In his interview with Chris Wallace, President Clinton repeatedly cited Richard Clarke’s book which Cornerites have conclusively demonstrated does not actually endorse the former president as a resolute and successful anti-terrorism warrior.
There’s another book that makes the same point: My Life, by Bill Clinton.
It is telling to note that in his autobiography, which I reviewed for NOR in 2004, Clinton’s first mention of terrorism does not appear until page 574. Al-Qaeda does not appear until page 797.
At no point is there a serious discussion of Militant Islamist ideologies or of the potential effectiveness of terrorists armed with advanced Western technologies. Had Clinton spent a lot of time working on such issue during his years in office, would that not have found its way into his 957-page door-stopper?
Clinton does say that after the bombing of the USS Cole he considered a “large-scale bombing campaign of all suspected [terrorist] campsites or a sizeable invasion” of Afghanistan where thousands of terrorists were being trained – this was known to Clinton and his deputies. But he decided “neither was feasible without a finding of al Qaeda responsibility for the Cole” bombing.
What about the bombing of our African embassies two years earlier? Did he seriously believe there was doubt about the responsibility for those attacks? Did he reason that a few years of further investigation might show that the US ambassadors had bombed their own embassies for the insurance money?