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CNN Sunday Morning
Interview With Bill Clinton
Aired July 11, 2004 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. It's 9:00 a.m. here in Atlanta on July 11. This is CNN SUNDAY MORNING. I'm Drew Griffin.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Betty Nguyen. Good morning to the West Coast. Thanks for starting your day with us. Last month's release of "My Life" put former President Bill Clinton right back in the forefront of American debate. Questions about his presidency and his personal life have been topics of discussion since his days in the Oval Office. Now, this past week, he sat down with CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour. During this hour, we will bring you their entire conversation. But first, here's what's happening now in the news.
GRIFFIN: More American deaths in Iraq. Four U.S. Marines killed on patrol near Fallujah yesterday. The Associated Press reports the Marines died in a vehicle accident.
And an American soldier died today in a roadside attack near Mosul, in northern Iraq.
A death threat remains in force for a Filipino hostage in Iraq. The Philippine government says it will not give in to the kidnappers' demand to withdraw troops a month earlier than scheduled.
The government will fly Angelo de la Cruz's wife and brother to Iraq in an ongoing negotiation to secure his release.
Palestinian militants claim responsibility for a roadside bombing in Israel. The explosion in a Tel Aviv bus stop killed one woman, injured 20 others. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon condemned the attack, saying it shows the need for Israel's controversial West Bank barrier.
NGUYEN: Former President Bill Clinton is weighing in on the war in Iraq. He says he believes the United States should have moved more quickly to internationalize the war.
GRIFFIN: The former president discussing Iraq and other pressing international policy issues with CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: First of all, thank you very much for joining us on CNN.
BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Glad to do it.
AMANPOUR: I want to ask you first about Iraq. If one of your farewell interviews as president, you told an interviewer that one of your most difficult and challenging issues as president was Iraq. A quote I think was, "The most difficult thing, the hardest decision was deciding when to bomb and when not to bomb in Iraq." In retrospect, do you wish you had mustered a large invasion force like President Bush, and if not, do you think that the threat that you faced from Iraq is any different than the threat that President Bush faced from Iraq?
CLINTON: The answer to the first question is, no. I basically believe that the policy that I inherited, which was to keep Saddam Hussein in a box and under sanctions, unless and until he fully complied with all the U.N. resolutions was the right policy. It wasn't so great for the Iraqis, but he didn't present a substantial threat to anyone else, that's my belief based on the intelligence that I saw. I have no way of knowing how much of his weapons of mass destruction capacity was destroyed when the U.K. and the U.S. bombed him for four days in '98. But I think, I'm satisfied that we did the right thing. I think after the first Gulf War, it was a mistake to leave the Marsh Arabs, the Shiites in the southeast of Iraq unprotected. And I think the international coalition made a mistake to do that. But I don't believe that I made a mistake not to invade him. I think that we had more pressing security priorities. And we didn't have at the time an effective opposition. And there was certainly no international support for doing that.
AMANPOUR: Do you think the threat currently or in the last two years was any different than the threat you faced?
CLINTON: I have no information that would support that it is, but I don't -- you know, I haven't seen any intelligence in the last three years. So I don't know about that. I know that it seems to be hotly disputed what Vice President Cheney alleges and what others allege. I can only tell you that when 9/11 occurred and the president went back to the United Nations to ask for a resolution which essentially said Iraq has got to open up to weapons inspections again, I strongly supported that, because there was a substantial amount of botulinum, Alpha Toxin, VX and Ricin unaccounted for.
I want to be very careful about the language, we didn't know they had it or not had it. We just knew at the time the inspectors were kicked out in 98, it was unaccounted for. So I thought the inspections should start again, so did apparently everyone in the world. Everybody voted for that.
Then I thought the Congress was on solid grounds in giving the president the authority to use force because it was represented that the force would be used if Saddam Hussein did not cooperate. Then we launched the attack before the U.N. inspections were through. That I thought was an error.
But they had other reasons for wanting to overthrow Saddam. They thought he was an inherent threat to the region, they thought if we could have a representative pluralistic government in Iraq, it would be stabilized and force change in other autocrat tick regimes in the middle east and it might help us make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. That's what the Bush people thought. And so now it seems to me we all have a stake in the success of the enterprise.
AMANPOUR: And do you believe, given where it is right now, that peace in the Middle East, as you just mentioned, leads through Baghdad?
CLINTON: No. I think peace in the Middle East leads through resolving the differences between the Palestinians and Israelis and giving the Israelis a lock solid guarantee of security and normal relations with its neighbors and giving the Palestinians their own country on the West Bank and Gaza with their capital in the eastern part of Jerusalem as we provided before in the peace proposal that I made. And giving an economic future to the Palestinians who are so poor there and who have been oppressed for so long.
I think that that will do more than anything else to reduce the impulse of terror around the world and especially in the region and give the Middle East a peaceful future.
