>>You know you don't think I'm a dolt, admit it. Come on, you bad boy, admit it
Heck, you gots me. That's a term of endearment, assuming you are an "inea". But I cannot fathom for a moment why women support Clinton so disproportionately. I do know that women are relatively uninformed politically speaking. That is borne out by every poll of voter literacy.
E D I T O R I A L Clouds Of Doubt
Date: 9/1/98
We took President Clinton's word that bombing Sudan and
Afghanistan was necessary and that our forces punished the
right people. We should have known better. His original
story, as usual, isn't holding up to scrutiny.
On Aug. 20, three days after half-confessing to lying about
Monica Lewinsky, Clinton ordered our military to pump as
many as 20 Tomahawk missiles into a plant in Sudan, a
Muslim nation with which we have heretofore had no major
quarrel.
Clinton ordered another 60 or so Tomahawks launched
against six camps near Khost, Afghanistan.
To justify its attacks, the White House invoked the specters
of nerve gas and a gathering of international terrorists.
Yet over the past 11 days, press reports have put the lie to
several statements made by Clinton and his officers to justify
the two attacks. As these statements have become
inoperative, officials have spun new justifications - further
raising suspicions the attacks were ordered to shift attention
from Clinton's personal woes.
SUDAN
Heavily guarded. That's how the administration described the
so-called ''chemical weapons-related'' plant hours after U.S.
missiles destroyed it.
But British engineer Tom Carnaffin, who worked at the plant
from '92 to '96, told The New York Times: ''It was never a
plant of high security. You could walk around anywhere you
liked, and no one tried to stop you.''
Military Industrial Complex. The day after the attack, Clinton
officials said the plant was owned by Sudan as part of its
so-called Military Industrial Complex. But the press found the
outright owner to be a Saudi Arabian banker with offices in
London.
No commercial products. Early on, the administration also
claimed the plant wasn't making medicine.
''We have no evidence or have seen no products, commercial
products, that are sold out of this facility,'' a senior official told
reporters.
Not so. It was clear the plant supplied malaria tablets for kids
and drugs for livestock. In fact, it produced as much as half of
Sudan's drugs and even had a contract with the United
Nations.
Reporters who toured the area afterward spotted
drug-related products in the debris. TV footage showed piles
of pill bottles.
Administration officials now concede the plant had
commercial uses. But the new spin is that it was a ''dual use
facility,'' making both medicine and ingredients for chemical
weapons.
Physical evidence. For several days after the strike, the
administration refused to talk about its evidence in detail. It
just said it was ''compelling,'' ''irrefutable'' and ''convincing.''
But the press demanded details.
So three days after the strike, National Security Adviser
Sandy Berger went on CNN to insist the plant was making a
''precursor'' to the deadly VX nerve gas.
''We have physical evidence,'' he added.
Will you release it to the public? asked CNN reporter Wolf
Blitzer. No, Berger replied. It's ''confidential'' information.
The next day ''two administration officials'' told The New
York Times that the U.S. had secretly obtained a soil sample
from the site before the attack. It contained a chemical used in
VX, the anonymous sources said.
But they would not name the agent.
Under more pressure to reveal details, officials the next day
said the agent was an acid called EMPTA. They claimed it
had no use except to make chemical weapons.
But the claim has two major problems.
For one, EMPTA doesn't show up on the list of chemicals
covered under the international treaty barring chemical
weapons.
And the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons says EMPTA can be used ''for legitimate
commercial purposes,'' such as making fungicides.
Also, The New York Times reported that EMPTA's chemical
structure is ''very similar'' to insecticides and herbicides sold
commercially, like the weed killer Round-Up. Because the
government took just one soil sample, it might have
misidentified what it found.
(Even if the sample was EMPTA, that doesn't prove the plant
was making it. The acid could have been stored there or
spilled in transit.)
A plant making chemical weapons needs special glass-lined
reactors and tubes that can withstand corrosion by highly
toxic chemicals. It would also need lots of space for such
equipment, as well as for stockpiling chemicals.
The plant had neither, according to former workers and
reporters who have seen the wreckage.
To limit casualties among workers, the White House says it
took pains to bomb the plant after it was closed. Local
reports said 10 people were hurt, four of them critically. And
one person was killed.
But the Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries Co. plant was in
the midst of the city of Khartoum. If the administration was so
sure the plant made deadly chemicals, why would it risk
sending vapors into the air and killing hundreds or thousands
of Sudanese?
Another curious note: TV footage after the blast showed
Sudanese firefighters dousing flames inside the plant with no
protective gear. If deadly chemicals were present, surely they
would have been overcome by the vapors.
Just a drop of VX, if inhaled, can kill an adult in minutes.
Bin Laden link. Most critical to Clinton's case for knocking
out the plant was the Osama bin Laden tie-in. It doesn't exist.
On the day of the attack, Defense Secretary William Cohen
said that bin Laden, a millionaire, ''had some financial interest
in this facility.''
Berger echoed him: ''We know that bin Laden has been a
substantial contributor.''
The press found no such funding link. The plant owner never
did business with bin Laden. What's more, bin Laden hasn't
lived in Sudan since '95.
Administration officials, speaking anonymously, now admit the
link is not so clear after all. One called it ''fuzzy.''
As doubts grew last week about the bin Laden link, a new
story emerged to justify the strike: Iraq had a role in the plant.
Once again, officials leaking that new line would not go on
record.
