The Grand Poobah Of Stupidity

I missed this exchange on the Joe Scarborough show a few days ago between Joe and the Grand Poobah of Stupidity himself Al Franken:

SCARBOROUGH: All right. Well, I do, but I wait until they are rude to me before I start fighting back.

I mean, you say the president lied about the war, but you know Ted Kennedy said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction; Al Gore said it; Bill Clinton said it; John Kerry said it; John Edwards said it, said it was an imminent threat.

FRANKEN: Well, at what time?

SCARBOROUGH: Even Saddam Hussein said in 1998, I have got weapons of mass destruction. So…

FRANKEN: And, in 1998, he did have weapons of mass destruction. And after we bombed them, they didn’t.

SCARBOROUGH: Where did they go? Where did they go?

FRANKEN: They were destroyed by President Clinton.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, good God. You don’t believe that one missile strike at a camel and a tent destroyed Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction?

FRANKEN: That’s wasn’t what they did. As you know, it wasn’t one missile strike at a camel and a tent. I don’t know why you feel the need to mischaracterize…

SCARBOROUGH: Al, are you really suggesting — listen, no serious person could step forward and say…

FRANKEN: No-the Duelfer report said that very thing.

SCARBOROUGH: … Bill Clinton’s missile strikes got rid of those weapons of mass destruction.
Oh, come on. So, you are telling America tonight that the president’s weapons of mass destruction, that the president’s attack in ’98 destroyed all of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction?

FRANKEN: Remaining weapons of mass destruction. That’s exactly what the Duelfer report said. That’s what the president’s own weapons inspectors said, that those destroyed the remainder of…

SCARBOROUGH: Well, then, when Saddam Hussein knew that America was coming at him, why didn’t he say in 2002, in the fall of 2002, I destroyed them? Why did Bill Clinton himself say in 2002, Saddam Hussein still has weapons of mass destruction? Why did Al Gore say in 2002 Saddam Hussein still had weapons of mass destruction??

Thankfully I check out Newsbusters often and they clued me in on this dummies assertion that Clinton had gotten rid of Saddam’s WMD’s in 98.

One question tho….if Bill Clinton had gotten rid of all the WMD’s why did Hillary vote for the Iraqi resolution? Ba-da Bing Ba-da Boom.

On the December 7, 2005, broadcast of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, guest Al Franken claimed that Saddam’s WMD “were destroyed by President Clinton” in 1998 and asserted that “the Duelfer Report said that very thing.”

The Truth? The Duelfer Report says no such thing. There’s no such basis for Franken’s claims.

In fact, this is what the Duelfer Report (.pdf file) said in part about President’s Clinton’s 1998 strikes, called Operation Desert Fox (emphasis mine):

?UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors departed Iraq just before the bombing and never returned. The Iraqis were satisfied with the outcome. They said, given a choice of sanctions with inspections or sanctions without inspections, they would prefer without.” (Vol. 1, p. 11)

Later, with the inspectors gone (emphasis mine):

?By 2000, the erosion of sanctions accelerated … Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem … Major items had no trouble getting across the border … Indeed, Iraq was designing missile systems with the assumption that sanctioned material would be readily available.?

Also, here is what Bill Tierney, an UNSCOM inspector in Iraq from 1996-1998, said in a recent, eye-opening interview in FrontPageMag about Operation Desert Fox (emphasis mine):

“Operation Desert Fox was a perfect example of the uselessness of strike operations. Iraqis have told me that the WMD destruction and movement started just after Operation Desert Fox, since after all, who would be so stupid as to start a bombing campaign and just stop.

“… It was only after Saddam realized that President Clinton lacked the nerve for anything more than a temper-tantrum demonstration that he knew the doors were wide open for him to continue his weapons program. We didn?t break his will, we didn?t destroy his weapons making capability (The Iraqis simply moved most of the precision machinery out prior to the strikes, then rebuilt the buildings), but we did kill some Iraqi bystanders, just so President Clinton could say ‘something must be done, so I did something’.”

You just have to wonder some times how many shrooms these people did when they were young.

I missed this exchange on the Joe Scarborough show a few days ago between Joe and the Grand Poobah of Stupidity himself Al Franken:

Curt

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