“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.”
—Former President Bill Clinton, Sept. 24, 2006Now there’s a passage for the next edition of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.” It is the stunning, blatant confession made in the midst of a heated exchange on “FOX News Sunday” with Chris Wallace that as president, Bill Clinton sanctioned the assassination of Usama bin Laden.
To put this little piece of braggadocio in context, it should be noted that no other American president has ever admitted to such a serious violation of law. Although assassination is specifically forbidden as a course of action open to U.S. officials, including presidents, no one seems to have noticed what was being said— perhaps because they were so caught up with the theater of what was happening on the screen.
Over the course of the past week, there is hardly a talk show in America that hasn’t run the tape of Clinton’s tirade and then proffered instant analysis of the former president’s performance. After playing the clip, one jabber-jawed host even asked a guest “Who won that exchange between Wallace and Clinton?” as if he were interviewing the judges at the “Friday Night Fights.”
Not one of the “experts” has, as yet, observed that in all of this, the biggest loser wasn’t on the screen; it was the American people. The tape of a former president arrogantly proclaiming on international television that he personally authorized the assassination of a foreign foe may be great stuff for the screenplay of “Rambo V,” but U.S. and international law specifically forbid it. Over the course of fighting the jihad being waged against us, Mr. Clinton’s intemperate words will come back to haunt us many times over. And of course, he won’t be the one to pay the price.
Read the whole thing.
What’s amazing to me is that President Bush has weathered a storm of criticism over interrogation techniques that - in what I feel is an overreaction - many people have deemed “torture.” Yet President Clinton admits to authorizing assassinations that are explicitly against international law and there is nary a peep from these same critics who are ostensibly oh-so-concerned about America’s image in the world.
Amazing how double standards like that work, isn’t it?