AMANPOUR: I'm going to come back to the Middle East, but I want to ask you another question on Iraq. You intervened, eventually in Bosnia and early in Kosovo to stop a genocide. And the war was also coupled with a very robust post-war plan with very heavy armored U.S.- led military forces and a political plan.
Given the instability in Iraq post the formal war there, what do you think could and should have been done differently to stabilize Iraq in much the same way as either Bosnia or Kosovo were after the war?
CLINTON: First, we had a very different situation, because NATO wasn't with us in Iraq. And the Russians didn't come into Iraq.
Keep in mind, the Russians nominally opposed what we and NATO did in both Bosnia and Kosovo, but they knew we were right and they came in and helped us with the post-war planning.
So we lost a lot of soldiers there after the mission was declared accomplished in Iraq, hundreds of them. And it made General Shinseki, whose military career was cut short because he committed candor in testifying that we needed more troops before the Congress, it made General Shinseki look like a seer like he knew what he was predicting.
So you can say we needed more troops there, but it was a constant two and fro, because we had troops in other places in the rest of the world. We already were down to 15,000 troops in Afghanistan, which is clearly not enough for us. But with any confidence to look like we're going to help stabilize the whole country or find bin Laden or his top lieutenants so we've got 50,000 there, 140,000 or more in Iraq already.
I think the main thing is we should have moved more quickly to internationalize it. And that would have required us early on, letting the United Nations have a say in the political decisions, opening the contracts up to people other than Americans and their allies. And just basically trying to say OK, Saddam's gone. Now we need everybody's help to make it right.
That is what's going on now. So I say again, whether I agree with everything's been done or not, all Americans, and just about everybody in the world has a stake now in the success of this Iraqi enterprise. And President Bush has gone back to the U.N. now. We do have a U.N. resolution. And I hope that once we show good faith in the United States, if we show good faith in observing sovereignty, giving up the monopoly on contracts, working with the U.N., I think in due time, and perhaps not before very long, we could get more help from our NATO allies.
AMANPOUR; And you think that will happen? Because there's nothing been forthcoming.
CLINTON: I think it will happen if they see we're serious, that, you know, it's a sharing thing. I mean, if you look at Bosnia and Kosovo, where we carried the lion's share of the military load during the conflict, because we had the capability to do it, but they were with us. Then when we moved into the peacekeeping phase of Bosnia and Kosovo, we assumed a minority role because they had the ability to do that, our allies.
So I think that we can use this to reestablish the vitality of NATO. We've trained a lot of those NATO forces for these kinds of missions now. I think we can get it back once we show good faith.
I just think right now that the politics between the United States and some of these European countries is so bad, not just -- not so much in the leaders, just with people in the street. You know it better than I do, you cover it all the time.
We just need to let some time pass, let the European public, as well as the leaders see that the United States has moved away from unilateralism in Iraq and it's a legitimate pluralistic government and we need their help and want their help. I think that we'll get it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NGUYEN: Up next, the former president on why the U.S. is unpopular in many places around the world.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Americans need to understand that it's not just about Iraq, it's about an attitude. They think now, the rest of the world thinks that we're going to act and do whatever we want whenever we can.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NGUYEN: Plus, his version on how close the U.S. came to catching Osama bin Laden. That's when we return.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) NGUYEN: Now more of CNN's interview with former President Bill Clinton. In the wake of the war in Iraq, anti-American sentiment has grown, even among allies. The former president spoke with CNN's Christiane Amanpour about how Washington can change perceptions, and about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Well, you brought it up -- I was going to ask you later, America has become very much feared and loathed in many parts of the world, not among the usual suspects, but among people who are usually America's friends and who want to like America. What needs to be done to stop that very dangerous state of affairs?
CLINTON: Well, in our country, the popular assumption is it's all about Iraq, and it's not all about Iraq. I think most everybody in the world understands that most Americans were more hawkish on Iraq than they were, including me. I mean, we bombed them two or three times and we always worried more about Saddam Hussein than they did.
But what made the Iraq thing so bitterly controversial was that it occurred in the aftermath of 9/11 when the whole world wanted to be with us. And they wanted America to lead a more united world and a united front against terror and a united front to make a world with more partners and fewer terrorists. It was a phenomenal opportunity.
And instead, we chose the path of unilateralism, not just in Iraq. We got out of the international criminal court, the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty, the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty before we knew our missile defenses would work, we got out of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Regime which every Republican president since Eisenhower was for, every president in both parties.
Something almost no Americans know, we changed the nuclear doctrine of the United States. Ever since World War II, we had never said we might use nuclear weapons first. Now the new nuclear doctrine is, we're trying to develop two small nuclear weapons one for battle and one to break underground bunkers, and we might use them first, even though it's already been conceded that if we might have dropped such a bunker buster on Baghdad, it might have taken out half the city.
