Posted on 09/06/2002 9:58:16 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
THE PRESIDENT mulls a strike against Iraq, which he calls an "outlaw nation" in league with an "unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals." The talk among world leaders, however, focuses on diplomacy. France, Russia, China, and most Arab nations oppose military action. The Saudis balk at giving us overflight rights. U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan prepares a last-ditch attempt to convince Saddam Hussein to abide by the U.N. resolutions he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War.
Administration rhetoric could hardly be stronger. The president asks the nation to consider this question: What if Saddam Hussein
"fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his 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."
The president's warnings are firm. "If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." The stakes, he says, could not be higher. "Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal."
These are the words not of President George W. Bush in September 2002 but of President Bill Clinton on February 18, 1998. Clinton was speaking at the Pentagon, after the Joint Chiefs and other top national security advisers had briefed him on U.S. military readiness. The televised speech followed a month-long build-up of U.S. troops and equipment in the Persian Gulf. And it won applause from leading Democrats on Capitol Hill.
But just five days later, Kofi Annan struck yet another "deal" with the Iraqi dictator--which once more gave U.N. inspectors permission to inspect--and Saddam won again.
OF COURSE, much has changed since President Clinton gave that speech. The situation has gotten worse. Ten months after Saddam accepted Annan's offer, he kicked U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq for good. We complained. Then we bombed a little. Then we stopped bombing. Later, we stepped up our enforcement of the no-fly zones. A year after the inspectors were banished, the U.N. created a new, toothless inspection regime. The new inspectors inspected nothing. If Saddam Hussein was a major threat in February 1998, when President Clinton prepared this country for war and U.N. inspectors were still inside Iraq, it stands to reason that in the absence of those inspectors monitoring his weapons build-up, Saddam is an even greater threat today.
But not, apparently, if you're Tom Daschle. The Senate majority leader and his fellow congressional Democrats have spent months criticizing the Bush administration for its failure to make the "public case" for military intervention in Iraq. Now that the Bush administration has begun to do so, many of these same Democrats are rushing to erect additional obstacles.
"What has changed in recent months or years" to justify confronting Saddam, Daschle asked last Wednesday after meeting with President Bush. Dick Gephardt wants to know what a democratic Iraq would look like. Dianne Feinstein wants the Israeli-Palestinian conflict settled first. Bob Graham says the administration hasn't presented anything new. John Kerry complains about, well, everything.
Matters looked different in 1998, when Democrats were working with a president of their own party. Daschle not only supported military action against Iraq, he campaigned vigorously for a congressional resolution to formalize his support. Other current critics of President Bush--including Kerry, Graham, Patrick Leahy, Christopher Dodd, and Republican Chuck Hagel--co-sponsored the broad 1998 resolution: Congress "urges the president to take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." (Emphasis added.)
Daschle said the 1998 resolution would "send as clear a message as possible that we are going to force, one way or another, diplomatically or militarily, Iraq to comply with international law." And he vigorously defended President Clinton's inclination to use military force in Iraq.
Summing up the Clinton administration's argument, Daschle said, "'Look, we have exhausted virtually our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so?' That's what they're saying. This is the key question. And the answer is we don't have another option. We have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily."
John Kerry was equally hawkish: "If there is not unfettered, unrestricted, unlimited access per the U.N. resolution for inspections, and UNSCOM cannot in our judgment appropriately perform its functions, then we obviously reserve the rights to press that case internationally and to do what we need to do as a nation in order to be able to enforce those rights," Kerry said back on February 23, 1998. "Saddam Hussein has already used these weapons and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so. That is a threat to the stability of the Middle East. It is a threat with respect to the potential of terrorist activities on a global basis. It is a threat even to regions near but not exactly in the Middle East."
Considering the views these Democrats expressed four years ago, why the current reluctance to support President Bush?
Who knows? But if the president continues to run into stronger-than-expected resistance from Democrats on Capitol Hill, he can always just recycle the arguments so many Democrats accepted in 1998:
"Just consider the facts," Bill Clinton urged.
"Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave the lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports. For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM. In 1995, Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, and chief organizer of Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more. Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities and weapon stocks. Previously, it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth."
Clinton was on a roll:
"Now listen to this: What did it admit? It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability--notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And might I say, UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production.
Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door. And our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it. "
More Clinton: "We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century," he argued. "They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein."
What more needs to be said?
Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
I'm certain that's the case.
All attempts to stall a vote until after the election. Dems will lose votes either way they come down on Iraq. If they support the president, their base will be alienated. If they oppose it they will lose moderate Dems and independents. So it's stall, stall, stall.
Dass says there is no new info. Low and behold come the leaks indicating that SH has new delivery system, etc, etc. The WH knew that Dass would be unmoved, let him shoot off his mouth and then allows the info to make it to the public. When the rest of the story is revealed by President Bush, Daschle will have sealed the fate of the Democrat Party in at least the next election if not longer.
In 1998 Clinton asked for an assault against Iraq. Joining him were the usual DemocRAT suspects Daschle, Gephardt, etal, including RINOS like REPUBLICAN Chuck Hagle. None of them objected or asked for proof --- like they are now???
WHY are they objecting now especially when things have gotten even worse???
The only thing that has changed is that now they know we have someone in the WH who walks the walk and will do what he says he will.
Have these DemocRATS and Rinos been involved in taking money from middle-east types to look the other way when the terrorists have attacked us for decades all over the world??? What are they covering up? I want to know.
Do these things expire? If not, this is an iron-clad permission for us to take Iraq out. No more debate needed! No interpretation of the war on terrorism resolution needed! Of course the Democrats will say that this only applied to their president, not to any old president.
It does, but it won't.
It does, but it won't.
FOX will probably pick it up.
Have these DemocRATS and Rinos been involved in taking money from middle-east types to look the other way when the terrorists have attacked us for decades all over the world???
You can throw the NY Slimes, the Compost, Slime/Newsweak phoney news mags and of course CNNCBSNBCABCCSPAN into the same group groveling for blood money from the Opecker Princes and Saddam. How much money have the Opecker Princes spent on ads to present their spin cycle about how good they are?
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