Do you remember this speech?



On 17 February 1998, President Clinton delivered a speech at the Pentagon. Excerpts from that speech include the following comments:


The UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons.



Now, against that background, let us remember the past here. It is against that background that we have repeatedly and unambiguously made clear our preference for a diplomatic solution . . .



But to be a genuine solution, and not simply one that glosses over the remaining problem, a diplomatic solution must include or meet a clear, immutable, reasonable, simple standard.



Iraq must agree and soon, to free, full, unfettered access to these sites anywhere in the country. There can be no dilution or diminishment of the integrity of the inspection system that UNSCOM has put in place.



Now those terms are nothing more or less than the essence of what he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War. The Security Council, many times since, has reiterated this standard. If he accepts them, force will not be necessary. If he refuses or continues to evade his obligations through more tactics of delay and deception, he and he alone will be to blame for the consequences.



Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.



And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal. And I think every one of you who's really worked on this for any length of time believes that, too. . . .

 

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"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."
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [the USA], 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."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"[W]e 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."
- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin,
Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998

"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."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover
of a ilicit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,)
and others, December 5, 2001

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

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

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the
authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do"
-Rep Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002

"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

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation .. And now he is miscalculating America's response to is continued deceit
and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ..."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

SO NOW THE DEMOCRATS SAY PRESIDENT BUSH LIED, THAT
THERE NEVER WERE ANY WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

You guys are funny, face the facts.

 

Democrats have said there were no wmd in 2004, not in 1998....everyone clearly knows that iraq used to have them, they just may have actually got rid of them

 

I love it, revisionist history has always fascinated me. Kerry supported the war in Iraq because HE believed that Iraq had WMDs, based on the same intelligence that GW had, but after no WMDs were found, turns around and says that GW lied because no WMDs were found. Democratic hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20. Too bad they don't have as sharp a vision of the future.

 

Democrats have said they had them right up to the moment we found out different. Everyone be real now, the above quotes by the President, Vice-President and Secretary of State are the people that briefed President Bush.

Secondly, none of them are denying what they said publicly as late as Jan 2003, only uninformed Internet hoaxters are trying to say that the Democrats always knew the truth and spoke out.

Read the quoted speeches by President Clinton, VP Al Gore, Sec of State, Sen. Clinton, Sen. Kerry and more.


Jan 2003 Sen. Kerry was quoted, READ IT, that's not 1998, it's 2003. Deal in facts.

 

More mudsling IMO.Sounds like the republican excuse of blaming the democrats for something they did.Clinton didn't take us to Bagdad,Bush did.You can't blame the democrats for this one.Seems there was a lot of misinformation that took us there under Bush.Just like the economy.Republicans say it started under Clinton.So why haven't they done anything about it.Excuses,excuses,escuses.Bush just doesn't have the answers.Plain and simple.

 

The fact is, the Clinton administration might have thought the weapons existed for the same reason the Bush administration did, bad intelligence. The big difference is, Clinton didn't invade Iraq and didn't spend hundreds of billions of dollars looking for them. As for Congressman Kerry having access to the same confidential information as President Bush regarding the pre-war intelligence, all I can say is "I doubt it". I would think for security reasons that highly sensitive information is privy to only the highest ranking members of this government, that is, until it proves to be wrong.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by jskufan
The fact is, the Clinton administration might have thought the weapons existed for the same reason the Bush administration did, bad intelligence. The big difference is, Clinton didn't invade Iraq and didn't spend hundreds of billions of dollars looking for them.

You're right. Clinton lacked the guts to take out a brutal dictator that was committing genocide on his own people while Slick got BJs in the Whitehouse.
Instead, he let Bin Laden slip out of his grasp on several occasions, bombed an aspirin factory in the Sudan and got our soldiers slaughtered in Somalia under a UN General.

As for Congressman Kerry having access to the same confidential information as President Bush regarding the pre-war intelligence, all I can say is "I doubt it". I would think for security reasons that highly sensitive information is privy to only the highest ranking members of this government, that is, until it proves to be wrong.

If Saddam himself believed that he had WMD, what makes you think that GW's intelligence would be better than that?

 

Well, maybe it isn't fair to expect a country with the most sophisticated military, spy and satellite network in the world, who has the largest intelligence agency (CIA), with the most technologically advanced equipment to verify something as abstract as "stockpiles of weapons". If we were willing to take his word that he had them, why couldn't we believe him when he said he didn't. The way I see it, he could only benefit by spreading rumors of his "capabilities" in the region. It would make all his neighbors think twice about messing with him.