So, Americans need to understand that it's not just about Iraq, it's about an attitude. They think now, the rest of the world thinks that we're going to do act and do whatever we want and cooperate only when we have to, when we've tried every other alternative. And that's what's got us in trouble. We would have had -- been treated, I think, much more differently on Iraq if it hasn't been for all the rest of the unilateralism. It's the cumulative impact that's alienated the rest of the world.
AMANPOUR: I want to ask you about Osama bin Laden. You say in your book that you made several efforts to kill him. In retrospect, do you believe, though, that you should have mustered some kind of special mission, some kind of special forces mission even though many of your senior military advisers opposed that at the time? Do you think you should have done it.
CLINTON: Well, what I wish now is that I had had a more vigorous military debate. One of the discussions that I had with the 9/11 commission involved the question of whether the reorganization of the military in the 1980s under the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which has done a lot of good, it's helped us to rationalize military, it's helped us to downsize the military and spend more in the areas where we need it, it's done a lot of good. But essentially it made the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff much more powerful and centralized authority there.
So, when people began to second-guess the fact that I didn't send the special forces into Afghanistan, even though, concededly, nobody knew where bin Laden was, nobody knew where Dr. al-Zarqawi was, nobody know, but we had a general idea of where they were operating -- after 9/11 when people began to second-guess that, I wish I had had a military debate.
Because basically the Pentagon and General Shelton were strongly opposed to it. They thought that the chances of those guys getting killed were high and that's what they signed on to do to risk their lives, but they didn't want to get killed with no reasonable prospect of accomplishing the mission. So, their view was we don't know where these people are. We have no reasonable intelligence. We know we can't trust people on the ground, because they told us bin Laden was going to be at this training camp we hit. We contracted with all these Afghan tribals and it's borne no result for us.
So we think that it's very high risk for a very, very low chance of return, and we recommend against it. But you know, so -- but I'm the commander in chief or I was then and they would have gone if I'd ordered them, too. I wish I had debated it a little more thoroughly.
Because, if you look at it, the record will reflect that I took every other alternative that I had based on the available intelligence. We did, it is true, consider bombing three other sites, three other times. But in each case, the CIA before the mission could be completed said, we just don't have that much confidence in our intelligence.
So you know, when something like 9/11 happens, you think, well, gosh I wish I had done everything.
Now, the other issue that I've been asked about is slightly different which is after the USS Cole in October, do I wish I had ordered the special forces. And the answer to that is, I would have done it in a heart beat, the special forces and more with or without international support once I got the CIA and the FBI to agree and make an official finding that bin Laden was responsible.
I just assumed he was from the day it happened and everyone else did, but it was not until after I left office that the FBI and CIA made a finding. If they had given a finding beforehand, I would have gone after him, without regard to the politics, the timing, the election, the court cases, anything going on in America, I would have done it. But I didn't get the confirmation. And America didn't get it till after I left office.
AMANPOUR: You mentioned what you could have or might have been able to do. Sometime in 1996 or -- you spoke to a group of people in Long Island about this whole controversial issue of Sudan. Was Sudan asked to extradite him.
CLINTON: That was in 2001.
AMANPOUR: OK. Was Sudan asked to extradite him, did you miss the opportunity to have him extradited?
CLINTON: What I said there was wrong. What I said was in error. I did all this research for my book. And I said that we were told we couldn't hold them, implying that we had a chance to get him and didn't. That's not factually accurate.
Here's what is factually accurate: In 1996, and before then, when we found out about bin Laden, we at first thought he was a financier of terrorism, but not a ringleader in the beginning. When he took up residence in Sudan after having been ejected from Saudi Arabia, it is true that at some point during that period, there was some discussion in the Justice Department casting a doubt on how long we could hold him on the question of had he committed or do we have evidence that he committed an offense against the United States, but that was never part of the question about whether we could get him.
When he left, the idea that the Sudanese offered to hand him over to us is just absurd. The idea they told us when he was leaving and he was landing in the Gulf and we could get him at another airport is absurd. And idea that they tried to give him to us instead of giving him to Afghanistan is just not true. I've now gone back and reconstructed all the records, read all the documents and that's just not true.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN: Often praised, and other times criticized, President Clinton reflects on his administration's efforts to reach a Middle East peace settlement. That, plus a look at the morning's top stories when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NGUYEN: Former President Bill Clinton reflects on his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. More of his conversation with Christiane Amanpour in just a few minutes.
GRIFFIN: We'll also square off on the legacy of William Jefferson Clinton, that's coming up, but first headlines now in the news.
(NEWSBREAK)
NGUYEN: Now, former President Clinton on the importance of resuming the Middle East peace process.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Here's the question: How many more kids are going to die before we make this deal?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NGUYEN: What he says the U.S. and the world need to do, and a little bit later, the legacy of William Jefferson Clinton. What effect might the former president have on this year's election? We'll take a closer look right here on CNN SUNDAY MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NGUYEN: During his eight-year administration, the former president spent a lot of effort trying to broker peace in the Middle East. Christiane Amanpour spoke with Clinton about the Mideast crisis and his legacy on that score.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you about the Middle East peace process, something that you spent a lot of time and capital on. You know, there's been a sort of a debate in some circles after your presidency that perhaps you did too much, perhaps you focused too much attention on it and the reality is that not as much has been done since you left office.
