----- Original Message -----
From: Larry C. Lyons
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/08/05/clinton_iraq040805
Bush rushed into Iraq invasion: Clinton
Last Updated Fri, 06 Aug 2004 10:11:24
TORONTO - Former U.S. president Bill Clinton said Thursday he would
have taken the word of United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix over
U.S. intelligence reports about evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction.
"It's not a question of believing [Blix] over the intelligence
agencies, but the intelligence was ambiguous on the point," Clinton
said in an interview with CBC's The National.
Blix led the UN weapons inspections in the months leading up to the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
His teams found little to support the pre-war assertions by the United
States that Saddam Hussein's regime was actively developing and
stockpiling chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
"I certainly would have believed it enough to put [the war] off and
try to build more support," said Clinton, referring to building a
consensus among the international community before invading Iraq.
"I mean, what was the hurry?" asked Clinton, who was in Toronto to
sign copies of his best-selling memoir My Life.
Recently, a U.S. Senate committee report criticized pre-war
intelligence reports claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction for being wrong and overstated.
Clinton criticized the Bush administration for rushing into war with
Iraq, saying the country posed a lesser threat to the U.S. compared
with four other international hotspots.
He accused the Bush administration of putting too much focus on Iraq,
saying it diverted resources from the top threat to the U.S.: al-Qaeda
and its leader Osama bin Laden.
As an example, he spoke about the recent terror alert indicating a
possible threat, based in part on four-year-old intelligence, to five
financial institutions in the U.S.
"Who's the threat from? Iraq? Saddam Hussein? No, from bin Laden and
al-Qaeda," he said, adding that the U.S. only learned of the threat
from Pakistani intelligence.
"Why did we put our number 1 security threat in the hands of the
Pakistanis with us playing a supporting role, and put all of our
military resources in Iraq, which I think at best was our number 5
security threat?
"How did we get to the point where we got 130,000 troops in Iraq and
15,000 in Afghanistan?"
Clinton said the absence of a peace process in the Middle East, the
conflict between India and Pakistan and their ties to the Taliban, and
North Korea and its nuclear program all posed greater threats than
Iraq.
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