EXCELLENT Clinton Interview From The Guardian (UK)

[liberalpragmatist]

FAR better than all the interviews currently floating around. All they dwell on is Monica. This one actually delves into so many more issues. It's written in a narrative form, with the interviewers quoting Clinton in the third person.

It also greatly clarifies Clinton's Iraq position.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1243638,00.html

One of My Life's most arresting passages describes the handover meeting Clinton had with his successor in December 2000. George Bush reckoned the biggest security issues he would face would be national missile defence and Iraq. "I told him that, based on the last eight years, I thought his biggest security problems, in order, would be Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida; the absence of peace in the Middle East; the standoff between nuclear powers India and Pakistan, and the ties of the Pakistanis to the Taliban and al-Qaida; North Korea; and then Iraq."

Besides advertising his own prescience, Clinton seems to be making a point - that Iraq was fairly low, fifth, on the list of priorities, and that, by implication, his successor went on to slay the wrong dragon.

Yet when we ask the former president about Iraq, his answer is not so straightforward. Like the Democrats' nominee for the White House, John Kerry, Clinton's position is nuanced. The unkind would say it is confused, or at least political - designed to stay firmly on the fence.

On the one hand, he says, he would have acted like Kerry. "I would have voted, I confess, if I had been a senator, I would have ... voted to give the authority to attack Iraq because Saddam Hussein in the past had never done anything that he wasn't forced to do. And we were in this post-9/11 era and I thought it was imperative that we find out whether he had this stuff."

Clinton knew from his own time in office that there were "unaccounted-for stocks of chemical and biological agents which could be weaponised" and that they could fall into the wrong hands.

That much might comfort the pro-war camp. But opponents will also find much to cheer in Clinton's remarks. The day we meet, initial reports from the independent commission investigating 9/11 conclude that there was no link between Saddam and the attacks on New York and Washington. "That's what I always thought," says Clinton, his gaze firm and steady. "From the minute it happened, I was virtually positive it was al-Qaida. I don't think Iraq had the capability to pull it off."

...But don't Republicans keep saying that toppling Saddam was Clinton policy too? "Our policy had been, since 1998, regime change, but our policy toward Castro had been regime change, too, and we hadn't invaded Cuba! There is more than one way to pursue that objective."

***

On the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis

We start with the one area that came tantalisingly close to handing him a golden legacy: the Middle East. With trademark Diet Coke in hand, Clinton rattles off the details of the Israel-Palestine conflict as confidently as he did when he was leading the global effort to end it. Percentages of territory, death tolls on both sides - he is a walking database. It's hardly a surprise. The attempt to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians was one of the constant threads of his presidency, bringing one of its greatest successes - the 1993 handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn - and a lethal failure, the ill-fated peace talks at Camp David in 2000.

My Life is full of fond reminiscences of the early days of that effort: how he advised Arafat not to wear a pistol for that signing ceremony, how he and his aides devised a physical manoeuvre that would prevent the Palestinian leader attempting to kiss Rabin as well as shake his hand.

But he also details the deterioration of the process, giving his account of the Camp David debacle that led to the outbreak of the intifada that still rages. Clinton's version is that Israel's Ehud Barak was ready to make enormous concessions but that Arafat was not able to "make the final jump from revolutionary to statesman ... he just couldn't bring himself to say yes."

...We ask whether that leaves Clinton convinced, as the Israelis are, that so long as Arafat is there, there is no Palestinian partner for peace. No, he says, President Bush and Ariel Sharon make a mistake if they think they can ignore the veteran Palestinian leader.

"Unless they just want to wait for him to become incapacitated or pass away or unless they seriously believe they can find a better negotiating partner in Hamas ... then they need to keep working to make a deal."

...But here he is, now, wielding perfect recall and a searching anaylsis. What of Sharon's plan unilaterally to withdraw from the Gaza Strip? "If it's done in the right way, I think it's a good thing. The idea that Israel as the stronger partner ... is strong enough to unilaterally make concessions, I think that is a very good thing - with two provisos. One is I don't think it should be done in a way that humiliates the Palestinians. If they're going to do it, they ought to just do it and do it in a dignified manner. Figure out what to do with the settlers and settlements, and if America needs to help financially to relocate them, then we ought to do that, whatever needs to be done.

"The second thing is, it cannot appear that 'This is the scrap we are throwing you from our table.' What the message of the Gaza withdrawal needs to be is, 'Here is a demonstration of our good faith ... Now if you will give me security and give up the right of return' - as Arafat's already said he would do when he accepted my parameters - 'if you will do these things and work with us in good faith, more will follow.' Then I think good things will happen." In other words, Clinton welcomes the Israeli pullout plan if it is Gaza first, rather than Gaza only. He recognises that this might not be how Sharon sees it; the former president admits that the Israeli PM still regards the West Bank as crucial to Israel - a view not shared by Rabin or Barak or, he adds, himself.

Either way, Israel has to act. Clinton explains that continued occupation is a "loser" for Israel. "If they don't let the Palestinians in the occupied territories vote the way they let the Palestinians in pre-67 Israel vote, then they're an apartheid state. If they do let them vote then they won't be a Jewish state after a while." So they have to act. Besides, "I still think there's a deal to be had."