This administration has felt that it is better to preserve its capital and work in a different way. If you were appointed a special envoy, let's say sometime in the future to the Middle East, what specifically would you do to get this peace process back on track?
CLINTON: Well, first of all, I can understand why President Bush and any other leader would be reluctant to invest a lot of time and effort after all the time and effort I invested. And after had been promised that we would have a deal and then we didn't. So I can understand that.
On the other hand, there is one rule we know. I don't think when you're dealing with the Middle East or any thorny long simmering problem; you can hold yourself to a standard that says the only success is a complete agreement. Because if that's your standard, then your success or failure totally depends upon what other people decide to do and how they read their own interests. That is, you know the old adage you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
What I know is whenever America is involved, fewer people die. Now, so to me, my great dream was to have a comprehensive peace. I wanted to do it because I thought it would help secure Israel. I thought it would give the Palestinians finally the decent life they deserved.
I wanted to do it because I thought it would undermine terror, I wanted to do it because I thought it would help reconcile the west to Islam. I wanted to do it because I thought it would help the Arab states to lay down the burden of blaming politics and pick up the responsibility for their future.
I think there's ten great things that would happen if we work this deal out. But I also wanted fewer people to die. So -- and I think if you go back to when President Bush and Colin Powell came up with this road map, acknowledged there ought to be a Palestinian state. And one good thing they did that you know, I approve of is that the power ought to be broadened in the PLO and PLO. The Palestinians ought to have a prime minister as well as Arafat as president and first going to Abu Mazen, then to Abu Allah.
I thought all that was good. They waited two years to do it for the reasons you said, but I thought that was good. So what would I do now? Now I would say, look, guys, in private, we all know within two or three degrees of difference what the final peace agreement's going to look like if there's ever going to be one.
AMANPOUR: Is that the Clinton parameters?
CLINTON: In my parameters, the Geneva Agreement, all of these things. You know, Israel is never going to agree to an unlimited right of return because then you'll have two majority Arab Muslim states in the holy land in 30 years.
And the Palestinians are never going to agree to take a state that doesn't include Eastern Jerusalem and more or less 97 percent of the West Bank, enough to give the Israelis the settlements and take 80 percent of the settlers and then some sort of land swap.
And we now know longer -- it's an easier problem on the station of the Israeli defense forces along the Jordan River for a period of time, because Saddam Hussein is gone. That is the one thing that can help settle the thing.
So we all know this. Now here's the question. How many more kids are going to die before we make this deal? And if it's not politically possible to make a deal more or less like whatever everybody knows it has to be, then what can we do to keep people alive and what can we do to keep the forces of peace viable in both Israel and the Palestinian authority until we get around to the point where we can make this deal.
So if Ariel Sharon says, for example, I want to withdraw from Gaza unilaterally and Shimon Peres says if I think it's the beginning of a serious peace process, maybe we will have a national unity government, I think the United States of America ought to support that. And I think we ought to say, do it, but don't humiliate the Palestinians when you do it. There's all kinds of ways to withdraw from Gaza. And then say if you'll help us with the terror, it's the beginning of a peace process.
But the main thing is everybody knows now, the one good thing by putting that plan out and having Barak say yes, and then a year later after I was gone having Arafat say yes, the one good thing is we all know now, we know more or less what a final deal is.
So the question is, how long are we going to take, how many young people are going to die on both sides and how do we keep as many people alive as possible and work toward it without wrecking the political careers of the Palestinians and the Israelis who are committed to peace? That's the issue.
AMANPOUR: And one final question. How long do you think it will take to get back to a place where they can even be some kind of process again, back to 2000 for instance?
CLINTON: In December, early December right before I left office as I recount in my book, I looked at Arafat and I said, now if you're not going to do this, I want to go to North Korea and end their missile program. You owe it to me to let me go if you're not going to do it. Don't you agree with that?
He said sure, you said you care more about my people more than anybody ever has, I do. And I said OK. Shall I go to Korea if you are not going to do it? And he got big old tears in his eyes and he said you can't go. He said if we don't do this now, it will be five years. I've been telling you for months it will be five years.
So it's going to be about five years. I mean, and for whatever reason he decided not to take the parameters and then when he took them, he had an Israeli government that wouldn't give them to him and an Israeli public that didn't trust him. So we got an inch back to that. But I think you know there are a lot of people who want peace, a decent honorable just fair and reasonable one with reasonable compromises.
