Bill Clinton: “Well, to be fair, I didn't take that on. That was an issue that was visited on the Presidency. I mean, I could have…”

“Well, to be fair, I didn't take that on. That was an issue that was visited on the Presidency. I mean, I could have said, ``We'll just let the courts go through that.'' But let's talk about that. That's become more of a slogan than a fact. The position I took, remember, was not that we should change the rules of conduct, which prohibited homosexual activity, but that we should not ask people or persecute people for their failure to lie about their sexual orientation. That position was endorsed by Barry Goldwater and by most of the combat veterans of the Vietnam war serving in the United States Congress. Now, the military thought it went too far, so what did we do? We changed the position. We studied it for a few months. We changed it. We wound up with a position with which we fought two World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. We did not bring an end to military order in our time. All we did was to change the position that was put in in President Reagan's tenure. And look, the United States Government was covered up with lawsuits. We were losing lawsuits. I suppose the easy thing to do would say, ``Oh, well, let the courts go forward.'' I was trying to find a way to put an end to this so that the military could just put this issue behind it and go on being the world's best military. And you may disagree with the position I took or the position that we came out with, but the position we're in now is roughly how we won two World Wars and fought through Korea and Vietnam. It's hardly the end of civilization as we know it. And the other position would not have been either.”