[FairOpinion]

Another good article by Mylroie:

SADDAM AND 9/11

Jan. 8, 2004

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/1058

Mylroie: Partly, it's par for the course, particularly these days, when political discourse can be unusually ugly. Partly, it reflects the high stakes involved.

The 9/11 attacks represent the greatest US intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor. That is not a controversial statement, but the nature of that intelligence failure certainly is, as it involves the question of who bears responsibility.

Bill Clinton and his top advisers are most culpable in my view, and I say that as someone who was Clinton's adviser on Iraq in the 1992 campaign. People may forget, but Clinton was tougher than former president Bush on Saddam then, saying that Bush should have got rid of him during the 1991 war.

Clearly, I didn't begin as someone hostile to Clinton, but my strong critique, indeed utter dismay, developed as the Clinton administration refused to deal with the dangers posed by Iraq, including terrorism, as they became increasingly evident during the 1990's. In fact, I experienced that first hand, because in 1993 and 1994 I had easy access to the people covering the Middle East, including Martin Indyk, Clinton's NSC advisor on the region, who the year before, had actually brought me out of academics to work for him in Washington. That is how I ended up as Clinton's adviser on Iraq.

As early as 1993, I raised my concerns with them: it appeared from the New York Times reporting that Iraq was involved in the World Trade Center bombing. Also, Massoud Barzani (head of the Kurdish Democratic Party) had told me that Saddam was hiding many things from the UN weapons inspectors (UNSCOM), including that Iraq was still making biological agents (after Saddam's son-in-law defected, UNSCOM learned that Barzani was correct)

[Fresh Wind]

People may forget, but Clinton was tougher than former president Bush on Saddam then, saying that Bush should have got rid of him during the 1991 war.

This has nothing to do with whether Clinton was tougher than Bush I. It has everything to do with Clinton trying to get elected. If Bush had, in fact, gone after Saddam, Clinton (and the rest of the Democrats) would have been criticizing him for that. If Clinton had been president when Saddam went into Kuwait, Saddam would still be in power, and Kuwait would still be a province of Iraq.

[Kimberly GG]

Mylroie link is not working for me. Error message says it is 'Forbidden"?

How else might I view?

TIA

[FreedomPoster]

I'm thinking their website has been slashdotted by this.

I can't get to anything, now, and it was working earlier.