A lot of the Palestinians want it. A lot of the Israelis want it. And the real question is to get the trust and the politics lined up. That's what America ought to do. We can't impose a peace. We shouldn't impose a peace. It won't work if we do, but we can help get the politics right. And if they want a security guarantee, we ought to give it to them.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
CLINTON: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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Aired July 11, 2004 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. It's 9:00 a.m. here in Atlanta on July 11. This is CNN SUNDAY MORNING. I'm Drew Griffin.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Betty Nguyen. Good morning to the West Coast. Thanks for starting your day with us. Last month's release of "My Life" put former President Bill Clinton right back in the forefront of American debate. Questions about his presidency and his personal life have been topics of discussion since his days in the Oval Office. Now, this past week, he sat down with CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour. During this hour, we will bring you their entire conversation. But first, here's what's happening now in the news.
GRIFFIN: More American deaths in Iraq. Four U.S. Marines killed on patrol near Fallujah yesterday. The Associated Press reports the Marines died in a vehicle accident.
And an American soldier died today in a roadside attack near Mosul, in northern Iraq.
A death threat remains in force for a Filipino hostage in Iraq. The Philippine government says it will not give in to the kidnappers' demand to withdraw troops a month earlier than scheduled.
The government will fly Angelo de la Cruz's wife and brother to Iraq in an ongoing negotiation to secure his release.
Palestinian militants claim responsibility for a roadside bombing in Israel. The explosion in a Tel Aviv bus stop killed one woman, injured 20 others. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon condemned the attack, saying it shows the need for Israel's controversial West Bank barrier.
NGUYEN: Former President Bill Clinton is weighing in on the war in Iraq. He says he believes the United States should have moved more quickly to internationalize the war.
GRIFFIN: The former president discussing Iraq and other pressing international policy issues with CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: First of all, thank you very much for joining us on CNN.
BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Glad to do it.
AMANPOUR: I want to ask you first about Iraq. If one of your farewell interviews as president, you told an interviewer that one of your most difficult and challenging issues as president was Iraq. A quote I think was, "The most difficult thing, the hardest decision was deciding when to bomb and when not to bomb in Iraq." In retrospect, do you wish you had mustered a large invasion force like President Bush, and if not, do you think that the threat that you faced from Iraq is any different than the threat that President Bush faced from Iraq?
CLINTON: The answer to the first question is, no. I basically believe that the policy that I inherited, which was to keep Saddam Hussein in a box and under sanctions, unless and until he fully complied with all the U.N. resolutions was the right policy. It wasn't so great for the Iraqis, but he didn't present a substantial threat to anyone else, that's my belief based on the intelligence that I saw. I have no way of knowing how much of his weapons of mass destruction capacity was destroyed when the U.K. and the U.S. bombed him for four days in '98. But I think, I'm satisfied that we did the right thing. I think after the first Gulf War, it was a mistake to leave the Marsh Arabs, the Shiites in the southeast of Iraq unprotected. And I think the international coalition made a mistake to do that. But I don't believe that I made a mistake not to invade him. I think that we had more pressing security priorities. And we didn't have at the time an effective opposition. And there was certainly no international support for doing that.
AMANPOUR: Do you think the threat currently or in the last two years was any different than the threat you faced?
CLINTON: I have no information that would support that it is, but I don't -- you know, I haven't seen any intelligence in the last three years. So I don't know about that. I know that it seems to be hotly disputed what Vice President Cheney alleges and what others allege. I can only tell you that when 9/11 occurred and the president went back to the United Nations to ask for a resolution which essentially said Iraq has got to open up to weapons inspections again, I strongly supported that, because there was a substantial amount of botulinum, Alpha Toxin, VX and Ricin unaccounted for.
I want to be very careful about the language, we didn't know they had it or not had it. We just knew at the time the inspectors were kicked out in 98, it was unaccounted for. So I thought the inspections should start again, so did apparently everyone in the world. Everybody voted for that.
Then I thought the Congress was on solid grounds in giving the president the authority to use force because it was represented that the force would be used if Saddam Hussein did not cooperate. Then we launched the attack before the U.N. inspections were through. That I thought was an error.
But they had other reasons for wanting to overthrow Saddam. They thought he was an inherent threat to the region, they thought if we could have a representative pluralistic government in Iraq, it would be stabilized and force change in other autocrat tick regimes in the middle east and it might help us make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. That's what the Bush people thought. And so now it seems to me we all have a stake in the success of the enterprise.
AMANPOUR: And do you believe, given where it is right now, that peace in the Middle East, as you just mentioned, leads through Baghdad?
CLINTON: No. I think peace in the Middle East leads through resolving the differences between the Palestinians and Israelis and giving the Israelis a lock solid guarantee of security and normal relations with its neighbors and giving the Palestinians their own country on the West Bank and Gaza with their capital in the eastern part of Jerusalem as we provided before in the peace proposal that I made. And giving an economic future to the Palestinians who are so poor there and who have been oppressed for so long.
I think that that will do more than anything else to reduce the impulse of terror around the world and especially in the region and give the Middle East a peaceful future.
