The pretzel logic here is straightforward: Clinton and other Democrats thought the stuff was there, and that justifies the claims made by the Bush crew about Iraqi weapons.
Clinton and his crew had every reason to believe Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction during the 1990s. For one thing, they knew this because the previous two administrations - Reagan and Bush 41 - actively assisted the Hussein regime in the development of these programs. In other words, we had the receipts.
After the first Gulf War, the United Nations implemented a series of weapons inspections under the banner of UNSCOM, and scoured Iraq for both weapons and weapons production facilities. They lifted bombed buildings off their foundations and used a wide range of detection technologies. After seven years of work, they disarmed Iraq.
Former UNSCOM chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter spent seven years in Iraq searching out and destroying weapons and weapons manufacturing capabilities. "After 1998," Ritter reports in a book titled, War on Iraq, "Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed. What this means is that 90%-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability, including all of their factories used to produce chemical, biological, nuclear long-range ballistic missiles, the associated equipment of these factories, and the vast majority of the product produced by these factories, had been verifiably eliminated."
"Now, there are those who say that the Iraqis could have hid some of this from us," continued Ritter. "The problem with that scenario is that once we blew up the Muthanna State establishment, they no longer had the ability to produce new agent, and in five years science takes over. Sarin and tabun will degrade and become useless sludge. It's no longer a viable chemical agent that the world needs to be concerned about."
By 1998 those facilities had been destroyed and any weapons that might have been stashed away were pudding by 2003, a fact that weapons inspections in 2003 could have easily established (and did establish, thanks to Bush's inspector, Dr. David Kay, who bluntly stated after the killing had begun that the stuff wasn't there).
Clinton did not invade Iraq and throw the United States into a ridiculous, endless, bloody quagmire. He managed to disarm Hussein without taking this disastrous step. There is evidence that the Bush administration knew this:
• “He (Saddam Hussein) 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...” – Colin Powell, February 24, 2001 in Cairo, Egypt
• “He (Saddam) does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.” – Condoleezza Rice, July 29, 2001 on CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer
You can watch a video clip of Powell and Rice saying these things here:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htmBut after 9/11/01 the administration’s rhetoric changed sharply, in support of the neocons’ dreams of invading Iraq:
• “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” - Dick Cheney August 26, 2002
• “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." – Condoleezza Rice, September 8, 2002
• “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” - George Bush March 18, 2003
• “We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.” - Donald Rumsfeld March 30, 2003
And so, Clinton and other Democrats were correct to have said during 1998 that Saddam had WMDs. He did, and Clinton’s efforts to destroy all of them were nearing successful completion just about then. We know Bush was aware in 2001 that Saddam then had no significant WMD capability because two of his top officials said so. It is true that some gullible Democrats were caught up in the Bush administration’s post-9/11 WMD lies, but neither Clinton nor Congressional Democrats lied us into the invasion of Iraq. And they didn’t pull the trigger. Dick Cheney and George Bush did.
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