Clinton says he did his best to trap Laden, destroy al Qaeda

NEW YORK: Former U.S. president Bill Clinton steadfastly defended his efforts as president to capture al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and accused the Bush administration of doing very little in thwarting the 11 September 2001 attacks engineered by the terrorist outfit.

In a taped interview telecast on Fox News Sunday, the former president claimed he was closer to killing Laden than anybody else and said if he continued as president he would have "more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him."

He chided the right-wingers for criticizing him for his efforts to capture Laden, saying, "But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now."

He was pointedly asked whether he had failed to anticipate the threat posed by the Qaeda leader. He responded, "They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed." The 9.11 attacked occurred about eight months after president Bush took over from Clinton.

He said he had authorized the CIA to kill Laden and overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan after the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000, but the action was never carried out because the U.S. could not establish a military base in Uzbekistan and because both the CIA and FBI refused to certify that Laden was behind the bombing.

A television movie earlier in September had portrayed Clinton as too much preoccupied with the Monica Lewinsky scandal that he failed to confront Laden and his militants. Clinton had dismissed the contention as indisputably wrong.

Asserting that he had done more to try to kill Laden than "all the right-wingers who are attacking me now," he said, conservatives at one time had criticized him for "obsessing" over Laden while he was in office.

Clinton also pointed out to the anomalous perception in the minds of the Bush administration as far as threats from Iraq and Afghanistan are concerned. He said the U.S. has 21,000 troops in Afghanistan, most of them in bases along the border, while it has 140,000 troops dealing with the increasing unrest in Iraq.

At one point in the interview, the former president accused host Christ Wallace of straying away from the main theme of discussion -- climate change -- and asking him why he did not do more to capture Laden and destroy al Qaeda.

"So you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me," he told Wallace. "I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of?

"And you've 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," he said.

More World News click here