The President Lied

[Truthiness Inspector]

"In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now -- a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.

If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program."


No further questions.

[Monkeyman]

1. Under Bush we are the rogue State

[Truthiness Inspector]

3. That was President Clinton who said that

Look it up. Agree or disagree with the war.

Peace to you.

<<<Waiting for assumptions that I'm part of the DLC. Ha ha!

[SweetGrass]

4. Obviously...

...you're a DLC hack. :) (Do I win anything??)

[newyawker99]

7. Hi SweetGrass!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[SweetGrass]

8. Why...

thank you kindly!! :hi:

[donheld]

2. Let me guess, you saw his mouth move?

That's a sure sign he's lying.

[Truthiness Inspector]

5. Kick

In the interest of integrity.

[magellan]

6. Clinton and other officials were being scammed by Chalabi

...and the Republicans/neocons at the time he gave that speech. From The Center for Cooperative Research:

August 1996

One of the Kurdish groups within the Iraqi National Congress (INC) invites Iraqi forces into Kurdistan to crush a rival faction allied with Chalabi. Saddam Hussein sends 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and 300 tanks into the Kurdish city of Irbil. Saddam’s forces capture, torture, and kill hundreds of Chalabi’s followers and some INC officials. At this time, Chalabi is in London. The Clinton administration eventually evacuates 7,000 supporters. A few years later, Chalabi and his aide, Francis Brooke, will help ABC News produce a documentary that puts the blame on the CIA.

Entity Tags: Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, Central Intelligence Agency
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion


1998

Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brooke find allies in the US Senate’s Republican leadership. They provide the Republicans with details about the events surrounding the INC-CIA’s 1995 failed plot against Saddam Hussein (see March 1995) and Iraq’s subsequent incursion into Kurdish territory (see August 1996) which the Republican senators use against the Clinton White House and the CIA. “Clinton gave us a huge opportunity,” Brooke later recalls. “We took a Republican Congress and pitted it against a Democratic White House. We really hurt and embarrassed the president.” The Republican leadership in Congress, he acknowledges, “didn’t care that much about the ammunition. They just wanted to beat up the president.” Senior Republican senators, according to Brooke, are “very receptive, right away” to Chalabi and Brooke’s information, and Chalabi is soon on a first-name basis with 30 members of Congress, including senators Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, and Newt Gingrich.

Entity Tags: Ahmed Chalabi, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich, Francis Brooke
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion


January 26, 1998

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative think tank, publishes a letter to President Clinton urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a “hazard” to “a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil.” In a foretaste of what eventually happens, the letter calls for the US to go to war alone, attacks the United Nations, and says the US should not be “crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” The letter is signed by many who will later lead the 2003 Iraq war. 10 of the 18 signatories later join the Bush Administration, including (future) Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Undersecretaries of State John Bolton and Paula Dobriansky, presidential adviser for the Middle East Elliott Abrams, and Bush’s special Iraq envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. Clinton does heavily bomb Iraq in late 1998, but the bombing doesn’t last long and its long term effect is the break off of United Nations weapons inspections.

Entity Tags: William Kristol, Richard Perle, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, William Schneider Jr., Vin Weber, Donald Rumsfeld, Peter Rodman, Elliott Abrams, Paula J. Dobriansky, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Richard Armitage, John R. Bolton, James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick, Paul Wolfowitz, William J. Bennett, William Jefferson ("Bill") Clinton

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion


October 31, 1998

President Clinton Signs the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 into law. The act, which passed with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate, was written by Trent Lott and other Republicans with significant input from Ahmed Chalabi and his aide, Francis Brooke. The act makes it “the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” To that end, the act requires that the president designate one or more Iraqi opposition groups to receive up to $97 million in US military equipment and nonlethal training. The act authorizes another $43 million for humanitarian, broadcasting, and information-collection activities. To be eligible for US assistance, an organization must be “committed to democratic values, to respect for human rights, to peaceful relations with Iraq’s neighbors, to maintaining Iraq’s territorial integrity, and to fostering cooperation among democratic opponents of the Saddam Hussein regime.”

Entity Tags: Trent Lott, Ahmed Chalabi, Francis Brooke, William Jefferson ("Bill") Clinton
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion