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Sept. 25, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:09
September 25, 2006, Monday, Hour #2
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Greetings, thrill seekers, music lovers, conversationalists, all across the fruited play in the award-winning Thrill Pact Rush Limbaugh program here for the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
And we will get to your phone calls.
I know you want to weigh in on all this.
And we'll get to it.
800-282-2882 is the number.
If you would like to be on the program.
I checked the email and I knew this was going to happen.
And I know that most of the people writing this complaint are Clintonoids.
Can't you let go of it?
You wouldn't have a show if it weren't for Bill Clinton.
Why do you have to keep harping on all this?
Even though those questions do come from Clinton Noids, let me explain something to you, folks.
Why is this important?
Let's take a look at Somalia.
Let's review what we've already heard from President Clinton.
I sound bicep today from the interview yesterday.
He essentially said, hey, don't blame Somalia on me.
I mean, nobody had ever heard of bin Laden 93.
Nobody had heard of al-Qaeda.
Nobody thought they were behind all that.
Why, there's not a person in the world that made that association.
Don't blame that on me.
Well, the bottom line is that two years or three years later we did, because that's when John Miller had interviews with bin Laden.
Bin Laden was from ABC and is on the network telling the world and everybody, well, we saw that behavior, that cut and run out of Somalia.
Well, the American people can't take casualties.
That inspired us, it motivated us and taught us a lot.
The reason that's important is because the Democrats are trying the same strategy in Iraq, folks.
They want, if given power, they will create another Somalia situation in Iraq.
The John Murthy's, the John Careys, the whole Democratic Party or that bunch of them that wants to pull out of Iraq, if you think Somalia led to bad things, if we pull out of Iraq, it's just going to embolden them even further.
So it's, you know, history is always a great teacher.
And this goes beyond Clinton.
You know, the problem with Clinton is that all this only concerns him and his legacy and his narcissistic self-absorption.
But this really is about the country.
It's the way we fight the war on terror and the way we're going to come together on it and the way we did come together all through the 90s when Clinton was launching these attacks.
And by the way, he only did one.
And we talk about all this wag the dogs of he only he only did one.
It's not as though he had a lifetime of attacking terrorists.
He did one.
He launched these missile attacks of what turned out to be an aspirin factory in Sudan and these terrorist or these missiles in the Afghan camps where bin Laden was supposedly hiding out.
He only did it once.
I mean, it's not as though there was a presidential policy about this.
But even back then, as we've documented already in the first hour today, Republicans were wholly supportive.
Clinton lied blatantly on television yesterday saying Republicans were mad at him and saying he was obsessed with bin Laden.
Why didn't he get on to other things?
We're now discussing his constant references 11 times in this interview to Richard Clark as the sole authority.
Richard Hark had it right.
And go read his book.
So here is Audio Sound by the four again from the top.
Do you think Richard Clark has a vigorous attitude about bin Laden?
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.
They downgraded him and the terrorist operation.
Read his book and read his factual assertions.
Not opinions, assertions.
All right, stop it.
Stop, stop, stop, stop.
I can't, I cannot.
I'm trying to here, but I can't get through a whole bite without stopping this stuff.
All right.
Vigorous attitude about bin Laden worked for Reagan, blah, blah.
They downgraded him and the terrorist operation.
Read his book.
Read his factual assertions, not opinions, assertions.
Well, we did.
The name of Clark's book is Against All Enemies.
And if you turn to page 234 of Richard Clark's book, you can read this, which sort of contradicts Clinton's claim that you just heard that Richard Clark had been demoted and then later fired.
Here's Clark writing.
I had completed the review of the organizational options for homeland defense and critical infrastructure protection that Secretary Rice had asked me to conduct.
There was agreement to create a separate senior White House position for critical infrastructure protection and cybersecurity outside the NSC staff.
Condi Rice and Steve Hadley assumed that I would continue on the NSC focusing on terrorism and asked whom I had in mind for the new job that would be created outside the NSC.
This is basically internet.
I requested that I be given that assignment to the apparent surprise of Condi Rice and Steve Hadley.
Now, Clinton has asked us to look at the Richard Clark book, not the 9-11 report.
The 9-11 Commission report, which was used as a primary source in the path to 9-11, portrayed Clark getting called in and being summarily demoted by Condoleezza Rice.
That is why Clinton thinks it happened because he read the report and he probably did watch the movie.
Yet he cites to us Clark's book as the foremost authority, cites the book 11 times, says, go read Richard Clark.
