were killed and 73 injured. Despite the loss the military wanted to finish the job and claimed that Aidid was severely weakened, but President Clinton aborted the mission and ordered the release of captured terrorists. A dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu is the lasting image of that initiative. Somalia remains mired in chaos, poverty, famine and escalating Islamic jihadist violence.
In the magazine Vanity Fair (August 2002) Mansoor Ijaz an American of Pakistani origin and then former U.S. ambassador to Sudan Timothy Karney disclosed that the government of Sudan had offered to turn intelligence on Osama bin Laden to the Clinton administration in 1996. Apparently the information included passport numbers, accounts and communications on terrorists taken to Sudan by Bin Laden. Clinton and Madeleine Albright turned it down.
Initially Clinton vociferously denied it and maintained that no such option ever existed. However, in a speech in February 2002, out of office President Clinton averred that the United States had turned down an offer from Sudan. Later, he stated that he had “misspoken†but by 2003, former National Security Adviser Samuel “Sandy†“stocking stuffer†Berger admitted “”The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time, and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States.”
And that, by the way, was after the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center by operatives of al Qaeda. The Clinton administration treated it as a law enforcement matter, but fortunately the prosecution was successfully handled by Judge Michael Mukasey and Andrew McCarthy who wrote:
 “In 1993, the United States Department of Justice was not merely the point of America’s counterterrorist spear. It was the spear. Period. The enemy was at war. Jihadists made that exquisitely clear, in word as well as deed. Our response was to call not the Marines, but the prosecutors.’ (Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad by Andrew McCarthy)Â
On November 13, 1995, after a bomb exploded in front of an American military training center in Riyadh, killing five Americans Saudi authorities arrested four Saudi nationals and convicted and beheaded them but U.S. officials were denied permission to investigate. Again, on June 25, 1996, a truck loaded with 5,000 pounds of explosives blew up outside of an apartment complex (Khobar Towers) in Dharan, Saudi Arabia which housed U.S. military personnel, killing nineteen and wounding several hundred American personnel. Once again, the Saudis impeded any U.S. investigation.
Are those the same Saudis that have contributed so generously to the William J. Clinton Presidential library in Arkansas?
Then there were the near simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998. Those attacks killed hundreds of personnel and wounded thousands. A former sergeant, Ali A. Mohamed, who served in one of the Army’s most sensitive units at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the 1980s was implicated in that bombing. Apparently the FBI knew about Ali after the first World Trade Center bombing. Where was Bill Clinton?
Well at least he did retaliate. On August 21st, he bombed a “paramilitary training camp†in Afghanistan and declared it a beginning salvo in the war on terrorism, and he bombed Sudan and killed and destroyed a cell of terrorist aspirins in the al-Shifa pharmaceutical company in Khartoum.
Let’s cut him a little slack. It was only three days after his televised admission that he had misled the American people about his “dalliance†with Monica S. Lewinsky.
In March of 1999 there was that “macho†bombing of Serbia. Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke gave Serbia’s dictator an ultimatum known as the “Rambouillet Agreement†which demanded Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo which had been an integral part of Serbia for centuries. Milosevic accepted but Clinton and NATO commenced an unprecedented 78 day spree of bombing in which they destroyed infrastructure and access to electricity and water. The outcome is victory for Islamic jihadists who continue to implement their harsh Sharia in Kosovo panting for a Balkan caliphate. What was the gain for United States national security and the war on terror? Er…zero.
He just does not know when to remain silent.
 Here is what he said at a meeting in Davos in 2005: “Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.â€
In a subsequent television interview with Charlie Rose in March of 2005 which is documented and recorded:
“Iran is the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami (in 1997). [It is] the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: Two for president; two for the Parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralties. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.â€
There now, maybe Ah’jad isn’t a meanie like some of the people at the tea party rallies.
And, finally, while he was President, Clinton’s former chum arch terrorist Yasser Arafat was the most favored guest in the White House. Yup. That’s been documented. It must have been something in the way Arafat smiled that obscured the mass murders of thousands that he instigated and perpetrated.
Really, how dare he discuss terrorism? And how dare he impugn millions of Americans who participate in the tea parties?
But the Clinton legend lives on in spite of all evidence. His interviewer on ABC even asked if he would consider appointment to the Supreme Court. He demurred citing only his age as a negative. And, always the gentleman, he even threw in the fact that Hillary was too old also…even though nobody asked or brought up her name.
He should really stick to philanthropy, where he can put all those “foreign†contributions to some good use.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Ruth S. King is a freelance writer who writes a monthly column in OUTPOST, the publication of Americans for a Safe Israel.
Comments are closed.
