Bill Clinton: “The only thing that I have authorized so far--and I want to say I'll be doing a lot more work on this today, later…”

“The only thing that I have authorized so far--and I want to say I'll be doing a lot more work on this today, later today, when I've got some time set aside to go back to work on it--the only thing I have done so far is to authorize the rangers that are there who are wounded or exhausted or done more than their fair share to be replaced, to roll over that group and then to send some more people there with some armored support so that we can have some more protection on the ground for our people. None of this happened when we had 28,000 people there. And even though there are lots of U.N. forces there, not all of them are able to do what our forces did before. So I'm just not satisfied that the folks that are there now have the protection they need. So all I've authorized is a modest increase to provide armored support, to provide greater protection for the people over there trying to do their job. This is not to signify some huge new commitment or offensive at this time, but I'm just not satisfied that the American soldiers that are there have the protection they need under present circumstances. So I've authorized, after consultation with the Secretary of Defense, a modest increase to get some more armored protection for them.”