AMANPOUR: I'm going to come back to the Middle East, but I want to ask you another question on Iraq. You intervened, eventually in Bosnia and early in Kosovo to stop a genocide. And the war was also coupled with a very robust post-war plan with very heavy armored U.S.- led military forces and a political plan.
Given the instability in Iraq post the formal war there, what do you think could and should have been done differently to stabilize Iraq in much the same way as either Bosnia or Kosovo were after the war?
CLINTON: First, we had a very different situation, because NATO wasn't with us in Iraq. And the Russians didn't come into Iraq.
Keep in mind, the Russians nominally opposed what we and NATO did in both Bosnia and Kosovo, but they knew we were right and they came in and helped us with the post-war planning.
So we lost a lot of soldiers there after the mission was declared accomplished in Iraq, hundreds of them. And it made General Shinseki, whose military career was cut short because he committed candor in testifying that we needed more troops before the Congress, it made General Shinseki look like a seer like he knew what he was predicting.
So you can say we needed more troops there, but it was a constant two and fro, because we had troops in other places in the rest of the world. We already were down to 15,000 troops in Afghanistan, which is clearly not enough for us. But with any confidence to look like we're going to help stabilize the whole country or find bin Laden or his top lieutenants so we've got 50,000 there, 140,000 or more in Iraq already.
I think the main thing is we should have moved more quickly to internationalize it. And that would have required us early on, letting the United Nations have a say in the political decisions, opening the contracts up to people other than Americans and their allies. And just basically trying to say OK, Saddam's gone. Now we need everybody's help to make it right.
That is what's going on now. So I say again, whether I agree with everything's been done or not, all Americans, and just about everybody in the world has a stake now in the success of this Iraqi enterprise. And President Bush has gone back to the U.N. now. We do have a U.N. resolution. And I hope that once we show good faith in the United States, if we show good faith in observing sovereignty, giving up the monopoly on contracts, working with the U.N., I think in due time, and perhaps not before very long, we could get more help from our NATO allies.
AMANPOUR; And you think that will happen? Because there's nothing been forthcoming.
CLINTON: I think it will happen if they see we're serious, that, you know, it's a sharing thing. I mean, if you look at Bosnia and Kosovo, where we carried the lion's share of the military load during the conflict, because we had the capability to do it, but they were with us. Then when we moved into the peacekeeping phase of Bosnia and Kosovo, we assumed a minority role because they had the ability to do that, our allies.
So I think that we can use this to reestablish the vitality of NATO. We've trained a lot of those NATO forces for these kinds of missions now. I think we can get it back once we show good faith.
I just think right now that the politics between the United States and some of these European countries is so bad, not just -- not so much in the leaders, just with people in the street. You know it better than I do, you cover it all the time.
We just need to let some time pass, let the European public, as well as the leaders see that the United States has moved away from unilateralism in Iraq and it's a legitimate pluralistic government and we need their help and want their help. I think that we'll get it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NGUYEN: Up next, the former president on why the U.S. is unpopular in many places around the world.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Americans need to understand that it's not just about Iraq, it's about an attitude. They think now, the rest of the world thinks that we're going to act and do whatever we want whenever we can.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NGUYEN: Plus, his version on how close the U.S. came to catching Osama bin Laden. That's when we return.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) NGUYEN: Now more of CNN's interview with former President Bill Clinton. In the wake of the war in Iraq, anti-American sentiment has grown, even among allies. The former president spoke with CNN's Christiane Amanpour about how Washington can change perceptions, and about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Well, you brought it up -- I was going to ask you later, America has become very much feared and loathed in many parts of the world, not among the usual suspects, but among people who are usually America's friends and who want to like America. What needs to be done to stop that very dangerous state of affairs?
CLINTON: Well, in our country, the popular assumption is it's all about Iraq, and it's not all about Iraq. I think most everybody in the world understands that most Americans were more hawkish on Iraq than they were, including me. I mean, we bombed them two or three times and we always worried more about Saddam Hussein than they did.
But what made the Iraq thing so bitterly controversial was that it occurred in the aftermath of 9/11 when the whole world wanted to be with us. And they wanted America to lead a more united world and a united front against terror and a united front to make a world with more partners and fewer terrorists. It was a phenomenal opportunity.
And instead, we chose the path of unilateralism, not just in Iraq. We got out of the international criminal court, the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty, the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty before we knew our missile defenses would work, we got out of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Regime which every Republican president since Eisenhower was for, every president in both parties.
Something almost no Americans know, we changed the nuclear doctrine of the United States. Ever since World War II, we had never said we might use nuclear weapons first. Now the new nuclear doctrine is, we're trying to develop two small nuclear weapons one for battle and one to break underground bunkers, and we might use them first, even though it's already been conceded that if we might have dropped such a bunker buster on Baghdad, it might have taken out half the city.
So, Americans need to understand that it's not just about Iraq, it's about an attitude. They think now, the rest of the world thinks that we're going to do act and do whatever we want and cooperate only when we have to, when we've tried every other alternative. And that's what's got us in trouble. We would have had -- been treated, I think, much more differently on Iraq if it hasn't been for all the rest of the unilateralism. It's the cumulative impact that's alienated the rest of the world.
