A
version is posted at Larry Johnson's blog
No Quarter.
.......................
One of the more stunning false allegations passed along by Chris Wallace to Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday's show (transcript) was:
There's a new book out, I suspect you've already read, called The Looming Tower. And it talks about how [sic] the fact that when you [Clinton] pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said, I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops."
There are TWO key facts here that need to be straightened out:
1) The Looming Tower does not infer that bin Laden ever had anything to do with "Blackhawk Down," including training Somalians to shoot down U.S. helicopters.
2) It was the GOP Congressional leadership who demanded that Clinton pull out of Somalia immediately.
ITEM #1: On a recent C-Span interview,
Looming Tower author Lawrence Wright pointed out that it is a MYTH that it was ever proven that Osama bin Laden had anything to do Blackhawk Down, including the training of Somalians to shoot down the U.S. helicopters. I have the book, and found the relevant passages -- quite opposite from what Chris Wallace inferred:
It is possible that, until now [1997], bin Laden had not killed an American or anyone else except on the field of battle. The actions in Aden, Somalia, Riyadh, and Dhahran may have been inspired by his words, but it was never demonstrated that he commanded the terrorists who carried them out. Although Ramzi Yousef had trained in an Al-Qaeda camp, bin Laden was not connected to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Bin Laden told the London-based Palestinian editor Abdel Bari Atwan that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the ambush of American forces in Mogadishu in 1993, the National Guard Training Center bombing in Riyadh in 1995, and the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, but there is no evidence to substantiate these claims. (page 246, The Looming Tower)
So, bin Laden was padding his resume with the typical braggadocio of most terrorists and criminals.
On page 266, Wright also points out that in 1998 bin Laden had a criminal indictment brought against him in New York for the killing of American servicemen in Somalia, but "[t]hose specific charges against him were later dropped ... and no testimony in subsequent terrorist trials ever proved that Al-Qaeda or bin Laden had been responsible for the murder of Americans -- or anyone else -- before August of that year."
So no evidence was ever found that could have been used against bin Laden in connection with Blackhawk Down or the training of Somalians to shoot down U.S. helicopters. Bin Laden INVENTED his involvement in Blackhawk Down.
ITEM #2: Wallace casually recited the allegation as if it were agreed factual history -- without any proper journalistic qualification such as "some allege," or "your critics have argued." Clinton, correctly, replied:
They [the Republicans] were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk down, and I refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.
OK, now let's look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al Qaida was a growing concern in October of `93.
"Who wanted to 'cut and run' from Somalia?", in today's Salon, declares Wallace's statement of GOP complaints as "pure historical revisionism":
Who wanted to "cut and run" from Somalia?
One of the central prongs in the right-wing effort to blame Bill Clinton for the growth of al-Qaida (and one of the central aspects of the general neoconservative mythology of how to fight terrorism) revolves around Somalia. Specifically, the right-wingers claim that President Clinton's withdraw of troops from Somalia after a Muslim militia dragged the bodies of U.S. troops through the streets of Mogadishu conveyed weakness to the Muslim world and showed that we could be easily defeated. We suffer a few casualties, and we run away. They claim that that perceived weakness -- "cutting and running" from Somalia -- is what "emboldened" Osama bin Laden in the 1990s to wage war against us.
But that is pure historical revisionism ... being subjected to that accusation this weekend by Fox News' Chris Wallace appears -- understandably -- to have been what principally triggered Clinton's anger in responding to those accusations during his interview. ...
If anything, Clinton understated his own defense [to Wallace]. ...
Clinton -- along with Democratic senators such as John Kerry -- vigorously argued against immediate withdrawal, in part because of the concern that America would look weak by panicking and abandoning its mission at the first sign of trouble (just like President Reagan did in 1983 when he immediately withdrew U.S. forces from Lebanon after the attack on U.S. Marines). Clinton had to virtually beg to be allowed to keep troops for an additional six months (and he even increased American troop levels) to stabilize the situation, demonstrate U.S. resolve and a commitment to the mission and, most of all, avoid a panicky, fear-driven retreat.
I have compiled -- here -- just some of the numerous Senate speeches by conservative Republican senators demanding immediate troop withdrawals, speeches by Clinton and Democratic senators (such as John Kerry) warning of the dangers of immediately withdrawing in the face of U.S. casualties, and various news accounts making clear that the cut-and-run argument was being made most vocally by conservative Republican senators who wanted to force the commander in chief to abandon the mission in Somalia the minute it became difficult and dangerous. Reading these excepts reveals just how completely misleading -- how outrageously revisionist -- is the accusation that it was Bill Clinton who emboldened Islamic extremists by beating a quick retreat from Somalia.
... Recently, Gen. Colin Powell said this about our choices in Somalia: 'Because things get difficult, you don't cut and run. You work the problem and try to find a correct solution.' ..."
Republican Senators attempted to force an immediate withdrawal ... [F]rom a Senate floor speech by Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, on Oct. 6, 1993: "The United States has no interest in the civil war in Somalia and as this young soldier told me, if the Somalis are now healthy enough to be fighting us, then it is absolutely time that we go home ...
The author, Glenn Greenwald, concludes:
The extent to which blatantly false propaganda can be casually disseminated in our political dialogue is genuinely jarring. Bush followers can make these blatantly false accusations and Chris Wallace can repeat them because they usually go unrebutted by a media that is too slothful and shallow to do the most basic research to determine if they were true. That is why Clinton's aggressive responses to Wallace were so welcome ...
It's good to set history straight. As long as people KNOW the history. Which we must make our mission. Since the rightwing lies, lies, lies.