Little late to this horndogs remarks since I sat on my ass all day yesterday and watched football, but better late then never.
The blogosphere has been abuzz with the remarks for over 24 hours now. Here is one of my favorite quotes:
Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq “virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction.”
Now I have no idea what kind of drugs he has been on, maybe a bit of Viagra that causes all the blood from his brain to head down south, but did he not recall his 8 years in the Presidency? I highly doubt that he has forgotten his years there so it comes down to the simple fact that he is lying.
On August 20th 1998 Clinton ordered the bombing of a Sudanese chemical plant, Al-Shifa, because he believed that bin Laden was producing precursors for VX there with Iraqi assistance. Recall that Iraq suspended UNSCOM inspections on August 5th, on August 7th two US embassies were bombed in Africa by Al-Qaeda. So Clinton bombs Afghanistan and then Bombs a Sudanese chemical plant because of it’s ties to Saddam.
Did he do this because he believes Iraq does not have WMD’s?
THE PRESIDENT: The United States does not relish moving alone, because we live in a world that is increasingly interdependent. We’d like to be partners with other people. But sometimes we have to be prepared to move alone. You used the anthrax example. Think how many people can be killed by just a tiny bit of anthrax. And think about how it’s not just a question of whether Saddam Hussein might put them on a Scud missile, an anthrax head, and send it to some city of people he wanted to destroy. Think about all the terrorists and drug runners and other bad actors that could just parade through Baghdad to pick up their stores if we don’t take the strongest possible action.
I far prefer the United Nations. I far prefer the inspectors. I have been far from trigger-happy on this thing. But if they really believe that there are no circumstances under which we would act alone, they are sadly mistaken.
So obviously he was a bit worried in January 1998 about WMD’s. How about the fact that his Administration believed Saddam was working with Bin-Laden?
New York Post – Feb 1st, 1999 (You have to pay for the archived article so I posted the whole article for you here).
Saddam Hussein – battered, humiliated and increasingly isolated – plans to resort to terrorism in revenge for U.S. airstrikes against his country, the Clinton administration believes.
U.S. officials say the CIA has received “credible and reliable” intelligence reports that Saddam is forging alliances with some of the Middle East’s most bloodthirsty terrorists – including Osama Bin Laden and Abu Nidal – as part of an apparently new campaign to strike American targets and possibly destabilize Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
News of Saddam’s terrorist strategy comes as American efforts to contain him with sanctions and arms inspections appear to be unraveling in the United Nations.
The United States has squelched Saddam’s attempts to launch terrorist strikes – most notably an alleged plot to assassinate former President Bush in Kuwait in 1993.
Now, analysts say, it appears the desperate despot is reaching out for new allies in the region, including vagabond Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, who turned up last week in Baghdad.
Even more alarming to U.S. experts is an emerging alliance between Saddam and Saudi millionaire Bin Laden, mastermind of the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.
…In the last days of December, a group of Iraqi officials crossed the Hindu Kush border from Pakistan to Afghanistan on their way to keep an appointment deep in the remote eastern mountains.
At the head of the group was a man by the name of Farouk Hijazi, President Saddam Hussein’s new ambassador to Turkey and one of Iraq’s most senior intelligence officers. He had been sent on one of the most important assignments of his career – to recruit Osama bin Laden.
Thus the world’s most notorious pariah state, armed with its half-built hoard of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, tried to embrace the planet’s most prolific terrorist. It was the stuff of the West’s millennial nightmares, but United States intelligence officials are positive that the meeting took place, although they admit that they have no idea what happened.
This was not the first time that President Saddam had offered Mr Bin Laden a partnership. At least one approach is believed to have been made during the Saudi dissident’s sojourn in Sudan from 1990 to 1996. On that occasion, the guerrilla leader turned the emissaries away, out of a pious man’s contempt for President Saddam’s secular Ba’athist regime.
Hmmm, seems that his Administration had enough evidence to believe Iraq was making WMD’s in the Sudan and that he had ties to Bin-Laden, enough evidence to bomb the crap out of a chemical plant.
What, you want more evidence that Clinton believed Iraq had WMD’s and was working with Bin-Laden?
Washington Post – Jan 23rd, 1999
Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.
Clarke did provide new information in defense of Clinton’s decision to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, in retaliation for bin Laden’s role in the Aug. 7 embassy bombings. While U.S. intelligence officials disclosed shortly after the missile attack that they had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa site that contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, Clarke said that the U.S. government is “sure” that Iraqi nerve gas experts actually produced a powdered VX-like substance at the plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.
Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.
Given the evidence presented to the White House before the airstrike, Clarke said, the president “would have been derelict in his duties if he didn’t blow up the facility.”
Clarke said the U.S. does not believe that bin Laden has been able to acquire chemical agents, biological toxins or nuclear weapons. If evidence of such an acquisition existed, he said, “we would be in the process of doing something.”