Even if it's true, it doesn't make the case. Clinton said the
strike was in response to the embassy bombings in Africa. Bin
Laden was behind the bombings and was funding the
chemical- weapons plant in Sudan. The idea was to punish
bin Laden, not Iraq.
AFGHANISTAN
Infrastructure damage. The day after the administration rained
down missiles on Afghanistan, officials claimed they destroyed
or damaged many buildings in what they described as bin
Laden's base.
That's a stretch.
It turns out bin Laden's headquarters was nothing more than
mud huts and tents sprawled out in the mountains where
mujahedeen once hid from Soviets.
Officials said we knocked out bin Laden's communications
infrastructure. But press reports said bin Laden uses portable
satellite telephones, not a centralized command-and-control
system that can be hit with a missile.
A full 48 hours after the strike, the White House said it still
couldn't provide satellite photos of the damage. Why? Clouds
obscured the site from outer space. On the third day,
spokesman Mike McCurry said photos showed the missiles
hit their targets, but cloudy weather still prevented a full
damage review.
Unsatisfied by the sketchy details, Associated Press and
Reuters reporters trekked to the site near Khost. They
reported seeing a bunch of craters but not much wreckage
from blown-up ''infrastructure.''
Terrorist confab. ''A gathering of key terrorist leaders'' at the
camp ''underscored the urgency of our actions,'' Clinton said,
coming just 72 hours after his televised mea culpa.
Some first reports put the number of terrorists as high as 600.
Yet our missiles - which the administration said struck at night
and hit ''barracks'' - killed an estimated 21.
Now Cohen says it's not clear that the confab ever took
place. In fact, some news accounts say most of the camps
may have been empty.
Hurting bin Laden. Berger said bin Laden's training camps
were ''rendered ineffective.'' Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright said we had a ''significant impact'' on his ''major
terrorist camp.''
Aside from their hyperbole about damage, they ignored the
fact that others used the camps besides bin Laden.
Pakistani officials said they used two of the four camps hit by
missiles to train Pakistanis and Kashmiris for the war against
India in Kashmir. In fact, 15 Pakistanis were among the
reported dead.
Another camp was used by Arabs from several countries.
And only one was used by bin Laden. He is still at large.
MORE QUESTIONS
Sudan and other countries, including U.S. ally Kuwait, have
called for the U.S. to turn over its evidence to justify bombing
the Sudanese plant.
Yet the administration refuses. Nor will it let the U.N. conduct
an inquiry. Why not?
The Clinton administration's reluctance to make detailed
intelligence information public in order to justify its military
strikes contrasts starkly with previous administrations.
The Reagan administration went so far as to make public the
contents of decoded Libyan diplomatic cables in order to
support bombing Tripoli. It showed so many photos to
support its invasion of Grenada that cartoonists poked fun.
And the Bush administration made clear its case against
Panama's drug-running dictator.
Why is this administration so secretive?
After the strike, Clinton signed an executive order placing bin
Laden on the Treasury Department's list of terrorists. Why
only now, when he knew bin Laden announced a holy war
against America months ago?
Well before the embassy bombings, the U.S. indicted bin
Laden in New York on charges of soliciting murder. So why
did Clinton wait until now to go after his training camps?
If soil samples turned up proof of a Sudanese
chemical-weapons program months ago, why didn't we bomb
months ago?
And why have U.N. inspectors been spending all their time
trying to catch Iraq producing nerve gas when production was
supposedly already under way across the Red Sea in Sudan?
Clinton said he was acting on ''convincing evidence'' bin
Laden was behind the embassy bombings. Yet bin Laden has
not been charged. Why not?
Two terrorists ''linked'' to bin Laden have been charged. But
the link is weak. One says he was trained in explosives at an
Afghanistan camp ''affiliated'' with bin Laden, court papers
say. He says he ''attended'' a news conference with bin
Laden.
That's the administration's convincing evidence?
Clinton said, ''We knew before our attack that these (bin
Laden) groups already had planned further actions against us
and others.''
He also said he knew they plotted to kill the president of
Egypt, the pope and, as it turns out, himself. What's more,
they planned to bomb six U.S. 747s over the Pacific.
Pretty specific intelligence. We knew all this, yet we knew
absolutely nothing of plans to blow up our embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania?
If this retaliatory action was unjustified, Clinton can't blame it
on his intelligence officers or the Pentagon.
''I decided America must act,'' he boasted in his Aug. 20 Oval
Office speech. ''I ordered our armed forces to take action.''
In fact, reports say Clinton personally chose the attack site in
Sudan.
And he kept the decision secret, letting only a few advisers in
on it. No allies were consulted. Even people in Cohen's office
weren't informed.
This military call was all Clinton's. In light of his personal
problems, that's a scary thought. The commander in chief has
the power to unleash the deadliest army on the planet. Can
we trust Clinton to handle that awesome responsibility?
We fear we won't get much chance to debate it. The
administration is already preparing us for more strikes.
The battle against terrorism won't ''end with today's strike,''
Clinton warned. ''We must be prepared to do all that we
can.''
''It's very important for the American people to understand
that we are involved here in a long-term struggle,'' Albright
said.
Good, some say. Go after those terrorists. Who cares about
Sudan, anyway? It harbors terrorists. It's run by a military
regime. It's not a democracy.
We had better care. If we blindly let stand what may have
been an unjustified act of aggression ordered by a besieged
president, we are no better than the terrorists we condemn.
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