Bill Clinton Smacks Down Chris Wallace of Fox News

AP Photo/Fox News Sunday, Michael Simon

Many of you may already have heard about or seen former President William Jefferson Clinton's smackdown of Fox News' Chris Wallace. Wallace asked Clinton why he didn't do more to kill or capture Osama bin Laden while in office, prompting a furious and unexpected flare-up from Clinton. Clinton lashed out at his right-wing critics and accused Wallace of trying to perform a "little right-wing hit-job."

I think one can credibly argue that Clinton's reaction may have been a bit over-the-top, but given the right-wing smearing of his terrorism efforts, I think it's understandable. For the past several years, the Republicans have been repeatedly trying to blame Clinton for 9/11 (in fact, they try to blame Clinton on everything). The effort appeared to peak with ABC's broadcast some weeks back of an ABC docudrama called The Path to 9/11 (written by an out-and-out conservative filmmaker and friend of Rush Limbaugh's). The film fabricated several scenes that baldly stated that the Clinton White House hampered anti-terrorism efforts.

None of this is to say that the Clinton White House didn't make some mistakes in fighting Al Qaeda, but the charge that they were negligent of Al Qaeda during their administration was debunked both by the 9/11 Commission Report and by former Counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies.

I'll let the Big Dawg speak for himself. You really MUST watch this clip, generously hosted by crooksandliars.com. The file is about 1 MB and is about 20 minutes long, so if you don't have space or bandwith and would prefer to stream it, you can do so at ThinkProgress.org, which displays a slightly shorter clip of the same exchange (the only part that is lost is the first question, which is on a different topic).