MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: We don’t have a strategy for victory?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, if we do, it's not working right now, at least. But I know what they say

Let me take a step back a little bit. I did not favor what was done. I did favor the Congress giving the President the power to use force, because when he asked for it in his speech in Cincinnati, he basically made the argument I've made many times, which is Saddam Hussein never did anything he wasn't forced to do, so he needed to know that there would be consequences if he didn't fully comply with the UN inspections.

But the administration, then, decided to launch this invasion virtually alone and before the UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were any weapons of mass destruction there. So I thought that diverted our attention from Iraq and Al Qaeda and undermined the support that we might have had.

Now, but what's done is done. Now, the question is, after 58 percent of those people voted, after there has been a heroic but so far unsuccessful effort to put together a constitution that everybody can buy off on, that the world would be better off if this enterprise did not fail and if the 58 percent of Iraqis who believed in it were given the chance to govern themselves in a stable and secure environment. I also think they will want us to leave as soon as they can defend themselves.

So the stated strategy of trying to develop the security and police forces to the point where they can defend themselves I think is the correct strategy. The problem is we may not have, in the short run, enough troops to do that.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Would you put more troops in now?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't know if they can, and I think it's even more important not to let Afghanistan fail, even more important. You know, you've got civilian contractors moving out of Afghanistan. We had a record week of casualties there last week. Every time we put a soldier in Afghanistan, we get a soldier from NATO.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: So we're losing in Afghanistan, at risk of losing in Iraq. What do we do right now? What should the new strategy be?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well as I said, I don't know, because I'm not President, I don't know what his military options are. I don't know how many troops he's got where. But I know my view is if there is a reasonable chance that this constitutional process can be completed and that it will not be rejected under the terms that govern the vote, once that happens, I think that will give another boost to the civilian government. Then, I think that we will know how long it takes to train enough and equip enough forces that they ought to be able to defend themselves. When that happens, I think we can begin drawing down our presence.

But my problem with setting a date certain for withdrawal now is I always assumed that whoever I was competing against was smart. And suppose you were running the Iraqi insurgency, and I know you, and I know how smart you are. If I told you I was going to leave in six months, 12 months, or 18 months, and you could survive that long, there's no way in the wide world you would join the political process.

Now, let's look at the other thing: when the IRA says they're going to give up arms, and they want the international body to observe the blowup, and they want the representative of the Catholics and Church of England, the Protestants to observe the blowup, what does that say? They say they've decided they've got more to gain from the political process than from continuing the conflict.

When 13,000 armed guerrillas and paramilitaries in Colombia give up their weapons and rejoin civil society, and President Uribe, who's been so tough on them, offers them a chance to reconcile, why are they doing that? Because they know they're not going to win anymore, and they want to be part of a political process. When the Hutu soldiers came home in response to President Kigami's welcome and rejoined civil society and did their community atonement work, why did they do that? Because they knew they couldn't win anymore.

So the reason I don't want to see an announcement made is I see no reasonable prospect that this insurgency can be transformed into a political process, and the Sunnis who are alienated will come back if they know all they have to do is wait. It may not work. I've never known whether it would work. All I know is a majority of the Iraqis would like it to work. We'd be better off, and the Middle East would be better off if it did work.

A lot of good Americans have given their lives; thousands of others have been horribly wounded. So I have been in a position where I wanted the strategy to work. Whether it will or not, I don't know. But the only thing I would sacrifice it to is if I thought we were going to lose in Afghanistan. We cannot lose in Afghanistan. We cannot let the Taliban come back. We cannot let Karzai fail. We cannot relax our efforts to try to keep undermining Al Qaeda, because that's still by far a bigger threat to our security.

Clinton betrays his lack of understanding of both the strategic and operational details of the war in these statements. The only way to treat this is with a line-by-line fisking.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: . . . Let's talk Iraq for a second. We just had one of the bloodiest weeks of the war. I know you've said that we have to have a strategy for victory and see this through to victory, but a lot of Democrats and also some Republicans like Chuck Hagel look at the situation now and say you know what? We don't have that strategy. We're not winning.

I'm sure Chuck Hagel is a great guy, but he's a politician, that most opportunistic breed of human, and he smells blood in the water on Iraq. It doesn't matter if the blood is there or not. It matters if it is perceived to be there. So he goes on TV and claims we are losing. I've seen hiim on at least two shows and I don't even watch that much TV. This is all of course completely unrelated to his desire to run for president. And wait just a minute . . . sure it's been one of the bloodiest weeks ever. But you are completely ignoring the positive: the recapture of Tall Afar from a terrorist occupation -- an operation which was in fact called "Operation Restore Rights". See Tal Afar Turning Point? A breakthrough for Iraqi forces.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We don’t.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: We don’t have a strategy for victory?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, if we do, it's not working right now, at least. But I know what they say.

