How Pres. Clinton Marketed the Invasion of Iraq

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Much has been made for the past six years of President Bush and his administration’s efforts to convince the American people and the world of the necessity to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. It is an issue that has left few stones unturned, and as such, the time has come for history to examine the role that President Clinton and officials from his administration and the era of his reign had in marketing the idea that Saddam Hussein was a WMD threat.

The rhetorical buildup to the invasion of Iraq started with the inclusion of Iraq in the famous Jan 2002 Axis of Evil comment made at the State of the Union address. However, there was almost no more rhetoric from the Bush Administration for the following 9 months-not until his Sept 12, 2002 address to the United Nations where President Bush challenged the UN to peacefully resolve the question of Saddam’s missing WMD after 11years of UN failure to do so. Immediately after that speech, the military buildup began in preparation for the UN’s typical failure re Saddam’s Iraq. Similarly, so too did the bi-partisan rhetoric and claims that Saddam’s Iraq had WMD still hidden from the UN. It was at this point when officials from the former Clinton Administration, President Clinton, and Senator Clinton went to work to justify and promote the invasion of Iraq.

“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”
– Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

On October 2, 2002, a classified National Intelligence Estimate was put together and presented to Congress by the 16 different American intelligence agencies. Only a handful of Senators and Congressmen signed in to view the classified report. Still, somehow, President Clinton (who was in England at the time and couldn’t possibly have seen the report) promoted the invasion of Iraq.

The restrictions imposed in 1998 are not acceptable and will not do the job. There should be a deadline and no lack of clarity about what Iraq must do. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein’s regime poses a threat to his people, his neighbours and the world at large because of his biological and chemical weapons and his nuclear programme. They admitted to vast stores of biological and chemical stocks in 1995.
-Former President Bill Clinton 10/2/02 at British Labour Party Conference

Two days later, a declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate was presented to Congress. It gave an overview of the intelligence on Saddam’s WMD, but the sections on how substantive and reliable various intelligence claims were was left out/classified so that the world wouldn’t know how weak, limited, and thin the intelligence was at the time. That didn’t matter to some people-like Sen. Hillary Clinton. She had the unique “experience” of having been in the White House during all those years of Saddam’s WMD hide/seek game, and the unique ability to ask her husband as well as formed Administration officials (many of whom were also serving in the Bush Administration) how reliable the intelligence was.

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members … It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
– Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

Other Clinton Admin officials were privately telling Democrats who were about to authorize the invasion that Saddam had WMD:

“I didn’t take Bush’s word for whether or not they had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I went to the CIA. I sat down across from George Tenet. I said, ‘George, I have to vote, you don’t. Are you worried that they have weapons or the components of weapons or the ability to quickly make weapons?’ He said ‘yes’ emphatically. I got the same thing from high officials in the Clinton administration who had worked in the security area.”
-Congressman/Presidential candidate Dick Gephardt Nov 17, 2003

Years after the invasion, we found out that President Clinton went all around Europe after his address to the British Labour Party where he claimed Saddam was a threat. President Clinton apparently went to individual European leaders and promoted the war to them.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, during a press conference last week, said “Many months before [the] Iraqi action, I met [the] predecessor of [chief U.N. weapons inspector] Hans Blix in Warsaw … He told me [a] very important thing: that Saddam had these weapons or is ready to produce these weapons. Because to have such [an] impression that he has mass destruction weapons is a part of his doctrine, to keep … power in Iraq and to be strong in the region. So I think it’s very difficult today to judge how it was when he … decided to continue this project of mass destruction weapons … Absolutely, Iraq is ready to produce if it’s necessary to keep the power of and dictatorship of Saddam and to play such [an] important role in the region.”
-“On Iraq WMD: Did the President Lie?” by Laurence A. Elder

Even after it was clear that a WMD threat from Saddam wasn’t found in the form of stockpiles, President Clinton (like President Bush) continued to claim Saddam had stockpiles of WMD

“…it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons. We might have destroyed them in ’98. We tried to, but we sure as heck didn’t know it because we never got to go back there.”
-President Clinton, Larry King Live 7/22/03

…and President Clinton continued to meet with foreign heads of state selling the idea that Saddam had WMD stockpiles even a year after the NIE had been presented to Congress…and not him.

“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 re: the 10/03 visit from fmr President Clinton

President Clinton continued to argue that Saddam had WMD even into 2004:

* In June 2004, Bill Clinton Said President Bush Had The Responsibility To Make Sure Iraq’s Chemical And Biological Weapons Did Not Get In The Hands Of Terrorists. “After 9/11, let’s be fair here, if you had been President, you’d think, Well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you’re sitting there as President, you’re reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I’ve got to do that. That’s why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for. So I thought the President had an absolute responsibility to go to the U.N. and say, ‘Look, guys after 9/11, you have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection process.’ When you’re the President, and your country has just been through what we had, you want everything to be accounted for.”
-Bill Clinton, “His Side of The Story,” Time, 6/28/04

Why? Why did President Clinton, his wife Senator Clinton, other Clinton Administration officials, and so many other Democrats continue to claim Saddam was a WMD threat? Was it that they didn’t have access to the same intelligence as the White House? Was it because they wanted to justify their decade+ of bombing Iraq, sabre rattling, etc which the 911 Commission report claims was what set Osama Bin Laden to start killing Americans? Perhaps they didn’t want to carry the now defunct “Bush Lied” propaganda that the far left desperately wanted to hear?

We must never forget that the selling of the invasion of Iraq was a bi-partisan marketing effort, and just as President Bush has been held to account in the 2004 election, so too must others someday, equally be held to account.

Who?

