Bill Clinton: “No, that was a different issue. The mistake was--and I want to clarify this, because I am proud of what those Rangers…”

“No, that was a different issue. The mistake was--and I want to clarify this, because I am proud of what those Rangers did. The ones who gave their lives did not die in vain. The ones who gave their lives and were wounded in the last instance did it because of the tradition of the Rangers of never leaving anybody behind, even someone who has been killed. And I feel terrible about what happened. But what they were doing is trying to enforce the law. Their mission was to try to arrest people who were suspected of murdering the Pakistani U.N. soldiers. The mistake was not that they were trying to do that. The mistake was that we were out doing that, and while we were doing that the political dialog shut down, so that the people that were associated with Aideed thought we, the U.N., not we, the U.S., but we, the U.N., were trying to cut them out of Somalia's future. And what we had tried to do is to lower our profile on the military police side so that the political dialog can start again. Now that that's going on, we're going to do the U.N. mandate. Mr. Russert. And all troops will be out by March 31st?”