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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (91329)	3/24/2007 4:32:16 PM
From: tonto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Huh? Do you just make up your lies as you go? President Clinton: “It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of [Saddam’s] capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them. The UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons.” Clinton then added: “Now, let’s imagine the future. What if [Saddam] fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal. And I think every one of you who’s really worked on this for any length of time believes that, too. [emphasis added] If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.” It could be argued that Clinton was acting on what was known in 1998, but that by 2003 anyone who would take the same line was either a liar or a fool. Then Clinton must be both, because in early 2003, the issue came up in a discussion with Larry King, and Clinton–actually defending Bush–held firm on the idea that it would have been dangerous to assume that there were no longer in WMD in Iraq even at the end: (President Clinton quote from Larry 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.And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn’t know. So I thought it was prudent for [President Bush] to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don’t cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions.” For what it’s worth, John Kerry (among others) called for Iraq to be “disarmed” right into 2003–if there were no WMD there, what exactly would we be “disarming?”–and there are plenty of statements from Democrats and others who could hardly be counted either as Bush supporters or part of some neo-con cabal that indicate a belief in active WMD programs in Iraq right through 2002.