AMANPOUR: I want to ask you about Osama bin Laden. You say in your book that you made several efforts to kill him. In retrospect, do you believe, though, that you should have mustered some kind of special mission, some kind of special forces mission even though many of your senior military advisers opposed that at the time? Do you think you should have done it.
CLINTON: Well, what I wish now is that I had had a more vigorous military debate. One of the discussions that I had with the 9/11 commission involved the question of whether the reorganization of the military in the 1980s under the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which has done a lot of good, it's helped us to rationalize military, it's helped us to downsize the military and spend more in the areas where we need it, it's done a lot of good. But essentially it made the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff much more powerful and centralized authority there.
So, when people began to second-guess the fact that I didn't send the special forces into Afghanistan, even though, concededly, nobody knew where bin Laden was, nobody knew where Dr. al-Zarqawi was, nobody know, but we had a general idea of where they were operating -- after 9/11 when people began to second-guess that, I wish I had had a military debate.
Because basically the Pentagon and General Shelton were strongly opposed to it. They thought that the chances of those guys getting killed were high and that's what they signed on to do to risk their lives, but they didn't want to get killed with no reasonable prospect of accomplishing the mission. So, their view was we don't know where these people are. We have no reasonable intelligence. We know we can't trust people on the ground, because they told us bin Laden was going to be at this training camp we hit. We contracted with all these Afghan tribals and it's borne no result for us.
So we think that it's very high risk for a very, very low chance of return, and we recommend against it. But you know, so -- but I'm the commander in chief or I was then and they would have gone if I'd ordered them, too. I wish I had debated it a little more thoroughly.
Because, if you look at it, the record will reflect that I took every other alternative that I had based on the available intelligence. We did, it is true, consider bombing three other sites, three other times. But in each case, the CIA before the mission could be completed said, we just don't have that much confidence in our intelligence.
So you know, when something like 9/11 happens, you think, well, gosh I wish I had done everything.
Now, the other issue that I've been asked about is slightly different which is after the USS Cole in October, do I wish I had ordered the special forces. And the answer to that is, I would have done it in a heart beat, the special forces and more with or without international support once I got the CIA and the FBI to agree and make an official finding that bin Laden was responsible.
I just assumed he was from the day it happened and everyone else did, but it was not until after I left office that the FBI and CIA made a finding. If they had given a finding beforehand, I would have gone after him, without regard to the politics, the timing, the election, the court cases, anything going on in America, I would have done it. But I didn't get the confirmation. And America didn't get it till after I left office.
AMANPOUR: You mentioned what you could have or might have been able to do. Sometime in 1996 or -- you spoke to a group of people in Long Island about this whole controversial issue of Sudan. Was Sudan asked to extradite him.
CLINTON: That was in 2001.
AMANPOUR: OK. Was Sudan asked to extradite him, did you miss the opportunity to have him extradited?
CLINTON: What I said there was wrong. What I said was in error. I did all this research for my book. And I said that we were told we couldn't hold them, implying that we had a chance to get him and didn't. That's not factually accurate.
Here's what is factually accurate: In 1996, and before then, when we found out about bin Laden, we at first thought he was a financier of terrorism, but not a ringleader in the beginning. When he took up residence in Sudan after having been ejected from Saudi Arabia, it is true that at some point during that period, there was some discussion in the Justice Department casting a doubt on how long we could hold him on the question of had he committed or do we have evidence that he committed an offense against the United States, but that was never part of the question about whether we could get him.
When he left, the idea that the Sudanese offered to hand him over to us is just absurd. The idea they told us when he was leaving and he was landing in the Gulf and we could get him at another airport is absurd. And idea that they tried to give him to us instead of giving him to Afghanistan is just not true. I've now gone back and reconstructed all the records, read all the documents and that's just not true.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN: Often praised, and other times criticized, President Clinton reflects on his administration's efforts to reach a Middle East peace settlement. That, plus a look at the morning's top stories when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NGUYEN: Former President Bill Clinton reflects on his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. More of his conversation with Christiane Amanpour in just a few minutes.
GRIFFIN: We'll also square off on the legacy of William Jefferson Clinton, that's coming up, but first headlines now in the news.
(NEWSBREAK)
NGUYEN: Now, former President Clinton on the importance of resuming the Middle East peace process.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Here's the question: How many more kids are going to die before we make this deal?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NGUYEN: What he says the U.S. and the world need to do, and a little bit later, the legacy of William Jefferson Clinton. What effect might the former president have on this year's election? We'll take a closer look right here on CNN SUNDAY MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NGUYEN: During his eight-year administration, the former president spent a lot of effort trying to broker peace in the Middle East. Christiane Amanpour spoke with Clinton about the Mideast crisis and his legacy on that score.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you about the Middle East peace process, something that you spent a lot of time and capital on. You know, there's been a sort of a debate in some circles after your presidency that perhaps you did too much, perhaps you focused too much attention on it and the reality is that not as much has been done since you left office.
