There’s not much certainty about life nowadays, but there is one thing that is: when Bill Clinton opens his mouth to speak, what will come out is either a lie, an obfuscation, exaggeration or misdirection.
Hours before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, former President Bill Clinton told an audience in Australia about his missed chance to kill attack mastermind Osama bin Laden, according to audio released this week.
Clinton was speaking at a business meeting in Melbourne when the topic turned to terrorism.
“I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden … He’s a very smart guy. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” Clinton said in the audio, which was recorded by former Liberal Party head Michael Kroger and aired by Sky News.
“I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have had to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him.
“And so I didn’t do it.”
I leave it to you to decide which of the above four characterizations apply.
Incidentally, what happened to that TV show that (I think) ABC aired about this very topic? Shown once, never been seen since.
I wonder why that is?
I guess we’ll never know.
Clinton never failed to kill someone he wanted to kill, like his wife.
So if he says he could have killed bin Laden but didn’t, that means he didn’t WANT to kill him, not that he had any moral problems about bombing Kandahar.
Well, to be fair, Osama was on “our side” during the 80’s and a large part of the 90’s. We were supporting him and his buddies who were fighting the godless commies in Afghanistan. So old Bill probably had no real reason to kill Osama. It wasn’t until the late 90’s (IIRC) that Osama started protesting against the US. Not to mention that the Bin Laden family is a very large, very rich family with businesses all over the world. Wouldn’t want to piss them off by killing their weird cousin (or whatever).
Yeah, Clinton lies like a cheap rug. But the bigger lesson is that we have no business in the Middle East, never have, never will, and should unass that god-forsaken desert ASAP. If the muzzies act up, drop a nuke. Fuck them. Otherwise, we got enough oil here in the North American Continent to last us the next several hundred years. Might need to annex Canada to get it, but I’m ok with that as long as the we quarantine the french-speaking canucks.
As I posted on Insty the other day, there were at least three (and, depending on how deep you want to dig online, as many as six) opportunities to get bin Laden before 9/11. And when the time came to make an “Executive Decision”, as such things require, Clinton passed. As I said to a guy in a bar back in November 1996 after he’d won reelection, “we’re going to be paying for this for a long time.” I had no idea how right I was.
Having thought about it, one of those times was Sudan straight-up offering bin Laden up for extradition. Of course, Clinton turned them down because he didn’t believe there was any legal pretext. As if the first WTC bombing wasn’t enough.
“There was that time, down at the lake, when I hooked what had to be a 70lbs bass, 9’long. I fought it for hours, but it got dark and to land it would have violated the regs so I was forced to cut the line”
OR
“And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids”
Take your pick.
I believe the appropriate comment is “At this point, what difference does it make”.
IIRC, according to some former CIA types, in the late 1990’s Clinton had several opportunities to authorize the seizure or killing of bin Laden. In one instance, Bill was on the golf course, and he couldn’t be bothered to leave the course and go to his office to see the intelligence.
A charming, narcissistic sociopath, a lying POS.
Give “Losing bin Laden” by Richard Miniter a read. I don’t recall all of the particular (and I can’t located it on my shelf just now), but Clinton was offered up bin Laden several times by a third country (Syria, I think) through an intermediary, and he turned the opportunity down each time.
> what happened to that TV show that (I think) ABC aired about this very topic? Shown once, never been seen since.
…and they’ve tried to memory-hole The Path to 9/11 wherever it has surfaced. I managed to snag a copy at some point (timestamps say 2012, but it might be older) and have it on my home server, immune to takedown attempts.
(Come to think of it, I might’ve recorded it off cable when it was originally broadcast and have kept it for the past 20 years. It is only a standard-definition copy. I have my server set to keep an eye out for an HD copy, if it should happen to drift by on the high seas. 🙂 )