Now That I am Praising Bill Clinton

Nothing makes me more angry than the whole "Bush Lied" meme. It is dishonest and flies in the face of all the facts. Austin Bay has posted a column by Tom Nichols that makes this quite clear.

The article quotes none other than my new favorite person to praise,
Bill Clinton. Here is what Clinton had to say...

“It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of [Saddam’s] capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them. 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.”

Clinton then added:

“Now, let’s imagine the future. What if [Saddam] fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the
solemn commitments that he made? 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. [emphasis added] If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with
impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United
Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.”

That was Bill Clinton in 1998. Here he is on Larry King in 2003...

“People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn’t know. So I thought it was prudent for [President Bush] to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don’t cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions.”

Read the whole article, I think it is very convincing and a sharp rebuke to those who want to continue to scream, Bush lied.