They fired him and they demoted him.
Well, we now know that Richard Clark was not demoted.
He asked to be transferred by his own admission.
He asked, and the 9-11 movie got this wrong, apparently, if Clark is right.
If Clark's book is right, that whole scene where Condi brings him in and tells him, we're doing a new thing here, Dick, and we're sending you over here to this new internet thing we got, study terrorism.
And Clark looked dumbfounded, couldn't believe he's being moved.
And in his own book, let me read it to you again.
There was agreement to create a separate senior White House position for critical infrastructure protection and cybersecurity outside the NSC staff where Clark was currently working.
Condi Rice and Steve Hadley assumed I would continue on the NSC focusing on terrorism and asked whom I had in mind for the new job that would be created outside the NSC.
I requested that I be given that assignment to the apparent surprise of Condi Rice and Steve Hadley.
So if he was demoted, he requested it.
Now, Clinton also implied in what you just heard that Clark was demoted prior to 9-11, and so did the movie, The Path to 9-11.
But if you go to page 239 of Clark's book, Against All Enemies, you'll read the following.
Roger Cressy, my deputy at the NSC staff, came to me in early October.
That would be after September.
After the time I had intended to switch from the terrorism job to critical, after the time I had intended.
He wasn't demoted and he wasn't shoved out of the way.
He asked to go there, and he was getting ready to go there in October after 9-11.
But he says I couldn't make the move because the switch had been delayed by September 11th.
So the Bush administration kept Clark at the NSC, according to Clark, beyond the period he had planned on being there.
Did I stop this?
Okay, let's hear the rest of it.
With bigger action after the African embassies, we probably nearly got Bin Laden.
The CI was run by George Tennant 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.
That's just we didn't have anything till Clinton got there.
We didn't have a good economy.
We didn't have right tax policy.
Nobody had health care.
Do you realize, folks, this country was just a bunch of savages roaming the plains before Clinton got there?
We didn't have anything in place.
He launched one attack.
One attack.
And the most comprehensive terror policy we've ever had.
The Bush administration.
Yeah, he's probably telling me to wipe that smirk off my face.
That wasn't a smirk, Mr. President.
That was a look of total incredulity by Chris Wallace, who couldn't believe the behavior he was saying in a former president.
One more bite here.
Again, I'm going to do my best to get through this without stopping it.
I haven't managed to pull that off yet today, but I'm going to keep on.
In this bite, Clinton goes off on this tangent about how he drew up plans to go into Afghanistan, but everybody stopped him.
I mean, he really wanted, but everybody out there stopped him.
If you want to criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for this.
After the COVID, 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.
The CIA and the FBI responsible.
Wait, I'm sorry.
So Bush did something right?
We needed basing rights in Uzbekistan.
Clinton couldn't do that, but Bush was able to after 9-11.
We'd been hit long before 9-11.
Clinton couldn't get basing rights in Uzbekistan, but Bush could, and yet Bush is the incompetent here?
To certify that bin Laden was responsible for the United States.
Stop type.
Stop type.
What are you saying here?
The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible while I was there.
While I was there.
They refused to certify.
So that meant I would have had to send a few hundred special forces in and helicopters refueled 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, anybody wants to say I didn't do enough, you read Richard Clark.
Well, we've done that, too, and it doesn't bear you out, Mr. President.
We try not to gloat here over the implosion of political enemies, and I'm trying not to do that.
But once again, you know, CIA, FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible while I was there.
Bin Laden declared war on us, 1996.
You said you were obsessed with bin Laden.
How in the world does this play?
You're obsessed with bin Laden, but you couldn't get the CIA or the FBI to certify that bin Laden was responsible.
Why were you obsessed with bin Laden then if nobody could have certified that he was involved?
Do you understand how convoluted and pathological this is?
They refused to certify, so that meant that I would have had to send a few hundred special forces, a helicopters, refuel at night.
Even a 9-11 Commission had recommend that.
What did Richard Clark recommend, Mr. President?
It seems to be the foremost authority.
Here again, though, what we have, the buck never got there.
Hey, you can't blame me.
I mean, I tried, but I just couldn't.
And they didn't certify, so I couldn't do it.
Mansoor Ejaz, Los Angeles Times, has written of the efforts that Clinton was, or the attempts that Sudan made to offer bin Laden to Clinton.
The idea that nobody would certify anything, this is just, it's just pathological.
We got more sound bites in your phone calls.