THE LIE THAT BUSH LIED

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Of course.

The standard Bush Administration alibi. “It’s all Clinton’s fault”.

In fact, how many times have I said that, had the Bush Administration been even minimally competent in their OCCUPATION of Iraq, the deceit (President Bush had more current information available to him than did President Clinton) involved would have been forgotten.

However the Bush Administration was incompetent. Infighting between Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld allowed a civil war to get started. Donald Rumsfeld declared there was no civil war (“dead enders”), so Conservatives are not permitted to use that word. But when multiple internal ethnic/georgraphic groups, with or without outside help, are fighting and killing each other for control of a government, territory or regions of a country, that fits the definition of a “civil war” for all but the most loyal NeoConservative.

Now that the violence is “only” at the levels of 2005, Conservatives are patting themselves on the back for what a great job the NeoConservatives of the Bush Team have done.

Great job, folks. It is high time the blogging and media worlds know the truth.

You can thank Jay Rockafeller, then head of intelligence. Remember he promised in 2002 that he would destroy the Presidents credibility, why, because of his high ratings before the coming election. The media sought and bought into every leak, lie, and maybe, that was put out there and ran with it, including Joe Wilson and Plame, for starters. From my point of view it is one of the worst smear jobs based on lies that the media has ever propagandized on the American people. Now watch them get Obama elected.

Kathie, I believe you’re referring to the infamous “Rockefeller Memo”?

We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows:

1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard. For example, in addition to the president’s State of the Union speech, the chairman has agreed to look at the activities of the Office of the Secretary of Defense as well as Secretary Bolton’s office at the State Department. The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and co-signs our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don’t know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. (Note: we can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.)

2) Assiduously prepare Democratic “additional views” to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it. In that regard, we have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims and contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry. The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an independent commission (i.e. the Corzine amendment).

3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation at any time– but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be next year either:

A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report — thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public: 1) additional views on the interim report; 2) announcement of our independent investigation; and 3) additional views on the final investigation; or

B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue. We could attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the “use” of intelligence.

In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter foot-dragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman; we have independently submitted written questions to DoD; and we are preparing further independent requests for information.

Summary

Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public’s concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet, we have an important role to play in the revealing the misleading — if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives — of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outline above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration’s dubious motives and methods.

Yup, that is exactly what I’m referring to. Thank you Scott. It was very effective wasn’t it? Well not for those of us who no longer buy Newspapers, but read the blogs.

Hindsight has always been a propaganda tool for the left and their agenda driven media.

It seems to me that Flopping Aces has posted (in the past) a lot more of Democrats statements in support of the removal of Saddam Hussein, including the Clinton administration’s official policy of regime change.

Besides the economy, the left will rachet up the rhetoric in the months to come on this subject. “Bush’s War” was a decision made by a bi-partisan and united consenses by both partys to remove the threat of Saddam. The very fact that less people were murdered in Iraq in the past month than the total of our own inner cities “genocide” begs the question—-what nation is safer to live in. The fact that more political progress has been accomplished in the last year by a youthful Iraqi government in the interest of its people than our own congress’s pathetic record of a “change in direction” that has produced little with over 800 oversight hearings and dozens of “cut and run” legislation defeated by both sides of the isle.

And now the Democrats want to put a marxist appeaser into the WH that has promised to undo all the progress and sacrifices that have been made to satisfy his anti-war left for political gains. We can only hope that moderate Democrats will see this unqualified empty suit for what he is and vote for a candidate that knows the threats from abroad are still real. “Hope and change” are nice storys for hollywood productions, not national security issues.

Yeah Rovin, I and many of the other authors have posted on those comments. Latest being here.

And even more quotes from the left.

http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html

When there is a bi-partisan agreement for our government to do something the Democrats usually claim all the credit. The decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power was like other bi-partisan ideas one that originated with the Democrats. But the radical left of the Democratic Party turned this into a partisan idea for the sole purpose of destroying the credibility of Pres. Bush for their political advantage. That in doing so the radical left has destroyed America’s credibility in the world which does not matter to them.

I really, really hate seeing Clinton’s smarmy face. Such a lliar. As far as I am concerned it is a toos up as to who is the worst president: Carter or Clinton. They were both detrimental to the well being of this country.

Thankyou gentlemen for the links, (the pdf is perfect). I will add them all to my archives for the rebuttle that will surely be needed when the Democratic Party continues its “revisionist history”.

Rovin, glad you liked the pdf. I compiled it years ago. ALWAYS like to see the bigger works appreciated even in the slightest. Much thanks!

Impeach and imprison!

If only the Democrat-led leadership in Congress had the guts to impeach this criminal president, they would find that not only would they have the support and backing of a majority of the American public, but also the rest of the world, likely guaranteeing a Democrat win in November for the White House.

The strength of America has always relied on the foundations set forth in its laws and Constitution. To ignore those cherished laws now in the republic’s time of need, is a crime in itself, and indeed possibly even a greater one.

D, he was impeached

Re: “That in doing so the radical left has destroyed America’s credibility in the world which does not matter to them.”

That “credibility” was lost with Colin Powell’s “Mobile Biological Weapons Factories” and “We are turning the corner in Iraq”.

OH! I thought it was when the US impeached President Clinton over a BJ. My mistake. What was it the French newspaper Le Monde said on 9/12/01? “Today We Are All Americans.” I remember how the left points to that as some sort of international support, unity, and solidarity or at least respect for Americans when in fact the article under the headline basically said, ‘today we’re all Americans because America’s finally been attacked like the rest of us’ ie ‘America was long overdue for an attack’

Yeah, they just loved us in 1998. Lots o respect too.