19 Dec 2006 (updated 19 Dec 2006 at 19:04 UTC)
»
bi says in his blog entry dated
Dec 19th, 2006:
but check out the following words which he quotes Clinton
as saying (emphasis added):
"And mark my words, he will develop
weapons of
mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use
them. Because we are acting today, it is less likely that
we will face these dangers in the future."
From these words, he goes on to draw this conclusion
(emphasis added, again):
[...] it is interesting to note that even the
Clinton Administration claimed that Iraq had WMDs
[...]
Now, when someone can't properly distinguish between
the past tense, the present tense and the future tense,
are we supposed to trust his self-righteous pronouncements
on US presidents past and present?
Allow me to quote again from the same source that I was
quoting there (emphasis added):
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Earlier today, I ordered
America's Armed Forces to strike military and security
targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their
mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and
biological programs, and its military capacity to
threaten its neighbors.
[...]
Iraq repeatedly restricted UNSCOM's ability to obtain
necessary evidence. For example, Iraq obstructed UNSCOM's
effort to photograph bombs related to its chemical
weapons program. It tried to stop an UNSCOM biological
weapons team from videotaping a site and photocopying
documents, and prevented Iraqi personnel from answering
UNSCOM's questions.
Prior to the inspection of another site, Iraq
actually emptied out the building, removing not just
documents, but even the furniture and the equipment. Iraq
has failed to turn over virtually all the documents
requested by the inspectors; indeed, we know that Iraq
ordered the destruction of weapons related documents in
anticipation of an UNSCOM inspection.
This suggests (although, admittedly, does not confirm
with 100% certainty) that Iraq had WMD programs. Those
statements are where I had concluded that the Clinton
Administration was convinced that Iraq had
WMDs.
I maintain that then President Clinton chose his words
more carefully than I that Iraq was suspected of having
(or soon having) Weapons of Mass Destruction. We already
know that they had them further in the past (afterall,
they used them prior to even the first Gulf War).
Now, before bi argues that
Iraq has never used nuclear weapons, it is important to
note that the definition of WMDs is not limited to nuclear
weapons. From Wikipedia:
Weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a term used to
describe a munition with the capacity to indiscriminately
kill large numbers of living beings. The phrase broadly
encompasses several areas of weapon synthesis, including
nuclear, biological, chemical (NBC) and, increasingly,
radiological weapons.
We know for a fact that Iraq has had (and knows how to
make) chemical weapons capable of killing large numbers
of people. This is undisputable fact.
Clinton says this in his address:
With Saddam, there's one big difference: he has used them,
not once but repeatedly -- unleashing chemical weapons
against Iranian troops during a decade-long war, not only
against soldiers, but against civilians; firing Scud
missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
and Iran -- not only against a foreign enemy, but even
against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in
Northern Iraq.
I concede to bi that my
wording was wrong there, and I apologise, however one must
also note that it was clear that Clinton felt there were
indeed WMDs as, in the summer of 1998, he launched
missiles at a target thought to have been a chemical
weapons plant (later reported to have been a
pharmaceutical plant instead) which, as you might note,
happened prior to the report that I quoted from 1999.
My point is that even the Clinton Administration was
convinced that Iraq had WMDs or, at the very least, the
means to construct them... thus debunking the assertion
that the Bush Administration was the originating source of
this (possibly mis)information (I say possible
misinformation because it has never been proven that Iraq
didn't have the suspected WMDs at the time of the
allegations; similarly it has never been proven that they
did).