Clinton on Bush uranium line: 'Everybody makes mistakes'

"You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president"


Mmmm-hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

 

Way to go ex-President Clinton!

 

Very interesting.... Take note, Batman Jones, MacBeth, and the others who don't understand why we went to war, of how Clinton phrases it...."When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for."

Once again, this war was *not* about finding WMD, it was for Saddam to account for what the world agreed he possessed. Very simple, even another Democratic can admit it. It's nice to have someone who has been through the rigors of the Presidency to step forward and introduce some rational thinking into this 'debate' over intelligence and executive decision-making. It should be fun to watch Kerry, Dean, Gephardt, et al attempt to backtrack on this little situation.

 

These quotes of Clinton's in particular are exactly what I've been saying for quite some time now. All evidence pointed towards Saddam having these weapons...we assuredly KNEW that at one point he had them. THIS was the justification for the war...and even Clinton says, regime change would have been necessary when Iraq stopped cooperating with UN inspectors.

I guess what I'm saying here is that Bush gets labelled as a cowboy...as someone who just shoots first and asks questions later...but even Bill Clinton, a reasonably intelligent man, is arriving at the same conclusions given the same evidence that he had when he was president roughly 3 years ago. This shouldn't be new to anyone...we've heard this all before. But it's easier to run with the "what ifs" and the conspiracy theories. They're more fun, I suppose. But this is more educational on the topic than any opinion piece by Maureen Dowd.

 

Guys,

Stop it, you are going to ruin the liberals weak arguments.

Especially if their top dog is now coming out and saying that even HE thought that Iraq had WMD.

Tsk Tsk...undermining their arguments....come on now...play fair.

Let them keep posting article after article of media types guessing as to what the president knew or did not know.

That makes them feel better about losing their A$$ in the polls.



DD

 

Gotta love Bill.........despite the Monica controversy, he WAS a good President.



Cod

 

At least RMTex has the guts to show up in this thread.

Kudos RMT.

DD

 

That's not fair, even the administration is admitting the intelligence was shaky. There are no conspiracy theories.

 

If Clinton were still president he probably would not have lied, errr exaggerated, the facts.

Clinton, being the great speaker tht he is, would have laid out in plain English what was going on and why we need to do what we need to do.

I think it was last year when he was on Letterman and he explained exactly what was going on in the middle east and why it was such a difficult situation. It all made perfect sense.

But I have to doubt that he would have snubbed the UN like the current administration did. He wouldn't have gone about it with a reckless abandon.

You see, the big difference is that Clinton would have done all of this in a different manner. He could have appealed to the public without misleading us. He would have gone about it with the support of the rest of the world.

Then again, I could be totally wrong.

 

Clinton is still doing a great job of shaking every baby and kissing every hand. Maybe it will pay off, maybe history will now paint him in an even grander hue of Presidential blue.

Incidentally, it apparently takes a liar to know a liar.

 

But that's beside the point, pgabriel. They're saying that now, after the fact...after they've gotten over there and had trouble in finding it. But the Clinton administration had the same intelligence and the same intelligence sources...and they reasonably arrived at the very same conclusions Bush arrived at. That's the bottom line.

Space City -- what you're talking about is a difference in style...poke at Bush's style all you wish...but that's very different from talking about a president fabricating the reasons leading to war. very, very, very different. Clinton went on television in 1998 and laid out the very same case that Bush laid out. He told us Saddam had these weapons and was continuing to develop them...he told us that Iraq was a material threat to us and our allies....he arrived at the same conclusions. Now, well after the fact, we're being told that Bush lied to us in arriving at those very same conclusions.

 

Regime change was the right policy. That's been the official policy in Cuba for decades. But Regime change as a policy doesn't mean unilateral preemptive invasion is the only sollution.

Actually I'd buy one excuse from the pres. But Dick Cheney who's office received reports from the CIA prior to the state of the union labeling the Uranium claim as dubious is a different story. Cheney then goes on to announce that Iraq has already reconstituted it's nuke program. Bush and his initial claim that he had the '98 IAEA report claiming that Iraq was six months from a program, and his subsequent excuses in explaining the initial state which all turned out to be false as well, I don't buy. Rumsfeld claiming that he actuall knew where the WMD were, I might buy if not for all the other inaccuracies many of which, can't be blamed on bad intel.

 

Clinton isn't going to chastise Dubya. Never really will. From what I have read (and will not post, because I enjoy, say, breathing) those two have done their share of dirty dealing in their home states. Living in each other's back yards makes it easier to know what the other was doing; just peek over the back fence.

And George Tenet falling on the sword for the current President, and people wondering if he'll be fired or resign. Nope. He knows too much of the misdeeds of two presidents, so....nope.

Now I'm not saying Iraq might or might not have had weapons-grade material. But how much? Of what kind? Was the country actually a threat? (More so than Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, our "allies" who DID have something to do with 9/11?) In league with Al Qaeda? (I'll answer the last one: no.) Worth the mess we have in Iraq? Worth the garrison we'll have to rotate there for the next, oh, decades?

 

The bottom line is that with the same intel, and the same conclusions, Clinton didn't invade Iraq preemptively. Clinton had the intel, and came to the same conclusions, but had the wisdom not to gather what few countries were eventually willing and invade preemptively.

The same basic intel was agreed on by both administrations, but the pattern of hyping bad intel, and falsehoods was vastly different.

 

Have you ever lied under pressure? I am pretty sure I have.

 

Oh, come on. Give me a chance to wake up. I log on to the BBS (having been gone to sleep for eight hours) and find out anyone who didn't immediately respond lacks guts. What does that make treeboy and t-heath?

So, where's the story exactly? Clinton supported the thing all along. I've never been a fan of his (especially on his politically motivated, cynical bombing of Iraq) and I'm still not. It's a little surprising that he'd go out of his way to forgive this, but it's hardly controversial. Every little bit helps though, I guess. Even when a known liar says it's okay to lie, it's gotta count for something.

 

What is that supposed to mean? What preassure are you talking about?

 

The anti-war crowd here thought that Saddam most likely had some WMD. We did question the US intel on Iraq, seeing that our knowledge of Iraqi WMD was no help to the UN inspection team. The US Iraqi intel is looking worse and worse everyday.

Of course this is all a diversion. Speaking for the anti-war crowd here, the Iraqi War was extremely questionable as the next step in the War on Terror. GWB more than anything else appeared to use the War on Terror as a pretext for taking care of some of his father's (and to be fair Clinrton's) unfinished business. The US would have had to eventually dealt with Saddam, preferably after the War on Terror was "won".