Coming up after this, the EIB Network rolls on the EIB Network.
And I promise I'm going to get, we've got more Clinton Bites too, but we're going to intersperse other things to sort of refute them as well.
But I'll make a pledge here.
I'm going to get through one of these bites without stopping it.
Folks, be patient.
We're going to get to your phone calls and other things in the stack of stuff today.
The Democrats continue to implode in other areas as well as this, and we'll get to it all.
We're going to switch gears here and go to CBS early show today.
The co-host Harry Smith talked to former CIA analyst Michael Shire.
Now, we've talked about Shire in the past.
Keep in mind, Shire is no fan of Bush, no fan of the Bush administration, and no fan of the war in Iraq.
But he was involved in one of these CIA missions to get bin Laden.
And Harry Smith, I'm sure, thinks he's doing a piece here to defend Clinton against this neocon, vast right-wing conspiracy assault on their beloved fearless leader on Fox on Sunday.
The question is, President Clinton basically laid blame at the feet of the CIA and the FBI for not being able to certify about that.
And talking about presidential and character, I mean, we've all heard how rotten and dumb and lightweighted George W. Bush is.
You ever heard him blame his administration?
He stands, he bucks them up, he supports them.
He doesn't dump on them.
Only a man who is obsessed with himself in a narcissistic way and knows that he's telling lies to himself at first.
I think he ends up believing his lies.
But only a guy who knows he didn't do anything serious in his administration is trying to create the impression after the fact that he did would dump on his own department head, his own cabinet, CIA, FBI, as though he was powerless.
Richard Clark wrote about that too.
The reason Clinton was powerless was because he had a little aversion to the military, because of his Vietnam experiences, his letter that he wrote to Colonel Holmes, the Lewinsky situation.
Clinton was handcuffed by his, in his own mind, he was handcuffed by his previous behavior.
He was in a straitjacket.
He couldn't operate without threatening the approval rating and the legacy and so forth.
And Clark makes this point clear that that was Clinton's attitude.
So now you've got a dump on the FBI.
You have a dump on the CIA.
And now after those people are gone and they can't react to it, it is classic, childish CYA.
And it certainly is not presidential.
Here's the whole question.
President Clinton basically laid the blame at the feet of the CIA and the FBI for not being able to certify or verify that bin Laden was responsible for a number of different attacks.
Does that ring true with you, Michael Shire?
No, sir, I don't think so.
The former president seems to be able to deny facts with impunity.
Bin Laden is alive today because Mr. Clinton, Mr. Sandy Berger, and Mr. Richard Clark refused to kill him.
That's the bottom line.
And every time he says what he said to Chris Wallace on Fox, he defames the CIA especially and the men and women who risked their lives to give his administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden.
Harry Smith, stunned at this, says, is the Bush administration any less responsible for not finishing the job in Tora Bora?
There's plenty of blame to go around, sir, but the fact of the matter is that the Bush administration had one chance that they botched, and the Clinton administration had eight to ten chances that they refused to try.
At least at Tora Bora, our forces were on the ground.
We didn't push the point.
But it's just an incredible kind of situation for the American people over the weekend to hear their former president mislead them.
Remember, this is no friend of George W. Bush speaking.
Michael Scheier, former CIA agent, He's saying Clinton didn't even try.
And yet, the famous bite from that interview yesterday with Clinton losing it, purple rage, eyes bugging out, pointing that finger at poor little Chris Wallace.
What?
CBS.
It's on CBS.
CBS is in on the conspiracy to get Clinton along with ABC.
And don't forget, I've been a commentator on CBS.
So I have a connection to CBS as well as the writer of the movie of 9-11 and ABC.
So my fingerprints are very, very deep on this, in this conspiracy to get Clinton.
But he says here, Clinton didn't even try.
Clinton blew up yesterday.
He said, at least I tried.
I tried and failed, but they didn't even try.
Not once in eight months.
Did they even try?
Here Shire said he didn't even try.
All right.
Now, back to Clinton.
I got to try to get through this without stopping the tape.
Mike Chris Wallace says, Do you think you did enough, sir?
No, because I didn't get him.
Right.
But at least I tried.
That's the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers that 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.
Stop the tape.
Now, that was the segment that people have seen where he just lost it.
I mean, if you saw that segment, that's where he lawyers.
That's when that finger was jabbing Chris Wallace's papers.
The finger was a long finger, by the way, just inches away from his nose, leading up on the front edge of the chair.
Something else I noticed, I'm sure some of you did too.
