http://nation.foxnews.com/libya/2011/03/11/bill-clinton-blasts-obama-drilling-and-libyaThe secretary's husband, former president Bill Clinton, came out strongly Thursday night for the controversial military measure to help the Libyan rebels in their struggle to topple Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
"We have the planes to make an appropriate contribution to this," the 42nd president told an influential dinner crowd attending Newsweek & The Daily Beast's Women in the World summit at Manhattan's Millennium Hotel. "I wouldn't do it if they hadn't asked," Clinton said, referring to anti-Gaddafi rebel leaders who have publicly and repeatedly requested the no-fly zone to stop bombardment from Gaddafi's air force. "We should do it."
At Newsweek and The Daily Beast’s second annual Women in the World summit, the former president gave a candid and expansive conversation ranging from his views on Libya (where his support for a no-fly zone is at odds with the Obama administration’s position) to why we’ve never had a female president. Lloyd Grove reports. Plus, watch Women in the World video highlights and follow our live blog.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been cautiously occupying the fence on whether the United States should help establish a no-fly zone over Libya—falling in line with Obama administration policy to build international consensus before deciding what to do.
But the secretary’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, came out strongly Thursday night for the controversial military measure to help the Libyan rebels in their struggle to topple Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
“We have the planes to make an appropriate contribution to this,” the 42nd president told an influential dinner crowd attending Newsweek & The Daily Beast’s Women in the World summit at Manhattan’s Millennium Hotel. “I wouldn’t do it if they hadn’t asked,” Clinton said, referring to anti-Gaddafi rebel leaders who have publicly and repeatedly requested the no-fly zone to stop bombardment from Gaddafi’s air force. “We should do it.”
Clinton, sporting a dark three-piece suit and a bright yellow tie, argued that Gaddafi himself has already internationalized the conflict by hiring foreign mercenaries “at $2,000 a day,” to kill Libyans. “It’s not a fair fight,” the former president said, under questioning by Newsweek and Daily Beast Editor in Chief Tina Brown. “They’re being killed by mercenaries. I think we should support them.”
Thursday morning, Hillary Clinton had espoused a much more restrained policy while testifying before a congressional committee, stressing that the no-fly zone remains an option on the table but one fraught with pitfalls and complications. Her view echoed that of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who told Congress last week that establishing a no-fly zone over Libya would entail bombing the country’s air defenses—essentially going to war.
“I don’t want to preempt the secretary of State—she’s the only one with influence in the family,” Clinton said, noting that his wife will be the featured speaker at Friday night’s Women in the World session. “I go out of my way never to get security briefings that the White House doesn’t ask me to get,” he said, joking that that he was speaking from a position of “complete ignorance.” “So if she contradicts me tomorrow night, you can agree with her.”
When he was still president, Clinton recalled, he found himself talking to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak about Gaddafi. “You think Gaddafi’s crazy, don’t you?” Mubarak told him. “I do,” Clinton replied. “You’re right,” Mubarak said.
Clinton spoke sympathetically about the deposed Egyptian president, although he praised the home-grown reform movement that drove Mubarak from power. “The searing experience of his adult life was standing there and watching Anwar Sadat get his brains blown out,” Clinton said, by way of explaining Mubarak’s reluctance to allow democratic institutions to flourish in Egypt.
In the audience were women’s rights activists from around the world—the summit is co-hosted by Diane von Furstenberg, Meryl Streep, Facebook's chief operating offficer Sheryl Sandberg, President of the Rockefeller Foundation Judith Rodin, and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, managing director of the World Bank. Clinton gave the crowd a dazzling tour of the Middle East and North Africa, from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. With his virtuosic command of obscure facts, the former president noted that “Morocco is the Saudi Arabia of phosphate,” a chemical used for fertilizer and detergents among other products.
At one point, Clinton recalled raising eyebrows by arguing at an economic conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that Saudi women should be permitted to drive. “I liked to travel there with Huma Abedin—looking like a Dior model, you know,” Clinton said, referring to his wife’s loyal aide, a native Saudi, who is married to Rep. Anthony Weiner. Clinton said he told his Saudi hosts that women should drive because the wife of the Prophet Muhammad was an accomplished businesswoman. “If she were alive today, not only would she be driving, she’d be running the car company,” Clinton recalled saying.
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Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that delays in offshore oil and gas drilling permits are “ridiculous” at a time when the economy is still rebuilding, according to attendees at the IHS CERAWeek conference.
Clinton spoke on a panel with former President George W. Bush that was closed to the media. Video of their moderated talk with IHS CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin was also prohibited.
But according to multiple people in the room, Clinton, surprisingly, agreed with Bush on many oil and gas issues, including criticism of delays in permitting offshore since last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill.
“Bush said all the things you’d expect him to say” on oil and gas issues, said Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore and executive director of the pro-drilling Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition. But Clinton added, “You’d be surprised to know that I agree with all that,” according to Noe and others in the room.
Clinton said there are “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it,” according to Noe and others.
“That was the most surprising thing they said,” Noe said.
The two former presidents both generally agreed on the need to get offshore drilling workers back on the job.
Clinton and Bush also agreed on the need for more domestic shale gas production, with Clinton noting that it has been done safely for years in his home state of Arkansas.
Bush — who referred to oil and gas in the discussion as “hydrocarbons” — described the anti-hydrocarbon sentiment in Washington as “dangerous.” He said while there is a need to develop new energy technologies, “we have to be prosperous in order to afford those technologies and, in order to be prosperous, we need to drill,” according to Noe.Clinton was more cautious about expanding nuclear energy production, noting that can take a long time and is expensive. He also praised Bush for expanding wind energy in Texas as governor.
Energy only came up among the last couple of questions from the audience, with the discussion dominated by talk of the geopolitics of the Middle East and anecdotes and memories.
Clinton also said he was supportive of enacting a no-fly zone in Libya at a time when the Obama administration and other experts in the region are urging caution, according to witnesses.
The panel with the two presidents closed out the weeklong IHS CERA, which included more than 2,200 Obama administration officials, industry executives, former diplomats and others. The Clinton-Bush event was the only one at the conference that was closed off to the media, at the request of the former presidents.
Friday, President Barack Obama pushed back against Republican critics who blame his administration's policies for high gas prices.
Obama said that domestic oil refiners aren't seeing a supply shortage — they're operating at near-full capacity. Instead, he said the recent price increases come from global market unease and economic recovery in fast-growing China, India and Brazil.
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