Over at the Huffington Post, where one would expect fist-pumping ephoria over Clinton "fighting back" against the "right-wing conspiracy", not everyone is impressed. Nora Ephron writes:

So Bill Clinton was sandbagged by Chris Wallace. By Chris Wallace? And he lost it. And he wasted a television appearance - when he could have been talking about taking back Congress - talking about (no surprise) Bill Clinton. Poor Bill Clinton. The victim of Fox News, the media arm of the right-wing conspiracy. The man who went after Bin Laden and was accused of wagging the dog. "I tried," he said. I tried? How lame is that? I haven't been able to listen to that since the sixties, when Werner Erhard, of all people, became famous for demolishing that excuse. When people said "I tried" to Werner Erhard, he would put a glass on a table and say to them, "Try to pick that up."

How does it happen? How does one of the smartest men ever elected president end up sandbagged by Chris Wallace? Is this what one docudrama does to the guy? I don't think so. I'm afraid this is classic Clinton, Clinton the monologist, Clinton the guy who used to keep his White House houseguests up until 4 a.m. while he went on and on about what the press was doing to him. What a waste. On top of which: Clinton calls George Bush "43"? Is he so confused about his role in the Bush family constellation that he has adopted their nicknames for one another?

It never occured to me that Wallace might be considered a wimp journalist. A real wimp journalist would never have asked the question in the first place. Its simply remarkable how much the left hate a single cable news channel with a fraction of the audience the broadcast networks have. I think the Clinton conniption resonates so much with the left because both the president and the far left can't stand to be challenged. They remind me of Islamic radicals protesting the popes un-PC-like but completely accurate comments on the nature of Islam.

All the coverage to this point is about Clinton's outburst, not the content of what he said, which in my view is a good indication that Clinton failed in his bid to rebut the narrative on his accountability for 9/11.

Nevertheless, the content is what is going to ultimately cause him the biggest problems.

In the panel discussion of Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace debunks Clinton's persecution complex by pointing out that he had indeed asked Donald Rumsfeld why bin Laden wasn't a higher priority pre-9/11.

As I stated in my earlier post, I though Clinton would regret pointing the Fox News audience towards Richard Clarke as an authoritive source on the Clinton administration's actions, attitudes and plans for bin Laden.

On a background briefing in 2002 to a number of reporters, including Fox News' Jim Angle, Clarke said the following:

RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.

Clinton implied that Clarke was completely reliable, so I guess that means we have to take him at his word.

As to Clinton's attempt to create the inference that the Bush administration demoted the best guy on terrorism (Clarke):

QUESTION: What is your response to the suggestion in the [Aug. 12, 2002] Time [magazine] article that the Bush administration was unwilling to take on board the suggestions made in the Clinton administration because of animus against the — general animus against the foreign policy?

CLARKE: I think if there was a general animus that clouded their vision, they might not have kept the same guy dealing with terrorism issue. This is the one issue where the National Security Council leadership decided continuity was important and kept the same guy around, the same team in place. That doesn't sound like animus against uh the previous team to me.

JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?

CLARKE: All of that's correct.

Clarke was confronted with this interview during his testimony before the 9/11 commission and explained it by saying that he was lying. Clarke has changed his mind on a variety of issues as time as passed, including whether there was any link between Saddam and al Qaeda. The bombing of the al Shifa pharmaceutical was at his behest, with the explanation that the plant was a joint venture between Saddam and bin Laden. Yet in an interview in March of 2004, Clarke denied there was any suppport for al Qaeda from Iraq. Incredibily, only weeks later, he reaffirmed the link between al Qaeda, Iraq and the al Shifa plant during his testimony before the 9/11 commission.

Can we believe anything Clarke says? I guess it depends on what you want to believe. I suppose Clinton hopes you'll read the statements by Clarke favorable of his actions, and ignore the rest, like this:

QUESTION: Had the Clinton administration in any of its work on this issue, in any of the findings or anything else, prepared for a call for the use of ground forces, special operations forces in any way? What did the Bush administration do with that if they had?

CLARKE: There was never a plan in the Clinton administration to use ground forces. The military was asked at a couple of points in the Clinton administration to think about it. Um, and they always came back and said it was not a good idea. There was never a plan to do that.

Byron York has an excellent article on what precisely Richard Clarke's book actually says, and rather than exonerate Clinton, its a devastating indictment.

But Clarke’s book does not, in fact, support Clinton’s claim. Judging by Clarke’s sympathetic account — as well as by the sympathetic accounts of other former Clinton aides like Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon — it’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden. Rather, he tried to convince — as opposed to, say, order — U.S. military and intelligence agencies to kill bin Laden. And when, on a number of occasions, those agencies refused to act, Clinton, the commander-in-chief, gave up.

One particular point that York pulled out of the book really hit me.

Because of the intensity of the political opposition that Clinton engendered, he had been heavily criticized for bombing al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, for engaging in ‘Wag the Dog’ tactics to divert attention from a scandal about his personal life. For similar reasons, he could not fire the recalcitrant FBI Director who had failed to fix the Bureau or to uncover terrorists in the United States. He had given the CIA unprecedented authority to go after bin Laden personally and al Qaeda, but had not taken steps when they did little or nothing. Because Clinton was criticized as a Vietnam War opponent without a military record, he was limited in his ability to direct the military to engage in anti-terrorist commando operations they did not want to conduct. He had tried that in Somalia, and the military had made mistakes and blamed him. In the absence of a bigger provocation from al Qaeda to silence his critics, Clinton thought he could do no more. (page 225, "Against All Enemies")

I'm sure glad that Bush didn't let political opposition derail his anti-terror efforts.