It's unclear here if he means that he knows what those of us say who think we will win, or if he knows what those of us say who paid attention to what Clinton has said in the past. Let's leave the former alone and concentrate on the latter. His next statement seems to back this up. He is doing a little pre-emptive defense because he knows that people like me are going to Google everything he said in 2002 and 2003 and even 1998 to see if it matches this:

Let me take a step back a little bit. I did not favor what was done. I did favor the Congress giving the President the power to use force, because when he asked for it in his speech in Cincinnati, he basically made the argument I've made many times, which is Saddam Hussein never did anything he wasn't forced to do, so he needed to know that there would be consequences if he didn't fully comply with the UN inspections.

Here we go:

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

Now let's stop right there. We all remember what happened in 1998. Clinton was perfectly happy to use military force against Iraq WITHOUT congressional authorization. See The Long Road to Containment. But let's take him at his word, that he only wanted to authorize the president to use force to put pressure on Saddam. In other words, Clinton never, never, never would have veered from his failed policy of containment, even though by his own admission Hussein had a weapons program. This is despite making regime change in Iraq the stated policy of the United States. That policy, for Clinton, was merely a way of attempting to force Saddam's hand. Clinton would in fact have bluffed every time, stopping short at extended airstrikes. Back to today's transcript:

But the administration, then, decided to launch this invasion virtually alone and before the UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were any weapons of mass destruction there. So I thought that diverted our attention from Iraq and Al Qaeda and undermined the support that we might have had.

Ahem. Here we go again: "'Saddam Hussein is not a good man by our definition,' said the former president. 'There's no question ... he has significant stocks of chemical and biological agents.'"

As far as undermining the support we might have had . . . Mr. President, what are you doing now, if not undermining support we have? But you exhibit even worse judgment than you accuse Bush of, because you choose to undermine support domestically. Classy thing to do. Great job. More:

Now, but what's done is done. Now, the question is, after 58 percent of those people voted, after there has been a heroic but so far unsuccessful effort to put together a constitution that everybody can buy off on,

The ratification of the Iraqi constitution will take place on October 15th. You heard it here first (actually it's been in a billion backpages, but nobody seems to care). Mr. Clinton, I will make a wager with you: I will bet you what I saved on my 2004 tax return from the Bush tax cut that the turnout will be higher on October 15th than it was on January 30th. And I will bet you that the constitution is ratified. You are so quick to call the constitutional effort unheroic when it hasn't even gone to the polls yet. Would you call the US Constitution unheroic as soon as the drafters left the assembly hall, but before the states could ratify it? Seriously, how does any of this serve any purpose, other than to get heads nodding in certain Democratic circles? More:

that the world would be better off if this enterprise did not fail and if the 58 percent of Iraqis who believed in it were given the chance to govern themselves in a stable and secure environment.

Are you advocating splitting off the Sunni region from the rest of Iraq, so that the 58% who believe in democracy can have it in their own environment? That's all I can make of that statement. Seems like something for the Iraqis to decide. If I lose my bet, and the constitution is not ratified, then it seems like the Kurds and Shi'ites just might say, "the hell with Anbar province and the Sunni triangle, we can do just fine on our own." So if that happens, will you see it as a positive develoment? Your statements are contradictory. If the constitution is a failed effort, and that's bad, but if by failing, it might say, lead to a new state wherein the populace desires to be governed by a democracy, and that's good, then where does that leave us? Granted I'm putting words in your mouth, but not by much. We hear every day how there's going to be a civil war. Well, wouldn't that mean a likely partitioning of the country? More:

I also think they will want us to leave as soon as they can defend themselves.

Really? Never heard that before.

So the stated strategy of trying to develop the security and police forces to the point where they can defend themselves I think is the correct strategy. The problem is we may not have, in the short run, enough troops to do that.

Wait just a second . . . a moment ago, Stephanopoulos asked if we had a strategy to win and you said no. But now what we are doing is the correct strategy. Ah! But we don't have enough troops. I seem to remember the 1990s and seem to remember a lot of headlines like this: Clinton continues 10-year trend with proposed military budget cuts. Now, I'm willing to overlook that to some extent. It was the 90s after all, and everyone was reading The End of History and the Last Man because there was never going to be another war (everyone except those of us who joined the service anyway). But all were wrong. And you were wrong too. So is it really a great idea to claim now that we don't have enough troops to accomplish what we need to in Iraq? The fact is, 150,000 or so is the most we can continually rotate at one time without changing the laws regarding the reserves, drastically increasing the size of he defense budget to pay for maintenance and refitting, or having a much larger force altogether. Are you advocating a draft, President Clinton?

But the worst part of your statement is to say that our strategy isn't working. Here, you're either grossly misinformed, or you're just pandering to the beliefs of the wide swath of the US still unfortunate enough to get its impressions on Iraq from the top fold of the local paper. Our strategy is working. Consider the number, scope, and competence of the Iraqi forces which took part in the operation in Tall Afar, again from the Wall Street Journal:

A U.S. officer with detailed knowledge offered us this assessment: "The Tal Afar operation has been a sweeping success for the Iraqi Security Forces in many ways. There is an Iraqi Army Brigade headquarters with four infantry battalions, a Special Police Commando Brigade headquarters with two battalions, and an Army Transportation battalion in the fight up there. The Police Commandos and one of the Army battalions were flown there by the Iraqi Air Force's own C-130 fleet executing their first combat support missions."

