[blackdog]

I seem to remember Ari Fleisher answering Helen Thomas's question rgarding Saddam Heussein and Iraq in 2000 with these exact words.......

"The president welcomes regime change in Iraq regardless of what manner it takes place"

How can that be interpreted as anything other than "We have a war plan in place?"

[smallchild]

"How can that be interpreted as anything other than "We have a war plan in place?"

Very easily.

If he said: "We have a war plan in place," it would not need an "interpretation."

[Happy2BMe]

"Bush says he inherited a policy of "regime change" in Iraq from the Clinton administration and adopted it as his own. He says the administration was working out its policy when Nine-Eleven hit."

Unless I misread this, Dubya just gave Bill Clinton a huge kudo.

Is that the earth shifting again I hear?

[elli1]

How can that be interpreted as anything other than "We have a war plan in place?"

I actually heard Ari say this & I interpreted it to mean that any way that Saddam got dead (including even some ''wet work'') would be fine & dandy w/ the folks at the WH.

Of course the WH had a war plan. Given the problems w/ Saddam taking pot shots at planes in the No Fly zone, even the Clinton WH would have had war plans. But I also think that Bush would have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid an invasion--as evidenced by the attempted missle hit on Saddam just before the invasion. I personally think that the WH would have used a contract hit or any other means of eliminating SH short of an invasion if they thought it had a reasonable chance of success...and MO is that is what Ari was alluding to w/ his statement about regime change in any form.