So they “were sure” that Iraqi agents were producing nerve gas. Now what would nerve gas be classified as?
Why would Clinton sign the Iraqi Liberation Act which set the policy of regime change in Iraq if he did not believe Saddam had WMD’s?
Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the “Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.” This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.
Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are:
The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.
The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq’s history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else.
The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.
My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.
Why would he say to the nation in December of 1998 the following after bombing Iraq:
From the Oval Office, President Clinton told the nation Wednesday evening why he ordered new military strikes against Iraq.
The president said Iraq’s refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors presented a threat to the entire world.
“Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons,” Clinton said.
Operation Desert Fox, a strong, sustained series of attacks, will be carried out over several days by U.S. and British forces, Clinton said.
“Earlier today I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces,” Clinton said.
“Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors,” said Clinton.
Clinton also stated that, while other countries also had weapons of mass destruction, Hussein is in a different category because he has used such weapons against his own people and against his neighbors.
…Clinton said he made the decision to strike Wednesday with the unanimous agreement of his security advisors.
Timing was important, said the president, because without a strong inspection system in place, Iraq could rebuild its chemical, biological and nuclear programs in a matter of months, not years.
“If Saddam can cripple the weapons inspections system and get away with it, he would conclude the international community, led by the United States, has simply lost its will,” said Clinton. “He would surmise that he has free rein to rebuild his arsenal of destruction.”
Clinton also called Hussein a threat to his people and to the security of the world.
“The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government — a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people,” Clinton said.
Another example of Clintons flip-flopping from Polipundit:
?When Clinton was here recently he told me he was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime,? . ? Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso said in an interview with Portuguese cable news channel SIC Noticias. Glenn Reynolds called this a blow to the ?Bush lied? crowd.
Or my favorite quote from 2003:
Clinton told King: “People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.”
Yeah, sure sounds like someone who did not believe there was enough evidence of WMD’s.
One final point, the attacks against the Chemical plant were done WITHOUT congressional approval. Iraq was invaded WITH congressional approval. Just wanted to throw that tidbit out there.
Here’s a bit more of what Clinton had to say yesterday:
The Iraq war diverted US attention from the war on terrorism “and undermined the support that we might have had,” Bush said in an interview with an ABC’s “This Week” programme.
So while during his “War” on terror we had the following terrorist actions taken against our citizens:
1993 – World Trade Center bombing
1993 – Iraq attempts to assassinate President Bush Sr.
1995 – Operation Bojinka, a plot to destroy airplanes in mid-Pacific flight using explosives. An apartment fire in Manila, Philippines exposed the plan before it could be carried out.
1995 -2 US diplomats killed in Pakistan by terrorists
1995 – Grenade thrown into the US embassy in Moscow
1995 – National Guard training center bombed in Saudi Arabia
1996 – Air Force housing bombed in Saudi Arabia
2000 – Cole Bombing
And still, 9/11 happened because his “war” did not work. Now we are fighting the terrorists on their home turf, and winning, with the added benefit of freeing a whole nation and allowing those who knew only tyranny to know Democracy.
Some more of Clintons remarks:
Clinton said there had been a “heroic but so far unsuccessful” effort to put together a constitution that would be universally supported in Iraq.
Who is he kidding? There has never been nor will there ever be a new Constitution in ANY country that is supported by ALL their people. Ours was not and to think that the Iraq experience would be any different is just idiotic. They vote on their Constitution next month, and it will be ratified.
The US strategy of trying to develop the Iraqi military and police so that they can cope without US support “I think is the best strategy. The problem is we may not have, in the short run, enough troops to do that,” said Clinton.
This coming from the guy who decimated our Military. laugh.
How’s this for an example about how well the Iraqi troops are being trained?
A U.S. officer with detailed knowledge offered us this assessment: “The Tal Afar operation has been a sweeping success for the Iraqi Security Forces in many ways. There is an Iraqi Army Brigade headquarters with four infantry battalions, a Special Police Commando Brigade headquarters with two battalions, and an Army Transportation battalion in the fight up there. The Police Commandos and one of the Army battalions were flown there by the Iraqi Air Force’s own C-130 fleet executing their first combat support missions.”
Yeah, our strategy doesn’t seem to be working huh?
On the US budget, Clinton warned that the federal deficit may be coming untenable, driven by foreign wars, the post-hurricane recovery programme and tax cuts that benefited just the richest one percent of the US population, himself included.
“What Americans need to understand is that … every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts,” he said.
“We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else.”
Really? So Bosnia & Somalia were funded how? How about WWII, ever heard of a thing called War Bonds? Does he not know how economies work?
Check out The Right Place for a fisking of Clintons FEMA insults.
To think another Clinton will be running in a few years, makes me shudder.
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