Why did Bill Clinton tell Letterman that Saddam had WMD?

[aquart]

"Biological and chemical weapons."

I was playing an old tape to see what was on it, and there was Bill Clinton doing the Letterman show, saying how Saddam was a threat.

He didn't favor pre-emptive attack, but he was unquestioning about the weapons.

[notbush]

1. My gut......

He thought they had them....hell he NEW they had them....
I know they had them........where did they go????????

[Kinkistyle]

3. They were destroyed

During the weapons inspections of the 90's and the sanctions and constant flyovers and surveillance prevented Saddam from acquiring new ones. That simple.

[Syrinx]

4. he destroyed them

Because he knew he would get nailed.

[JI7]

2. because we gave them to him

reagan and pappy bush gave them to saddam.

[bluestateguy]

5. He used to

They were almost all destroyed. Of course he had them, because the Reagan Administration's signature was on the order forms! In any event Clinton's support for a few pin prick air strikes upon locations where Saddam forbade inspectors access is very different from a preemptive full scale invasion, coup and occupation of a country.

[notbush]

6. Go read the thread question again

This was not 10 years ago (reference to Clinton)
Bill is just a dumbshit......Everybody with a brain knows Saddam didn't have weapons like this......
NOT

[sandnsea]

7. Because Scott Ritter said so...

... in 1998. Which was the last time we had inspectors in Iraq. Just a guess. :shrug:

[progdonkey]

8. he probably believed he did... so what?

I think Clinton, along with almost every intelligence agency in the world, believed Saddam had chemical and biological weapons (hell, WE gave them to him!). What the Bush administration likes to gloss over when pointing out this fact is that NOT EVERYONE BELIEVED WAR WAS THE WAY TO DISARM HIM!

There's a big difference between believing your next-door neighbor may have a gun, and launching a full assault on his house to take the gun from him. While most of the world did believe Saddam had weapons, there was absolutely no evidence he was the malicious threat that Bushco would have the public believe.

Something I want to mention about WMDs: One subtle way Bushco implied he was this massive danger was by using a term that encompasses chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Saddam had used chemical and biological weapons in the past, but he never used, nor was ever close to even possessing, nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, Bushco would say "Saddam has used WMD in the past, he'll use them in the future." This was another way of misleading the public, because they were giving the impression that chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are all the same; that, because Saddam had used the first two, he'd be just as likely to use, and capable of using, the last one. I think any idiot, though, would understand that nuclear weapons are FAR worse than chemical and biological weapons: if you're in range of a nuclear blast, you're dead; if you're in range of chemical or biological one, there's time to don protective clothing and survive. Also, the first two dissipate after a short while; a nuclear blast causes fallout and radioactivity that may last for centuries. They are very different, but the Bushies would have us believe they are all the same.

Remember, one of the ways Bushco ratcheted up the fear was with the use of the "mushroom could," yet there was never any question of whether Saddam had nuclear weapons; it was universally "no." So, when you hear Clinton saying that he believed Saddam had chemical and biological weapons, he is far from saying the war in Iraq was right: Saddam was no threat (Gen. Zinni said in a congressional hearing that Saddam wasn't even "mildly upsetting"), even with chemical and biological weapons.

[SoCalDem]

9. Depends on the what the definition of "had" is.....

Ole Bill may have been parsing.. Saddam DID have them....until about 1999 or so..

Maybe Bill was afraid that Saddam might have stashed a few away, and some soldiers might stumble on them.. They would probably be useless, but he had to have a picture in his mind of Fox showing the pictures endlessly, with his statement that there were NONE, playing beside it..

[KharmaTrain]

10. In The Invasion's Run-Up Who Really Knew???

It's easy to play Monday morning quarterback now, but I know I wasn't 100% Hussein didn't have some sort of chemical or bio weapon. I didn't think there was any nuclear due to the repressive sanctions and the poundings his plants and palaces took repeatedly from the 80's on by the Israelis, Iranians and then us. Few remember Iran launched missile and airstrikes on Baghdad throughout their nasty war, and surely a high priority target were those factories producing the mustard gas Hussein used and Rummy helped him get.

Remember we were being bombarded with this regime's drumbeat that Hussein was a threat and ready to launch some type of attack. Again, it wasn't that we were sure he had the weapons, but that he didn't. His lack of candor with UNSCOM added to the universal belief that he was hiding something somewhere.

Unfortunately this regime had enough "evidence" lying around...from the '88 gassings in Kurdistan to the testimony (never really corraborated) by Hussein's son-in-laws in their exile to Jordan in '95. If anything, their revelations added more fuel to the fire as they confirmed the existance of a program that until that point very little specifics were really known. With all these tibits out there the BFEE concocted the threads (as very well noted in several posts above) to create a fear and sense of urgency to launch an invasion.

Methinks Clinton was playing it safe...not wanting to make waves and that he saw a lot of the same intel this regime did and there wasn't a definitive NO to a weapons program as much as there wasn't a yes. Clinton couldn't get out...especially with his notariety, the public mood at the time (Bunnypants was near diety status) and there was a large majority in this country that was spoilin' for a war.

Playing the "I told ya so" game on the WMD or lack of them doesn't do much to help our cause right now. Been there, done that. Those who still want to believe there's tons of Sarin and other weapons hidden in some cave in Damascus will never change their belief, no matter how overwhelming the facts and evidence are. Best we stay focused on the profiteering and how the rich got very rich from this invasion.

[blm]

11. They really DIDN'T know because there were no weapons inspections

and they weren't sure if the bombings in 98 had hit the weapons targeted.

If Bush had implemented the IWR honestly the weapons inspections would have turned up the paltry number and use of force to disarm would have proven unnecessary.

[AP]

12. Because that's what intelligence told him. The neocons have been

sowing the seeds for this project for years, and that surely included inventing intelligence much more convincing thant he NIger uranium claims and the other shit the news chose to report in the last year.

[Az]

13. In the period of time Clinton was in office

Saddam's potential stockpile of chemical weapons was deteriorating. When he came into office they were viable. By the time he left office they were defunct. Thats an 8 years span. What was once a WMD is now a landfill problem.

[Ripley]

14. DING DING DING.

Glad someone here is up to speed.

Mustard gas, etc. have a shelf life and sitting around in cracked canisters in the desert for years does not make them WMD's to anyone, but maybe lethal to the Iraqi's who might be handling them for money on the black market.

[noonwitch]

15. Saddam did have the weapons at some point

Clinton didn't know what was destroyed after 1998, when the inspectors were booted out. I suspect that the Iraqis destroyed a lot of them after the bombing campaign.

[Hamlette]

16. We know he had them, we have the receipts.