As a matter of fact, a funny thing has happened. While you and the other Democrats have been beating the "not enough troops" and "Iraqis are poorly trained" memes into the ground, all of a sudden, we have plenty of troops -- and they are well-trained Iraqis. Seems like our strategy is working.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Would you put more troops in now?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't know if they can, and I think it's even more important not to let Afghanistan fail, even more important.

Nce way of changing the subject. Why can't we put more troops in? Hmmm? See above.

You know, you've got civilian contractors moving out of Afghanistan. We had a record week of casualties there last week. Every time we put a soldier in Afghanistan, we get a soldier from NATO.

I have no idea what this means.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: So we're losing in Afghanistan, at risk of losing in Iraq. What do we do right now? What should the new strategy be?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well as I said, I don't know, because I'm not President,

What a cop-out!! No, of course you aren't the President, but you were once. You mean to break with tradition about not complaining about he next guy and you don't even have anything constructive to offer? Come on. You are a Rhodes Scholar. You've just written a strategy case study. If you aren't going to solve it, why speak at all?.

I don't know what his military options are. I don't know how many troops he's got where. But I know my view is if there is a reasonable chance that this constitutional process can be completed and that it will not be rejected under the terms that govern the vote, once that happens, I think that will give another boost to the civilian government. Then, I think that we will know how long it takes to train enough and equip enough forces that they ought to be able to defend themselves. When that happens, I think we can begin drawing down our presence.

You just lost me. After the civilian Iraqis vote, then we'll know how long it takes to train and equip the Iraqi military? That doesn't make any sense. Training and equipping the Iraqi military is one thing that proceeds on its own independent timetable. Watching the outcome of an election is another. They are dual prongs in our strategy. But they aren't related in that way.

But my problem with setting a date certain for withdrawal now is I always assumed that whoever I was competing against was smart. And suppose you were running the Iraqi insurgency, and I know you, and I know how smart you are. If I told you I was going to leave in six months, 12 months, or 18 months, and you could survive that long, there's no way in the wide world you would join the political process.

Now, let's look at the other thing: when the IRA says they're going to give up arms, and they want the international body to observe the blowup, and they want the representative of the Catholics and Church of England, the Protestants to observe the blowup, what does that say? They say they've decided they've got more to gain from the political process than from continuing the conflict.

When 13,000 armed guerrillas and paramilitaries in Colombia give up their weapons and rejoin civil society, and President Uribe, who's been so tough on them, offers them a chance to reconcile, why are they doing that? Because they know they're not going to win anymore, and they want to be part of a political process. When the Hutu soldiers came home in response to President Kigami's welcome and rejoined civil society and did their community atonement work, why did they do that? Because they knew they couldn't win anymore.

So the reason I don't want to see an announcement made is I see no reasonable prospect that this insurgency can be transformed into a political process, and the Sunnis who are alienated will come back if they know all they have to do is wait. It may not work. I've never known whether it would work. All I know is a majority of the Iraqis would like it to work. We'd be better off, and the Middle East would be better off if it did work.

That was a very long-winded way of saying that you agree with the current administration: timetables are a bad idea. The only difference is that you say you're not sure anything will work. Churchill would be proud.

A lot of good Americans have given their lives; thousands of others have been horribly wounded. So I have been in a position where I wanted the strategy to work. Whether it will or not, I don't know. But the only thing I would sacrifice it to is if I thought we were going to lose in Afghanistan. We cannot lose in Afghanistan. We cannot let the Taliban come back. We cannot let Karzai fail. We cannot relax our efforts to try to keep undermining Al Qaeda, because that's still by far a bigger threat to our security.

Just plain wrong. Iraq is the linchpin of the Middle East and there are a hell of a lot more dangerous people there than in Afghanistan. And, why are we losing in Afghanistan? You skipped that part.

Thank God this man is no longer in office. Such nuance, such insight, such intellect, such splitting of hairs, equivocation, covering of hindquarters. Would he have been able to fashion a strategy after 9/11 nearly as bold as our current one? No. He sees fit instead to criticize all of our efforts, while by his own admission not having any better ideas. What noble statesmanship. He could have done it differently. He could have said, "We are going to win in Iraq. It might seem tenuous, but here's how." And then rattled off some brilliant suggestions. The effect would have been exhilirating. The press coverage would have been great. He could have cooked Bush's goose without even slamming the war.

I don't hate Bill Clinton. He was doing just fine with George H.W. as the Ex-President Disaster Relief Special Teams Field Goal Kicker. I don't know why he went and did this. Not winning any friends. I suspect that appearances like this will seriously undermine the Democrats in 2006 because we are going to win.

You heard it here first: we will win in Iraq.