Did the (current) President Lie?

[yojimbo]

*Originally posted by Shodan *
**Do you remember the missile attacks? Military action against Iraq under Clinton was based (allegedly) on the belief that Iraq had, or was developing, WMD. It was different from the invasion in degree, but not in kind.

Clinton claimed that the evidence was strong enough to kill Iraqis over, and so he did. Bush claimed the evidence was strong enough to kill Iraqis over, and so he did.

Actually I don’t remember the details of that attack but I didn’t remember a WAR, which is what I said.

However I’ve had a look around and found this

Clinton ordered the air strike against southern targets after Iraqi forces overran the Kurdish city of Irbil, in the “safe haven” in northern Iraq. The purpose of the Iraqi assault was apparently to put a Kurdish faction loyal to Saddam in charge of the city.

Is this the attack you’re talking about? Was this the evidence that Clinton had that Iraq had actually done something? You obviously agree with Bush’s actions so I’m assuming you agree with Clintons (actually maybe you think he should have gone to war as well).

However the point remains I remember no WAR, no millions on the streets, no 1000’s dead for a reason that has yet to be even partially shown to exist at all.

[Telcontar]

Shodan,
First, I don’t especially care if Clinton lied; I promise i will never vote for him (granted I will never have the option).
Second
During the debate on invading Iraq I kept hearing reference to events in the mid to late 90s, Saddam’s son in law defecting, meetings between Iraqi officials and terrorists, discoveries of eh inspectors etc. Reading the article in the OP will pretty much take you through everything more recent - aluminum tubes, uranium, more terrorism - and explain why it doesn’t matter much. I’m saying its possible for clinton to have concluded from a fair analysis of teh evidence that Saddam was a WMD threat. By the time we reach spring of 2003, we have a lot of stuff from 5-6 years ago and a sprinkling of new data that most intel people don’t trust. Further, we now have this constant stream of stories that show the Admin making its case using data it should have known to be false. if the same can be done with Clinton’s stuff, I haven’t seen it.
Finally, giving you the benefit of the doubt
If you agree to impeach Bush, I’ll back another impeachment of Clinton (which can be done BTW).

[yojimbo]

Oh and also if Clinton based attacks on exaggerations and bullshit what gives you the idea that I wouldn’t criticise him?

I’m not American and don’t really give a crap about the Dem V Rep thing you guys and gals seem to hold so dear. Clinton was very valuable(some would argue vital) when it came to Northern Ireland. He didn’t ostracise the rest of the world like the tulip you have in the White House now but over all he was a right wing American leader like all recent Presidents.

I’ve no love for the man.

[RTFirefly]

Well, let’s see:
Bush justified the invasion of Iraq - to the U.N., to Congress (which authorized the use of force specifically on that basis), and, on March 17 of this year, to the American people - on the basis of the WMD threat, specifically the threat that Saddam’s WMDs could wind up in terrorist hands:

The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.

The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything to defeat it. Instead of drifting along toward tragedy, we will set a course toward safety. Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed.

The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security. That duty falls to me, as Commander-in-Chief, by the oath I have sworn, by the oath I will keep.

Instead, the Bush war plan was characterized by lack of concern about securing ‘known’ WMD sites, as a result of which, many of them were looted to the ground after our troops first arrived at them, but before we had a chance to ascertain whether WMDs were in fact there, as the story of Task Force 75 shows:

By far the greatest impediment to the weapons hunt, participants said, was widespread looting of Iraq’s government and industrial facilities. At nearly every top-tier “sensitive site” the searchers reached, intruders had sacked and burned the evidence that weapons hunters had counted on sifting. As recently as last Tuesday, nearly a month after Hussein’s fall from power, soldiers under the Army’s V Corps command had secured only 44 of the 85 top potential weapons sites in the Baghdad area and 153 of the 372 considered most important to rebuilding Iraq’s government and economy.

McPhee saw early in the war that the looters were stripping his targets before he could check them. He cut the planning cycle for new missions – the time between first notice and launch – from 96 to 24 hours. “What we found,” he said, was that “as the maneuver units hit a target they had to move on, even 24 hours was too slow. By the time we got there, a lot of things were gone.”

<snip>

"You’ve got two corps commanders being told, ‘Get to Baghdad,’ and, oh, by the way, ‘When you run across sensitive sites, you have to secure them,’ " he said. “Do you secure all those sites, or do you get to Baghdad? You’ve got limited force structure and you’ve got 20 missions.”

You do both, of course, unless the Secretary of Defense has cut your troop levels repeatedly.

Then Bush put on his flight suit in order to do his little end-zone victory dance on the aircraft carrier. Did the looted WMD sites bother him in the least? Not a chance:

America is grateful for a job well done.

We have difficult work to do in Iraq…We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

I’ve yammered on about this numerous times here, but, one more time, there you have it. We needed to go to war against Iraq to protect ourselves from the threat that Saddam’s WMDs might fall into terrorist hands, where they could then be used against us. But in the actual war, we made little attempt to secure the places where those WMDs supposedly were. And afterwards, according to Bush, we didn’t have to worry any more about Saddam’s WMDs falling into the hands of terrorists - despite the looting that had taken place at those sites.

So the Bushies weren’t particularly concerned about the WMDs beforehand or afterwards; it was all just a scary story to get us to support the war. I’d call that not just a lie, but a whopper. Hell, a double Whopper with cheese, a super King Kamehameha whopper.

Whether Bush himself knew he was lying, I don’t know. But either he was knowingly lying, or he was Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfie’s ignoramus of a sock puppet. Take your pick; it hardly matters.

[Shodan]

RTFirefly -

An interesting post.

Would you say that Clinton also did not think or did not care whether or not Saddam had WMD? He did nothing at all to secure the sites where they might be found, just lobbed some missiles.

I would assume you agree that Clinton’s motive was simply the desire to avoid impeachment, not any belief that Iraq had WMD. Would you say that was an equivalent lie to what you assume about Bush’s motives, whatever they might be?

Regards,
Shodan