Clinton and U.S. allies knew Iraq possessed WMD
Former President Bill Clinton claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. John Kerry claimed that Iraq either had WMD or was attempting to get them. The United Nations believed Iraq had them. France said they had them, as did Russia and Germany.
Of course these allies refused to join us knowing that they had all illegally done trade with Iraq, including selling them arms. And the thousands of Kurds that were gassed and found in mass graves were proof that Saddam had them. Even Saddam admitted that he had anthrax. Yet Carol Abaya is the one person who is certain that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction.
If the WMD intelligence was an error, it’s one that has been around for years. In 1998, then-President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, called for regime change and was largely based on the same intelligence used by Bush. That happened to be a bipartisan policy that was passed by the Senate unanimously and near unanimously by the House. Mr. Clinton certified it as the law. In 1999 Secretary of State Madeleine Not-so-bright (Albright) even appointed a representative, Frank Ricciardone, for the transition of Iraq.
Unfortunately the president never followed through with that act.
And by the way, Democratic candidates Kerry, Lieberman and Edwards all voted for war in 2002. Wesley Clark endorsed war as well. Their positions were based on the same intelligence Bush used, intelligence that was crippled and underfunded under the last administration.
Insofar as what weapons inspector David Kay had to say about Iraq, I believe you are a bit ill informed. Kay called Iraq a more dangerous place than he originally thought and said that based on consensus of international pre-war intelligence, he does not see how Bush could have reached any other conclusion but that Saddam constituted a "grave and gathering threat." Even Clinton’s CIA director talked about a decade of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.
How many resolutions were needed to be passed before Saddam was forced to comply? Twelve, apparently, wasn’t the number. In fact, technically the last war with Iraq never ended because Saddam broke the terms of his surrender. He was supposed to account for his weapons and the ones he supposedly destroyed. For years he set roadblocks for the inspection teams’ inspections. So much for the illegal invasion.
Things may never get better in Iraq and if we leave that country and turn our backs on the Iraqis the odds are it won’t. Under the last administration we had a habit of doing just that (Somalia). And that is what Muslim fundamentalists are counting on.
No, Ms. Abaya, time has not proven you right. You need to reassess your ill-gotten facts. But it isn’t necessarily your fault. You are probably glued to CNN and The New York Times. I think you just have bad sources of information. In a way it’s very similar to the situation with our own Iraqi intelligence.
Larry Davis
Marlboro