Agitated Clinton defends his anti-terror record!

WASHINGTON – Former US President Bill Clinton has angrily defended his administration’s effort to combat Islamic terrorism, insisting he remains thus far the only US president to have made a serious effort to capture or kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now,” a visibly agitated Clinton told the Fox News Sunday television show. “They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try.”

Clinton, who left office in January 2001, said he had authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to try to kill bin Laden long before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

He also said that after the 2000 bombing in Yemen of the US destroyer Cole, he had ordered the preparation of battle plans to go into Afghanistan, overthrow its Taliban government and launch a full-scale search for bin Laden.

“The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until I came there,” said the former president, wagging his finger.

“I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it, but I did try and I did everything I thought I responsibly could,” he went on to say.

Clinton and other former members of his administration have been particularly irked by an ABC television movie, “The Path to 9/11,” that was shown during the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

The fictional portrayal of events leading up to September 11 contains a scene, in which Clinton’s national security adviser, Samuel Berger, refuses to authorize a CIA operation to kill bin Laden.

Former Clinton aides have called the movie “false and defamatory.”