    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [October 8, 1993]
    [Pages 1715-1716]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Exchange With Reporters on Departure for New Brunswick, New Jersey
    October 8, 1993

    Secretary of Defense Les Aspin

        Q. Are you going to support Les Aspin?
        The President. Well, yes. I mean, what is the question in reference
    to? I'm sorry.
        Q. In reference to all the complaints on Capitol Hill about his
    performance.
        The President. Well, I will say again, I asked Secretary Aspin why
    the extra--weren't sent to Somalia. He said to me that when they were
    asked for, there was no consensus among the Joint Chiefs that it should
    be done. And he normally relied on their reaching a consensus
    recommendation on an issue like that, a military--[inaudible]. And
    secondly that it was never suggested to him that they were needed for
    the kind of defensive purposes that it's been speculated that they're
    useful for during this last raid, that it was only for offensive
    purposes, and that it was his best judgment that we were trying to get
    the political track going again, and we didn't want to send a signal
    that we were trying to conduct more offense in Somalia. He also said if
    anybody had made the defensive argument, that would have been an
    entirely different thing. And obviously if he had known then what he
    knows now, he would have made a different decision.
        Q. Mr. President, did you know about the request in advance, sir?
        The President. Did I know? No.
        Q. Were you told--[inaudible]--and also do you think----
        The President. No. And I was talking to General Powell on a very
    regular basis about this

    [[Page 1716]]

    whole thing. This was not something that anybody brought to me directly.

    Somalia

        Q. Why won't the Somali warlords just go underground for 6 months
    and wait for us to get out and then declare victory? Isn't there a
    danger in giving them a deadline when we're going to get out?
        The President. Well, it might happen. But keep in mind, we're going
    to wind up--by then there should be an even larger U.N. force there. And
    that's our objective. In 6 months, we will have been there well over a
    year longer than we ever committed to stay.
        So we will have given them well over a year longer, more personnel,
    and more efforts in this endeavor. We have obligations elsewhere,
    including this very important effort that we've invested a lot in in
    Haiti, to try to support that. So, I just don't believe that we can be
    in a position of staying longer than that.
        I also think once we send a signal to them that we're not going to
    tolerate people messing with us or trying to hurt our people or trying
    to interrupt the U.N. mission, that we have no interest in denying
    anybody access to playing a role in Somalia's political future. I think
    a mixed message has been sent out there in the last couple of months by
    people who are doing the right thing. Our people are doing the right
    thing. They're trying to keep our folks alive, trying to keep the
    peacekeeping mission going, trying to get the food out there. But we
    need to clearly state, unambiguously, that our job is not to decide who
    gets to play a role in post-war Somalia, that we want the political
    process to work. So let's give it a chance to work and see if it does.
        Thank you.

    Note: The exchange began at 12:20 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White
    House.