Posted 12:13 PM by Robert

TIME's Fool

Shakespeare was right, "Love's not TIME's fool!"

It turns out that TIME's fool is Bill Clinton's former national security advisor, Sandy Berger, who just back in August was busy telling TIME that the Clinton administration had prepared a major, magic strike against al Qaeda, which the Bush Administration delayed!

Well, what a difference a few months, some third-party investigations, and an oath (or at least the applicability of the Federal False Statements Act) can make - at least if you're not Bill Clinton!

Apparently under oath and definitely before Congress, Mr. Berger yesterday is reported by Foxnews to have contradicted "published reports" (that is, Mr. Berger's own August TIME interview) that the outgoing Clinton administration gave the incoming Bush team a plan to go after Al Qaeda. He also said that he heard of the possibility of airplanes being used as weapons as one of several possible threat scenarios. Mr. Clinton himself had previously confessed earlier this year that his administration's plans had a "high probability" of failure, and that he personally declined to pursue any such plan. Which is good, I guess, since Mr. Berger is now saying that there was no plan to pursue in the first place.

In addition, Newsmax is reporting that during the same Congreessional testimony Mr. Berger also insisted "that the Clinton administration never received an offer from Sudan to extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S., directly contradicting President Clinton's statement earlier this year that he personally turned down the Sudanese offer in 1996."

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