Posted on 12/15/2011 4:36:11 AM PST by tobyhill
Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw recounted some of the rationale behind why the Bush administration believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion of Iraq, even noting that President Clinton had also believed in the presense of WMD.
Brokaw related evidence that the Iraqi dictator had tried to deceive Iran into believing he possessed WMD, and noted that the people of Iraq lived in "sheer terror" and were afraid to talk to the NBC anchor when he visited the country during Saddam Hussein's reign.
After host Piers Morgan asked Brokaw about the difference between America's approach to the war effort in Libya versus its more direct invasion of Iraq, Brokaw noted that a distinction between what the U.S. faced in the two countries was that Saddam Hussein "had the iron fist over that entire country." Brokaw:
Saddam Hussein really had the iron fist over that entire country, had an enormous military that was there. I was in Iraq several times before the war began, and the sheer terror of people in the streets of Iraq afraid to talk to you in any way because they didn't know whether they would be eliminated and the kind of terror techniques that he unleashed on people, the most innocent people in Iraq for the smallest, slight however he perceived it. So those are two different circumstances.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Those sons of bitches. What they put the country through for the sake of pure partisan politics is criminal.
< /sarcasm>
The Greatest Propagandist speaks.
Must have received a directive to help rehabiltate Bill Clinton’s image—Hillary must be running.
Does is mean that Tom Brokaw was able to depart from groupthink—if only briefly? Even that is astonishing.
I think I see where you’re coming from. Get these issues in the open and defuse them by trying to make them old news. If or when she enters the race, the narrative will be, “No need to go there, already reported,” Then, if anyone does bring it up, piously exclaim the race is about Hillary, not Bill, yada, yada, change subject...
I still don’t think it will happen unless the Bamster decides not to run again — which could happen. One thing for sure, he could make it very messy if someone were to try and force him out. Chicago-style, anyone?
And remember Hillary and the FBI records? What are the odds, with an AG like Holder, that Bammy has not already done the same thing — only much more secretly. Does the AG have access to FBI files? Would he burn the entire Democrat Party house down if he thought he had nothing to lose?
If I were a (shudder) Dem party boss, I probably wouldn’t want to take the chance.
Interesting times...
Clinton made that claim during his administration. The term “regime change” vis-a-vis Iraq was from that era.
A few days later and forevermore, all we heard was "Bush bashing".
No one ever talks about the whole standoff situation where Hussein was going to hit Tel Aviv with anthrax scuds and the Israelis were handing out gas masks and having end of the world parties.
Does anyone in the US remember or even know about this?
(btw.. anthrax is a wmd)
This still baffles me, and it baffles me why Bush and Rumsfeld have backed off this after the VERIFIED NEWS STORY three years ago that 550 TONS of uranium had been quietly moved out of Iraq after the war. What the hell is 550 tons of uranium but a WMD?????
They just couldn't let President Bush have that victory. We went in and toppled Saddam very quickly. Had we had the democrats' and international support we would have been gone within the year.
In truth, it was the UN who let Saddam go on and on with the opting for a conditional surrender rather than taking him out.
We had to go back and finish the job. It would have become a stragic base for Usama. Anyone that thinks Saddam and Osama wouldn't work together against the US has their head in the sand.
No. one head in the sand man....Barak Obama!!
Yes she is, and MSNBC/NBC is spearheading her dirty tricks campaign.
Zippo is going to be forced out, and it's going to be blamed on the 1%, the RICH WHITE PEOPLE. You can also substitute the word JEWS for 1%.
That's what OWS is about. Make it appear as of the 1% control everything.
On December 16, 1998, on the eve of the scheduled House vote on his impeachment, Bill Clinton launched a surprise bombing attack on Baghdad. As justification for this exploit, he cited the urgent threat that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction posed to America, and the need for immediate action.
Almost immediately, the House Democrats held a caucus and emerged calling for a delay in the impeachment proceedings. House minority leader Dick Gephardt made a statement: “We obviously should pass a resolution by saying that we stand behind the troops. I would hope that we do not take up impeachment until the hostilities have completely ended.”
Conveniently, a delay so near the end of the House term would have caused the vote to be taken up in the next session – when the newly elected House membership would be seated with more Democratic representation, thereby improving Clinton’s chances of dodging impeachment.
The Republicans did, in fact, agree to delay the hearings, but only for a day or two. Amazingly, Clinton ended the bombing raid after only 70 hours — once it became clear that in spite of the brief delay, the vote would still be held in the current session.
Once the bombing stopped, Clinton touted the effectiveness and importance of the mission. As reported by ABC News : “We have inflicted significant damage on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programs, on the command structures that direct and protect that capability, and on his military and security infrastructure,” he said. Defense secretary William Cohen echoed the point: “We estimate that Saddam’s missile program has been set back by at least a year.”
Whether or not one buys Clinton’s assessment of that mission, it is difficult to believe that its timing was so critical that it required commencement virtually at the moment the House was scheduled to vote on the impeachment. I think the most reasonable conclusion is that Clinton cynically deployed US military assets and placed military personnel in harm’s way for purely political reasons.
Maybe, but with Barry claiming credit, this must become "the good war" for the history books. I think that is the motivation here. Cynical? Yeah, but with good reason.
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