Somebody needs, and I'm serious.
We're talking about a former president.
It's really bad form to wear socks that are too short when you're sitting down.
Your slack's a little high on your calf up there, and you've got pasty white ankles and thighs, don't even have a golf tan under there.
It's distracting.
Some people actually thought Clinton was wearing white socks in the email.
And I had a right.
I'm excited.
No, not socks.
He's wearing black socks.
They're just too short.
What you saw there was Clinton showing a little leg.
Who knows who he thought was in the audience?
But this was the portion where he just lost it.
And this is when we knew, this is when it was confirmed that the movie got to him and that the truth is undermining his lie and his alternative reality that his entire legacy and existence is built on.
I think President Clinton runs around telling himself lies and has done so for so long.
He really believes this stuff, folks.
He really thinks that he was the only one who really made a serious effort to get bin Laden.
Nobody else has.
He came so close, and the country owes him a debt of gratitude, and he doesn't understand.
The neocons and the right-wingers and out there ridiculing him for trying.
Nobody's ridiculing you, sir, for trying.
We're ridiculing you for lying about it.
HR, stop what you're doing.
When we go to the phones, I want to start with line five.
Just got a little bit more to do here, folks.
I want to get your phone calls in, but I want to keep the rhythm going because we've put this together in sort of a timeline fashion in order to reply to the elements of Clinton's comments as they occurred.
We're going to go back here to the previous soundbite that I did not get through the whole thing because I had to stop it.
Chris Wallace again with the question: Do you think you did enough, sir?
No, because I didn't get him.
Right.
But at least I tried.
That's the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers that 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 Clark, who got demoted.
Stop the tape.
It did not get demoted.
We've quoted Clark's own book.
He requested a change to the new cyber division.
It didn't even happen until after 9-11.
Clark was still at the National Security Council staff before 9-11 happened.
He wasn't demoted.
He wasn't fired.
Clinton lying, sadly, again.
So you did Fox's bidding on this show.
You did your nice little conservative hit job on me.
This is where it really began to get interesting to me.
I mean, all this other stuff is typical, Clinton, and so is this.
Fox's bidding on this show.
This man is a former president, but he has been reduced here to a sniveling, whining baby who thinks that he has been set up.
He's a former president.
He tried to broker Mideast Peace.
He was obsessed with Bin Laden.
He was dealing with some of the world's biggest hooligans, and he's allowed himself to get set up by Fox, by Chris Wallace, and Fox News Sunday.
And it's a conservative hit job on him.
It goes to what I've been saying.
These people never get, and these weren't even hard questions, folks.
That's the thing about it.
These are questions that he doesn't get anywhere else.
Everywhere else, he's protected, as are all the Democrats.
They are protected.
They're not smeared by the mainstream media.
They are protected.
They are amplified.
They are resurrected when they plummet.
They are promoted.
They are considered the smartest people in the world, the most accomplished, the most valuable.
If it weren't for these people falling over, Clinton's legacy wouldn't have a chance anyway.
You set this meeting up because you're going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch's supporting my work on climate change.
Stop the title.
No, this is juvenile.
This is just juvenile.
You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Murdoch's supporting my work on climate change.
How many of you have stopped watching Fox News because Rupert Murdoch had a little fundraising breakfast for Hillary?
How many of you have stopped watching Fox because Rupert goes to Clinton's little circle, you know what, here, to raise and fleece money from people for hunger around the world?
We have always domestic problems here in this country, and I got to feed the people in the world.
I mean, it's just childish, folks.
It is just literally, literally childish.
You set this meeting.
You agreed to come on, sir.
They extended an invitation.
You agreed to come on.
Set this meeting up because you're going to get a lot of criticism from your view.
What is this guy?
What informs Bill Clinton on this?
He is as much a kook fringe lib as everybody else out there in their blogosphere is what this means.
He's not this triangulator.
I told you from the get-go, folks.
He and Hillary are a team.
He has to be the one to get the votes.
So he triangulated, made himself out to be a moderate while Hillary was the hardcore leftist.
But they both are.
And they always have been.
And Clinton is demonstrating that again.
You came here under false pretenses and said that you'd spent 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.
You falsely accused me of giving aid and comfort to bin Laden because of what happened in Somalia.
Well, is there a false accusation that aid and comfort was given to bin Laden?
He's running around with a guilt complex.
I'm telling you, he's got a lot of guilt and shame over this.
And he's lying to himself about it.