This administration has felt that it is better to preserve its capital and work in a different way. If you were appointed a special envoy, let's say sometime in the future to the Middle East, what specifically would you do to get this peace process back on track?
CLINTON: Well, first of all, I can understand why President Bush and any other leader would be reluctant to invest a lot of time and effort after all the time and effort I invested. And after had been promised that we would have a deal and then we didn't. So I can understand that.
On the other hand, there is one rule we know. I don't think when you're dealing with the Middle East or any thorny long simmering problem; you can hold yourself to a standard that says the only success is a complete agreement. Because if that's your standard, then your success or failure totally depends upon what other people decide to do and how they read their own interests. That is, you know the old adage you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
What I know is whenever America is involved, fewer people die. Now, so to me, my great dream was to have a comprehensive peace. I wanted to do it because I thought it would help secure Israel. I thought it would give the Palestinians finally the decent life they deserved.
I wanted to do it because I thought it would undermine terror, I wanted to do it because I thought it would help reconcile the west to Islam. I wanted to do it because I thought it would help the Arab states to lay down the burden of blaming politics and pick up the responsibility for their future.
I think there's ten great things that would happen if we work this deal out. But I also wanted fewer people to die. So -- and I think if you go back to when President Bush and Colin Powell came up with this road map, acknowledged there ought to be a Palestinian state. And one good thing they did that you know, I approve of is that the power ought to be broadened in the PLO and PLO. The Palestinians ought to have a prime minister as well as Arafat as president and first going to Abu Mazen, then to Abu Allah.
I thought all that was good. They waited two years to do it for the reasons you said, but I thought that was good. So what would I do now? Now I would say, look, guys, in private, we all know within two or three degrees of difference what the final peace agreement's going to look like if there's ever going to be one.
AMANPOUR: Is that the Clinton parameters?
CLINTON: In my parameters, the Geneva Agreement, all of these things. You know, Israel is never going to agree to an unlimited right of return because then you'll have two majority Arab Muslim states in the holy land in 30 years.
And the Palestinians are never going to agree to take a state that doesn't include Eastern Jerusalem and more or less 97 percent of the West Bank, enough to give the Israelis the settlements and take 80 percent of the settlers and then some sort of land swap.
And we now know longer -- it's an easier problem on the station of the Israeli defense forces along the Jordan River for a period of time, because Saddam Hussein is gone. That is the one thing that can help settle the thing.
So we all know this. Now here's the question. How many more kids are going to die before we make this deal? And if it's not politically possible to make a deal more or less like whatever everybody knows it has to be, then what can we do to keep people alive and what can we do to keep the forces of peace viable in both Israel and the Palestinian authority until we get around to the point where we can make this deal.
So if Ariel Sharon says, for example, I want to withdraw from Gaza unilaterally and Shimon Peres says if I think it's the beginning of a serious peace process, maybe we will have a national unity government, I think the United States of America ought to support that. And I think we ought to say, do it, but don't humiliate the Palestinians when you do it. There's all kinds of ways to withdraw from Gaza. And then say if you'll help us with the terror, it's the beginning of a peace process.
But the main thing is everybody knows now, the one good thing by putting that plan out and having Barak say yes, and then a year later after I was gone having Arafat say yes, the one good thing is we all know now, we know more or less what a final deal is.
So the question is, how long are we going to take, how many young people are going to die on both sides and how do we keep as many people alive as possible and work toward it without wrecking the political careers of the Palestinians and the Israelis who are committed to peace? That's the issue.
AMANPOUR: And one final question. How long do you think it will take to get back to a place where they can even be some kind of process again, back to 2000 for instance?
CLINTON: In December, early December right before I left office as I recount in my book, I looked at Arafat and I said, now if you're not going to do this, I want to go to North Korea and end their missile program. You owe it to me to let me go if you're not going to do it. Don't you agree with that?
He said sure, you said you care more about my people more than anybody ever has, I do. And I said OK. Shall I go to Korea if you are not going to do it? And he got big old tears in his eyes and he said you can't go. He said if we don't do this now, it will be five years. I've been telling you for months it will be five years.
So it's going to be about five years. I mean, and for whatever reason he decided not to take the parameters and then when he took them, he had an Israeli government that wouldn't give them to him and an Israeli public that didn't trust him. So we got an inch back to that. But I think you know there are a lot of people who want peace, a decent honorable just fair and reasonable one with reasonable compromises.
A lot of the Palestinians want it. A lot of the Israelis want it. And the real question is to get the trust and the politics lined up. That's what America ought to do. We can't impose a peace. We shouldn't impose a peace. It won't work if we do, but we can help get the politics right. And if they want a security guarantee, we ought to give it to them.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
CLINTON: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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