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Before you go laying all of the blame on a single administration:
| quote: | By Alex Keto
A Dow Jones Newswires Analysis
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Faced with a potential threat from Iraq, U.S.
President George W. Bush launched a preemptive strike, and he is now using the
same approach with Democrats who question his assertion that the then-Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the war began.
Perhaps with one eye on the travails of embattled U.K. Prime Minister Tony
Blair, who is facing sharp questions at home about whether he misled the public
about Iraq's weapons programs, Bush and White House officials have shifted
their tactics from simply asserting that Saddam had the weapons to a much more
aggressive approach.
For the second day in a row Tuesday, Bush said that anyone who seeks to make
political hay out of the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
so far would be well advised to exercise caution, and is engaged in nothing
less than "revisionist history."
"We made it clear to the dictator of Iraq that he must disarm. We asked other
nations to join us in seeing to it that he would disarm, and he chose not to do
so, so we disarmed him. And I know there's a lot of revisionist history now
going on, but one thing is certain, he is no longer a threat to the free world,
and the people of Iraq are free," Bush said.
On Monday, Bush said that Iraq posed a clear threat to the security of the
U.S. in 1991, 1998 and 2003, and in all cases, the U.S. acted.
The dates correspond to the first Persian Gulf War, the military strikes
launched by former President Bill Clinton after Saddam kicked out weapons
inspectors and the most recent war against Iraq.
The point, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, is that U.S. concerns
over Iraq's weapons programs didn't begin with the current administration and
haven't been solely a Republican concern. Both Republican and Democratic
administrations have been highly worried about Saddam's weapons programs for
over a decade.
In fact, during the Clinton administration, former Secretary of Defense
William Cohen held up a five-pound bag of sugar during a television interview
and said that a similar amount of anthrax could devastate a U.S. city. Cohen
made the remarks when the Clinton administration was trying to build support
for military action against Iraq in 1998.
While Cohen and other Clinton administration officials may be out of office,
a number of potential critics in the House and the Senate are not. However,
Fleischer indicated the administration is not worried about it.
"I would suggest to you, go back and read any number of speeches given by
members of Congress, Democrat and Republican alike, in 1998 when the Congress
passed, wisely passed, the Regime Change Act for Iraq, and you'll find floor
speech after floor speech that talks about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass
destruction," Fleischer said.
Any lawmakers who want to criticize the current administration's reading of
the intelligence material should first make sure they didn't claim in 1998 that
Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, Fleischer said.
"Members of Congress said it was certainty then. The previous administration
said it was certainty then. And unless somebody thinks again that Saddam
Hussein threw out the weapons inspectors, and after he threw out the weapons
inspectors he got rid of his weapons of mass destruction and didn't tell
anybody... Saddam Hussein did, indeed, have weapons of mass destruction leading
up to the war," Fleischer said.
The fact that such weapons have proven elusive in the two months since the
war ended proves nothing, Fleischer said, adding the president has confidence
the weapons not only exist but also they will be found at some point.
"Nothing's changed. You heard the president say it many, many times. Yes,
that's what the president said then. It's what he believes now, of course,"
Fleischer said.
Despite the aggressive stance of the White House, Fleischer insisted the
administration has no objection to congressional hearings into what
administration officials knew about Saddam's weapons.
"The president has welcomed these hearings," Fleischer said. |
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