And the last thing somebody's lying can be confronted with is the truth, particularly pathological liar.
You came here under false pretenses.
You told me that you were going to give me a softball interview, made me look good in the eyes of the world for raising all this money and caring about a bunch of damn poor people.
And now you're confronting me with this business about bin Laden.
This is just that's beneath anybody who's held the office of the presidency.
Wallace then said, But did they know in 96 when he declared war in the U.S.?
Did they know in 98 when he bombed these two countries?
Did they know in 2000 when he hit the USS coal?
What did I do?
I worked hard to try to kill him.
I authorized the finding for the CIA to kill him.
We contracted with people to kill him.
I got closer to killing him than anybody's gotten since.
And if I were still president, we'd have more than 20,000 troops here trying to kill him.
Now, I've never criticized President Bush.
Stop the tape.
Can't let this one go by.
Never criticized the president.
What, you mean on Sunday?
What about the previous five years?
What about when you travel abroad and undermine the Iraq war policy?
What about when you criticize the way the war on terror is being prosecuted?
You're doing it here.
If I were still president, we'd have 20,000 troops down there somewhere.
I issued a presidential finding for the CIA to kill him.
They don't think so.
CIA doesn't think so.
FBI doesn't think so.
They never got the word to go forward from you, sir.
It's actually sort of pitiful and pathetic.
We're watching a 60-year-old man here behave as an eight-year-old caught in a sandbox with the neighbor's little daughter.
Well, we are.
I mean, no, I've minded my own business here.
I was just, you know, exploring my nudity, and she walked in on her own.
What was I supposed to do?
All right, here's the rest of this.
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 asked me about terror and al-Qaeda with that sort of dismissive thing, 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.
Tried to do a lot.
Tried to cut taxes, tried to do this, tried to do that.
Just never worked harder on all these things.
Tried, you tried and tried and tried.
Get that smirk off your face.
Look at that smirk.
How you think you're so clever because you're nailing me and so forth.
This is intimidating.
That is threatening.
Well, I know it's funny.
It's...
It's hilarious, but it's just instructive here.
I can think this is a former president doing this stuff.
Wallace tries to move on to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Can I ask you about the Clinton Global Initiative?
You can.
I always intended to, sir.
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 deals where they ask me one set of questions and the other guys notice that.
And it always comes from one source.
Always comes from one source.
I wonder who.
Who is that one source?
Probably the Mr. Big of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
Who is the Mr. Big?
He went on to say that they never asked these questions of the other guy.
You got to be in utter denial.
Never ask these questions to the other side.
How many press conferences have there been where the drive-by media has demanded Bush admit he made mistakes in virtually every aspect of the war on terror and the war on Iraq?
Never gets asked these questions.
He gets asked constantly, why haven't you gotten bin Laden?
You failed to get bin Laden.
What are you doing to get bin Laden?
The Democrats say the fact that you haven't got bin Laden means a war on terror is a failure.
And he thinks the other side's never asked this stuff.
By the way, we looked that up, too.
Here's Chris Wallace talking to Donald Rumsfeld, March 28th, 2004.
Quote, I understand this is 2020 hindsight.
It's more than an individual manhood.
I mean, what you ended up doing in the end was going after al-Qaeda where it lived pre-9-11.
Should you have been thinking more about that?
So there's Chris Wallace criticizing Rumsfeld for not doing anything pre-9-11.
What do you make of his Richard Clark's basic charge that pre-9-11, this government, the Bush administration, largely ignored the threat from al-Qaeda?
Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a Trump top priority.
Now, you may not remember any of those interviews in 2004 with Secretary Rumsfeld by Chris Wallace, and that's because Rumsfeld didn't blow a gasket and act like a little kid when he answered the questions.
But to say that Chris Wallace has never asked these questions before is absurd.
Now, Bob Beckel was on Fox today, and he said, and he's trying to make the most of this, and I don't blame him.
I feel a little sorry for him, too.
But he said, what Clinton was doing here was giving Democrats a roadmap on how to deal with these silly charges, Democrats assault on terror.
Bill Quinton was telling them how to go out there and do it.
Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Wallace reports that Clinton walked out of there in a rage and threatened to fire his staff if they set him up like this ever again and if they goofed up.
I'm telling you, this was not a planned strategy.
If you think that this is sort of some grand liberal Democrat strategy that's outsmarted everybody, you have got it wrong.
You're being too smart by half.
This was the Bill Clinton, real Bill Clinton, and this was unmasking.
