7h6rmx49's Journal

The virtually unanimous opinion was that I should...
The virtually unanimous opinion was that I should notMost people already knew that Starr was out of control; they needed to hear my admission of wrongdoing and witness my remorseSome of my friends had given what they thought was strategic advice; others were genuinely appalled by what I had doneOnly Hillary refused to express an opinion, instead encouraging everyone to leave me alone to write my statement

At ten oclock I told the American people about my testimony, said I was solely and completely responsible for my personal failure, and admitted misleading everyone, even my wifeI said I was trying to protect myself and my family from intrusive questions in a politically inspired lawsuit that had been dismissedI also said that Starrs investigation had gone on too long, cost too much, and hurt too many people, and that two years earlier, another investigation, a truly independent one, had found no wrongdoing by Hillary or me in WhitewaterFinally, I committed to doing my best to repair my family life, and I hoped we could repair the fabric of our nations life by stopping the pursuit of personal destruction and prying into private lives, and moving onI believed every word I said, but my anger hadnt worn off enough for me to be as contrite as I should have been

The next day we left for Marthas Vineyard on our annual vacationUsually I counted the days until we could get away for some family coco chanel jewelry time; this year, though I knew we needed it, I wished that I was working around the clock insteadAs we walked out to the South Lawn to get on the helicopter, with Chelsea between Hillary and me and Buddy walking beside me, photographers took pictures that revealed the pain I had causedWhen there were no cameras around, my wife and daughter were barely speaking to me

I spent the first couple of days alternating between begging for forgiveness and planning the strikes on al QaedaAt night Hillary would go up to bed and I slept on the couch

On my birthday General Don Kerrick, Sandy Bergers staffer, flew to Marthas Vineyard to go over the targets recommended by the CIA and the Joint Chiefsthe al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and two targets in Sudan, a tannery in which bin Laden had a financial interest and a chemical plant the CIA believed was being used to produce or store a chemical used in the production of VX nerve gasI took the tannery off the list because it had no military value to al Qaeda and I wanted to minimize civilian casualtiesThe hit on the camps would be timed to coincide with the meeting the intelligence indicated bin Laden and his top people would be havingI gave Sandy Berger the final order to proceed, and UNavy destroyers in the northern Arabian Sea launched cruise missiles at the targets in Afghanistan, while missiles were fired at the Sudanese chemical plant from ships in chanel quilted handbag the Red SeaMost of the missiles hit the targets, but bin Laden was not in the camp where the CIA thought he would be when the missiles hit itSome reports said he had left the camp only a couple of hours earlier, but we never knew for sureSeveral people associated with al Qaeda were killed, as were some Pakistani officers who were reported to be there to train Kashmiri terroristsThe Sudanese chemical plant was destroyed

After announcing the attacks in Marthas Vineyard, I flew back to Washington to speak to the American people for the second time in four days, telling them I had ordered the strikes because al Qaeda was responsible for the embassy bombings, and bin Laden was perhaps the preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today, a man who had vowed to wage a terrorist war on America with no distinction between military personnel and civiliansI said that our attacks were not aimed against Islam but against fanatics and killers, and that we had been fighting against them on several fronts for years and would continue to do so, because this will be a long, ongoing struggle

Around the time I spoke of the long struggle, I signed the first of a series of orders to prepare for it by using all the tools availableExecutive Order 13099 imposed economic sanctions on bin Laden and al QaedaLater the sanctions were extended to the Taliban as wellTo date, we had not bag chloe paddington been effective in disrupting terrorists financial networksThe executive order invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which we had earlier used successfully against the Cali drug cartel in Colombia

I had also asked General Shelton and Dick Clarke to develop some options for dropping commando forces into AfghanistanI thought that if we took out a couple of al Qaedas training operations it would show them how serious we were, even if we didnt get bin Laden or his top lieutenantsIt was clear to me that the senior military didnt want to do this, perhaps because of Somalia, perhaps because they would have to send in the Special Forces without knowing for certain where bin Laden was, or whether we could get our troops back out to safetyAt any rate, I continued to keep the option alive

I also signed several Memoranda of Notification (MONs) authorizing the CIA to use lethal force to apprehend bin LadenThe CIA had been authorized to conduct its own snatch operation against bin Laden the previous spring, months before the embassy bombings, but it lacked the paramilitary capability to do the jobInstead, it contracted with members of local Afghan tribes to get bin LadenWhen field agents or the Afghan tribals were apparently uncertain of whether they had to try to capture bin Laden before they used deadly force, I made it clear that they did notWithin a few months I had extended the fendi spy bags lethal force authorization by expanding the list of targeted bin Laden associates and the circumstances under which they could be attacked

By and large, the response of the congressional leaders of both parties to the missile strikes was positive, in large part because they had been well briefed and Secretary Cohen had assured his fellow Republicans that the attack and its timing were justifiedSpeaker Gingrich said, The United States did exactly the right thing todaySenator Lott said the attacks were appropriate and justTom Daschle, Dick Gephardt, and all the Democrats were supportiveSoon I was heartened by the arrest of Mohamed Rashed, an al Qaeda operative who was a suspect in the Kenyan embassy bombing

Some people criticized me for hitting the chemical plant, which the Sudanese government insisted had nothing to do with the production or storage of dangerous chemicalsI still believe we did the right thing thereThe CIA had soil samples taken at the plant site that contained the chemical used to produce VXIn a subsequent terrorist trial in New York City, one of the witnesses testified that bin Laden had a chemical weapons operation in KhartoumDespite the plain evidence, some people in the media tried to push the possibility that the action was a real-life version of Wag the Dog, a movie in which a fictional President starts a made-for-TV war to distract public attention from his personal cambon chanel prob