 

Hasn't anyone figured out what is going on, of coarse saddam had WMD's , and know syria has them, there are satilite photos showing a convoy of semi trucks leaving Iraq just days before we invaded, but no one wants to admit it, the main problem is we know he had them we gave them to him.
As far as the big bad bush taking us to war, I got news for the demos they were just as involved because Bush couldn't do it on his own it took an act of congress, and that includes the 2 remaining canidates for the democrates

 

 

Clinton gutted our assets on the ground and fools like Kerry backed him 100%. Sure we had satellites and photos of trucks and buildings that we believed housed WMDs, but we lacked the ability to verify what we thought with direct evidence. There's no satellite in the world that can tell you that a tanker going down the street has Sarin or Milk in it.
We know that Saddam HAD WMD at some point prior to the war because he used them on his own people. We know he had them because he used them on Iran.
Ask yourself, if Saddam knew that he had no WMDs in the late 90's, why wouldn't he have allowed UN instectors full access in exchange for opening trade with Iraq? It has been estimated that by not allowing inspections, Saddam lost over $100Billion in oil revenue. That's not "chump change". The reason is because he believed what he was told by his scientists who were milking more and more money out of the dictator for "the Emperor's New Clothes".
The joke was on him AND the world.

 

Would someone please post where they got the info that Saddam was fooled by his own people into falsely believing he had WMDs?

I find this one a little hard to take. Seems like playing Russian roullette with with 6 full chambers to me.

Same goes for the convoy of WMD leaving Iraq for Syria, that one I find VERY hard to believe.

Also, it would seem to me that pride and posturing to stay in power would be much more valuable than 100 billion dollars to a man that already had more money than he and all his friends could spend. Especially if that money required cooperation with the infidel Americans.

l8r

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 69F150Guy
Would someone please post where they got the info that Saddam was fooled by his own people into falsely believing he had WMDs?

Here's the source. MI6.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...112467,00.html
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1070559/posts
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...81C5240FF2.htm

 

Here's the first article-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
British officials are circulating a story that Saddam Hussein may have been hoodwinked into believing that Iraq really did possess weapons of mass destruction.

The theory, which is doing the rounds in the upper reaches of Whitehall, is the result of an attempt to find what one official source called a "logical reason" why no chemical and biological weapons had been found in Iraq.

According to the theory, Saddam and his senior advisers and commanders were told by lower-ranking Iraqi officers that his forces were equipped with usable chemical and biological weapons.

The officers did not want to tell their superiors that the weapons were either destroyed or no longer usable.

The trouble for Britain was, the theory goes, that MI6's informants were the senior officials close to Saddam - with the result that British intelligence was also hoodwinked.

The hypothesis, which is being spread privately by officials, is open to the interpretation that the government is searching for an excuse, however implausible, for failure to discover any WMD in Iraq.

"A delicious irony if true" is how it was described yesterday by Gary Samore of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He said he was familiar with the hypothesis being put about by British officials "trying to figure out why Saddam behaved in such an irrational fashion".

He said it was possible that Britain or the US had captured documents written by Iraqi officers, and sent to Saddam, making exaggerated claims about Iraq's WMD programme.

Dr Samore also said US and British intelligence had picked up "chatter" during the war interpreted as Iraqi forces preparing to use chemical weapons. That, he said, could be explained by Iraqis "playing games" - pretending the weapons existed to frighten the enemy, knowing they would be overheard. Alternatively, it could indicate Saddam really did order the weapons to be used, said Dr Samore.

US officials reacted sceptically to the suggestion that Saddam was fooled by his own scientists.

"That sort of thing is verifiable, after all. Saddam's people could have gone to check if they had the tube of anthrax or whatever weapon they claimed to have," said one intelligence source in Washington.

But David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector in regular contact with Iraqi scientists, said the system in which those scientists worked was guaranteed to produce misleading information.

"Scientists would hoodwink their own bosses with all sorts of exaggerations of their achievements," said Mr Albright, who heads the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

s Blix, the former US weapons inspector in Iraq, said yesterday that most experts on Iraq now believed Saddam almost certainly destroyed his weapons of mass destruction after the first Gulf war in 1991.

"I think the vast majority of people are feeling there is very little likelihood that they [the Iraqis] had anything, and the biggest chance is that they destroyed them in 1991," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Dr Blix has always argued that weapons may be unaccounted for, but that did not mean they existed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No offense jpsartre12, but it seems to me that this is a theory at best, one that even the Brits admit is a stretch, and certainly can't be presented as fact.

I highlighted a couple sections I thought were relevent, and *I* think more believable than a story concocted by British intelligence to try and explain their screw up.

The second article backs up my point about Saddam bluffing about the WMD's to a T. It also doesn't state anywhere that Saddam was "fooled" into believing he had WMD's, rather it suggests he knew darn well he didn't, and he was playing the US and the world for fools.

The third article just shows that there's no honor among thieves. Again, no mention of Saddam being deceived by his own advisors.

l8r