Bush Senior Criticizes U.N. for Iraq Arms Effort

[Say_What]

It's a family affair--f*ck'n Poppy is blaming the UN for not disarming Saddam!? Wonder if Baba will have anything to say. Man, this is just getting nuttier by the article.

<clips>

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, who led the 1991 Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, accused the United Nations on Friday of having failed to make a sustained effort to disarm Saddam after the war.

Speaking at a conference in Atlanta to mark the 13th anniversary of Germany's unification, the father of the incumbent U.S. president said the U.N. had exposed its own shortcomings when trying to disarm Iraq.

"The U.N. security council did pass resolution after resolution, but there was not a level of sustained support," Bush, 79, said during a panel discussion with former German chancellor Helmut Kohl and ex-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

U.N. arms inspectors spent several years searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before leaving in 1998 after frequent disputes with Saddam's government.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3556171

[punpirate]

1. Stunning in his disingenuousness....

Between the Gulf war, inspections, sanctions and a quarter-million sorties in the no-fly zones over a decade, there was next to nothing for them to fight back with when we invaded, with either conventional and unconventional weapons.

This is nothing more than a half-hearted attempt to prop up his eldest dickhead son in his son's rant against the UN because it hasn't rolled over....

Criminy, these people are obtuse.

[Rex]

2. Like father, like son!

So let's see - the Bushy Regime can't find any WMD...so they say it's the UN's fault! Talk about pathetic, that's all these Bush brood seem to be able to spawn.

[slor]

3. The audacity of these...

bush league freaks is amazing. So bush 1 lets saddamn stay in power, allows him to crush an uprising he encouraged, all this, mind you, after years of arming him and thens wants to blame someone else! They really are amazing.

[0007]

4. The pooper has got to be kidding!

First let's talk about his so-called world war II heroics and those phoney awards & decorations he has collected.

[Cappurr]

5. Yeah....and when Clinton

Did drop a couple of bombs because the inspectors were thrown out he was accused of wagging the dog to get the focus off Monica. :eyes:

[Paschall]

6. Clarification

The inspectors were not "thrown out"; the UN voluntarily withdrew them precisely because Clinton threatened the bombing.

[Paschall]

7. But Cheney said in 1991:

There have been significant discussions since the war ended about the proposition of whether or not we went far enough. Should we, perhaps, have gone in to Baghdad? Should we have gotten involved to a greater extent then we did? Did we leave the job in some respects unfinished? I think the answer is a resounding "no." ...

The President has made it clear that we are not interested in a permanent, or long-term U.S. ground presence, a garrison if you will, on the ground in the Gulf in the Saudi Arabian area. ...

Saddam Hussein's offensive military capability, his capacity to threaten his neighbors, has been virtually eliminated.

This is a very significant development.


http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/soref/cheney.htm

[GCP]

8. Colon Powell was singing a different tune in 2001

We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4810.htm

[bowens43]

9. Well, they certainly found and destroyed more weapons

then a hundred thousand plus troops have found and destroyed.