The point is he didn't say what the media (and others) claim he said.
And about the subject you brought up:
THE CLINTONS; After Sharing the White House, Sharing a Critique of the G.O.P.
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
Published: August 30, 2004
Former President Bill Clinton offered a hard-hitting attack against the Republican Party yesterday, telling worshipers gathered at Riverside Church that President Bush and the Republicans are distorting John Kerry's war record in Vietnam.
''Sometimes I think our friends on the other side have become the people of the Nine Commandments,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''It is wrong to bear false witness.''
The remarks were echoed by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who unleashed an unusually strong assault on Mr. Bush and his party during back-to-back appearances on the Sunday-morning talk shows.
Mrs. Clinton accused the Bush campaign of having a direct hand in television ads that a veterans' group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has been running. The ads accuse Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, of lying about his war record and the circumstances surrounding the medals he was awarded during the Vietnam War.
''The bottom line here is John Kerry is an authentic war hero,'' Mrs. Clinton said during an appearance on the ABC News program ''This Week with George Stephanopoulos.'' ''And this attempt by the Republicans to smear a man of John Kerry's character and courage goes to the heart of their pathetic campaign.''
(snip)
''But that doesn't mean that he (Bush) doesn't see through a glass darkly," he (Clinton) said. ''It doesn't mean that you can have a bunch of people acting on your behalf and pretending like you don't know them, to say that the seven people who were on John Kerry's Swift boat don't know what they're talking about when they say he deserves the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.''
Mrs. Clinton, speaking on the NBC program ''Meet the Press,'' also linked the Bush White House with the Swift boat ads. ''The smear tactics used very effectively by this group, in, you know, conjunction with people very high up in the Bush campaign, have been an effort not only to impugn Senator Kerry but, more importantly, to divert and deflect attention from what's really at stake internationally and domestically,'' she said.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E5DC1631F933A0575BC0A9629C8B63&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/C/Clinton,%20Bill