WASHINGTON – What the nation needs is some good Jack Bauer agents, says Bill Clinton.
Bill and Hillary Clinton apparently no longer think torture has a place in U.S. policy, but Bubba sure hopes a “24”-style cowboy steps up if someone ever nabs a terrorist who knows a bomb is about to blow.
“If you’re the Jack Bauer person, you’ll do whatever you do and you should be prepared to take the consequences,” Bill Clinton said yesterday.
In Fox’s hit show “24,” actor Kiefer Sutherland’s character Jack Bauer is regularly confronted with the ticking-time bomb scenario – and makes his own rules about how to save the country.
Pointing to the show, Clinton argued on NBC’s “Meet the Press” it was better that way because any law that approved torture could be abused.
“If you have any kind of a formal exception, people just drive a truck through it, and they’ll say, ‘Well, I thought it was covered by the exception,'” Clinton said.
“When Bauer goes out there on his own and is prepared to live with the consequences, it always seems to work better,” he said.
In the past, the Clintons had been in favor of some sort of legal authority to torture in just those rare cases, but Hillary announced in last week’s Democratic debate that she changed her mind.In addition to discussing torture, the former President also expanded on the role he might play in a second Clinton administration, beyond being ambassador to the world.
“I should be available to help her with specific foreign problems, like she said, and maybe to help promote the domestic agenda – go around the country and help promote it,” he said.