Learning From the Pros
Sen. Hillary Clinton and former-President Bill Clinton are among the chief critics of the administration's handling of Iraq. Together with former-Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Sen. Carl Levin, Al Gore, and other prominent Democrats, they have launched a vicious campaign to discredit the administration of George W. Bush.
They now charge that, in reality, there never were any weapons of mass destruction. They say both the CIA and the president lied. They charge it was all concocted to make Dick Cheney and his friends at Halliburton rich.
They surely sound different than they did when they were facing the same Saddam Hussein that George Bush just deposed.
Just listen to what Bill Clinton said on Feb. 17, 1998, just before he ordered Operation Desert Fox against Saddam's Iraq: "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." He made this statement on a national broadcast.
At the time, Clinton's attack on Saddam's Iraq was being criticized as a "wag the dog" effort to deflect attention away from his scandals and upcoming impeachment.
Madeline Albright defended her boss, saying, "Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
On Nov. 19, 1999, Albright told the world, "Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
These are the warnings they gave America when they had the same intelligence access that the current administration has. The only thing that has changed is now they don't have access to the top-secret information the president has.
Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, justified the 1998 air war against Iraq by charging, "He [Saddam Hussein] will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983."
THESE ARE THE SAME WEAPONS THE DEMOCRATS NOW DENY EVER EXISTED.
Democratic Congressional Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, has opposed the current war on Iraq from the beginning. But in 1998, she said, "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons-inspection process."
So what happened between 1998 and now? Did Saddam have a change of heart that everybody except the White House knew about? Was new intelligence uncovered that suggested that Saddam had abandoned his weapons programs?
Not according to the hugely partisan Senate Intelligence Committee. Democrat Sen. Carl Levin sits on that committee. In a letter to President Clinton signed by John Kerrey and Carl Levin, these two stalwarts pleaded, "[We] urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
And this was from Carl Levin and John Kerry – today's most persistent and vocal critics of President Bush and his policy that was based on Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Their hypocrisy is almost beyond belief. They must think no one remembers their words of wisdom.
It is true that the Bush administration hasn't found Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. But if they deceived us about Iraq possessing them, they learned from the pros – the Clinton administration.
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