If Bush lied, Clinton lied
By Tom Quiner
- Believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs
With the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War upon us, the “Bush lied” crowd has reasserted themselves.
For the record, here is specifically what the President said:
“Saddam Hussein has huge stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal.”
Only it wasn’t President Bush who spoke it. Thus spoke then President Clinton.
- Believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs
President Clinton’s thoughts on Mr. Hussein are worth revisiting in light of countless assertions that “Bush lied”. Before the U.S. invaded Iraq, most of the world, including Kofi Annan (then the Secretary-General of the United Nations) and current Secretary of State, John Kerry, believed Iraq housed weapons of mass destruction. To think otherwise, one had to assume Mr. Hussein destroyed the weapons, but didn’t report it to U.N. inspectors even though it would’ve gotten sanctions against Iraq lifted. That doesn’t make sense.
Hussein encouraged the belief that he possesses such weapons with statements like this, made in 20o0:
“Iraq will not disarm until others in the region do. A rifle for a rifle, a stick for a stick, a stone for a stone.”
- Believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs
Finally, in 2004 after his capture, Hussein acknowledged the truth about WMDs to FBI interrogator, George Piro. He said most of the weapons had been destroyed by United Nations weapons inspectors in the 90s. Iraq destroyed the rest themselves. But Hussein pretended he still had them. In his mind, that perception was critical to deter Iran from attacking Iraq:
“It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq,” said Agent Piro.
Why, then, didn’t Hussein ‘fess up when he saw U.S. forces preparing to attack Iraq because of this very perception he had so carefully inculcated?
“… he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So he expected that initially,” Piro says.
Bush-haters are uninterested in such evidence. Their mind is made up. But think about the logic they must employ.
In their mind, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair launched a war based on a lie (no weapons of mass destruction) that would soon reveal the lie when no such weapons were found. Doesn’t make sense.
If weapons HAD been found, the same people would probably have said that Bush planted the weapons to justify going to war against Iraq.
There are certainly honorable differences of opinion on whether the U.S. should have gone to war with Iraq. Let’s debate the merits of the war honestly and can the phony argument that President Bush lied. If he did, so did President Clinton.
Why let the “Facts” get in the way of your feelings. This was a good reminder of all the world leaders who believed that Hussein had WMD. Thanks.
It doesn’t matter what you say Mike, the people who believe this will not change their opinion no matter what you show them.
This amplifies in a way my contention with several atheists that there is always an element of faith when we decide what to believe. They contend that science, and a simple laying out of the facts, can prove things to be true or false.
Oftentimes, they truly believe that if you can’t see it the way they see it, you are really, really, stupid.
Some of the greatest intellects, such as Aquinas, believe God’s existence can be proven through reason alone. But since it doesn’t line up with the faith of the atheist, they won’t consider even the possibility. They insist that they are smarter, and more evolved, and the likes of Aquinas is an idiot. In their mind, there is no other explanation.
If you read this post, it is very hard for the likes of you and I to still see how people will accuse Bush of lying. But they will. You know they will. Their faith is different from ours.
I personally don’t see either of you as stupid. From what Tom has posted here, I could easily argue that he thinks all atheists are stupid. We have even discussed that.
I try to keep an open mind, which is hard. I do like to argue, so you always take the chance of stepping over that line. I do have a lot of friends of faith who I respect tremendously and would never question their intellect. Some I argue with. Some we just agree to disagree.
I don’t think atheists are stupid. I think they simply have more faith than I.
Most believed he had WMD. I agree with those that think Bush was given bad intell. I found the following interesting:
“The revelation this month in GQ magazine that Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary embellished top-secret wartime memos with quotations from the Bible prompts a question. Why did he believe he could influence President Bush by that means?
The answer may lie in an alarming story about George Bush’s Christian millenarian beliefs that has yet to come to light.
In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.
In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:
“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle … and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:
“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.
The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elysée Palace, baffled by Bush’s words, sought advice from Thomas Römer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Römer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university’s review, Allez savoir. The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.
The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice. Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush’s invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs”.
In the same year he spoke to Chirac, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on “a mission from God” in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord.
There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.
Many thousands of Americans and Iraqis have died in the campaign to defeat Gog and Magog. That the US President saw himself as the vehicle of God whose duty was to prevent the Apocalypse can only inflame suspicions across the Middle East that the United States is on a crusade against Islam.
There is a curious coda to this story. While a senior at Yale University George W. Bush was a member of the exclusive and secretive Skull & Bones society. His father, George H.W. Bush had also been a “Bonesman”, as indeed had his father. Skull & Bones’ initiates are assigned or take on nicknames. And what was George Bush Senior’s nickname? “Magog”. “
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