This was taking a camouflage off.
This was getting rid of the mask.
There was nothing staged about this.
There was nothing programmed or rehearsed about it.
This was not a message to Democrats because Bill Clinton, in those minutes of the interview yesterday, couldn't have cared less about the Democrat Party or anybody but himself.
Back in just a second.
Clinton says, I'll never attack President Bush.
I'll never criticize President Bush.
Hell, he went on to meet the press yesterday and criticized President Bush's war policies left and right.
No big deal.
Let you go to the phones.
I really appreciate all of you being patient.
We'll start with Nathan in Puyallup, Washington.
Thank you, sir, for waiting, and welcome to the program.
Thank you, Rush.
Monday morning, Dittos.
Question, Bill Crystal seems to think that this was a strategy by Bill Quinton, that he had prepared this, basically come out, attack Fox, attack the conservative movement, kind of inoculating the Democrats against further questioning along these lines toward the election.
Bill Crystal said that.
Bill said that this morning on Fox.
Yeah, this morning on Fox, Bill Crystal said that I have to tell you, I sincerely, wholeheartedly, stridently disagree with that.
Clinton was too upset.
If that was his purpose, if he had a message and if he was leaving a roadmap for the Democrats, he blew it.
He was livid when he walked out of that studio.
Chris Wallace, who interviewed him, said that he threatened to fire his staff.
He was still exploding, walking out of there.
Said if he ever got set up like that again, it'd be the end of them.
This didn't go the way Clinton wanted.
Besides, this doesn't inoculate Democrats.
I haven't seen any Democrats come out and defend him.
I don't know what this means.
Inoculate Democrats?
Are you trying to take the heat off them?
Nothing's going to take the heat off them.
This wasn't even about the Democrats.
This is about Bill Clinton.
I think there are a lot of people trying to be the smartest people in the room out there and come up with opinions I think nobody else is going to have.
But this was no grand strategy.
This was an unmasking.
This was, I think, all the more so.
And though Clinton had to know he was going to get this question at some point if he goes on a Sunday morning.
Well, maybe he doesn't.
Maybe he thinks he's going to get pampered by Fox because Murdoch's going to take care of him since Murdoch donated money to his world forum.
Anyway, Kelly in Montclair, New Jersey.
You're next.
Nice to have you with us.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
How are you?
Fine.
Thank you.
Good.
This is my question.
Where in the Constitution does it state that the CIA needs to certify anything before the president can decide to send troops into battle?
Well, it's not that.
It's to assassinate somebody who is high up, maybe a president or foreign leader.
In the emasculation of the CIA by the Church Commission in 1975, the CIA is not allowed to assassinate anybody without a presidential finding or which doesn't really explain his later comment that he had a contract out on bin Laden or anything.
Well, yeah, contract.
He had certified the death, but that's not true either because all of these CIA agents who on a couple of occasions called the White House, the National Security Council, said, We got bin Laden in our sights.
Can we go get him?
Clinton wouldn't answer.
The story is, and this is from the guy, Buzz Peterson, who carried the nuclear football for Clinton for a couple years.
Sandy Berger would call Clinton saying, we got bin Laden in our sights.
Can we go take him out?
Clinton wouldn't answer the phone when he saw, and he knew what was being worked on.
He wouldn't answer the phone when he saw it was from Berger.
He was at a golf club once.
Other times, he would return the call after the window of opportunity had passed.
This is from somebody who was with Bill Clinton saying this.
This is really, I know it's funny to some people, but we elected a pathological liar to be president of the United States.
So we are paying dearly for it now in this whole war on terror.
We had eight years to gin up and be serious about this, and we never got there.
And now the one guy who's elected 9-11 happens and has to take this seriously is being pilloried.
They're trying to destroy him and his presidency.
They want to impeach him if they win the House in November.
They want to pull us out of Iraq.
They want to compound the problems.
That's why this is really serious stuff.
We've got an administration trying to clean up a whole lot of messes that this other bunch left.
And it's really serious times.
I think more and more people are going to come to realize this as time goes on.
He didn't want to deal with Bin Laden.
He didn't want to take bin Laden as a prisoner in this country.
Didn't think that there were legal reasons to hold him.
He says that's not true.
Didn't want the political pressure.
Didn't want the pressure, downward pressure on his approval numbers.
There are a number of people, Shire, Monsieur Izaz, who say that Clinton was offered bin Laden a couple times.
Clinton even admitted it in a little speech out in Long Island.
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