Something shocking and unusual happened recently on "Fox News Sunday." A prominent Democrat took issue with host Chris Wallace's cheap-shot interview techniques-- made him look foolish and completely out of his depth, and left him whining about his subject's bad manners. Unfortunately, that prominent Democrat was former President Bill Clinton, whose political career is history.

Even so, after a week most Democratic office-holders spent huddled under their desks like schoolchildren in a 1960s nuclear bomb drill, seemingly fearful of challenging the Bush administration's disgraceful advocacy of torture, it was bracing to see a Democrat speak his mind. Instructive, too. Apparently, Clinton's had enough of right-wing attempts to hoodwink voters by waving Monica Lewinsky's blue dress all over again.

Two weeks ago, it was ABC's fictive docudrama "The Path to 9/11," combining imaginary events with make-believe dialogue to make Clinton look soft on Al Qaeda and Bush full of manly resolve. History records something else: that it was Clinton who tried to kill or capture the Al Qaeda leader, Bush who downgraded terrorism from a Category 4 threat to the equivalent of a tropical depression, waved off a presidential briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S." with a flippant remark about the CIA's need to "cover (its) ass," then went fishing.

But let's go to the tape. Clinton clearly anticipated Wallace's tactics and took him head on. Citing viewer e-mails, Wallace asked "Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president? There's a new book out (by Lawrence Wright) called 'The Looming Tower.' And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, (Osama) bin Laden said, 'I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops.'"

Clinton immediately challenged the question's context, putting Wallace on the defensive and keeping him there. After all, exactly why ARE we talking about something bin Laden reportedly said 13 years ago when he remains at large five years after Sept. 11? He alluded to the ABC docudrama "directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission Report."

"All the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn't do enough, (then) claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden," Clinton said. "All of President Bush's neocons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office."

Then Clinton did something Bush rarely does when journalists irk him. He answered the question. See, for months, GOP propagandists have argued that Clinton emboldened Muslim terrorists by withdrawing after rebels dragged the bodies of U.S. soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu.

"There is not a living soul in the world," Clinton pointed out, "who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al Qaeda was a growing concern in October of '93. ... All the people who now criticize me wanted to leave the next day."

If anything, he went too easy on his antagonists. Indeed, Clinton, who inherited what began as a humanitarian mission in Somalia from the first President Bush, insisted upon holding fast for six months until an orderly transfer to U.N. peacekeepers could be arranged. He did so despite repeated calls from Republicans like Sens. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, for immediate retreat. Conservatives argued that Somalia was not in the national interest. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kansas, predicted that Congress would withdraw funding.

Glenn Greenwald provides a selection of contemporaneous GOP statements about Somalia on his "Unclaimed Territory" Web site (glenngreenwald.blogspot.com). They make enlightening reading. So does an October 1993 speech by Clinton agreeing with Gen. Colin Powell that it'd be a terrible mistake to, yes, "cut and run" from Somali warlords. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., argued against what he called Republicans' "extraordinary sense of panic."

Clinton regretted his failure to get bin Laden. But he also reminded Wallace that contrary to the current GOP disinformation campaign, "people on my political right who say I didn't do enough spent the whole time I was president saying ... that (it) was 'Wag the Dog' when (we) tried to kill him."

Indeed they did. Clinton's 1998 cruise missile attack on an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan set off a torrent of abuse from Republicans who scolded him for trying to refocus the GOP's laser-like attention away from the presidential zipper to the terrorist threat. (Greenwald provides numerous examples.) None of which excuses Clinton's spectacular indiscipline, which made it easy for them.

What the Fox News episode did show, however, is how badly Democrats need to imitate Bill Clinton, get out from under their desks, quit letting the GOP noise machine dictate the terms of the debate and force the Bush administration to confront its own epic failures.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at genelyons2@sbcglobal.net.