fire up the delorean and check out this blast from the past.
The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq’s history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.
My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.
yes, that was the golden child of the left, president bill clinton, in a 1998 statement on H.R. 4655, also known as the “iraq liberation act”. so even as far back as 1998, there was support for regime change in iraq. president clinton said nothing different than some of bush 43’s past statements. president clinton came out in favor of freedom for the iraqis, believed that it was possible regardless of ethnic or sectarian conflicts, and even suggested that iraq’s leadership needed to change. it’s easy to question whether clinton did this out of political calculation instead of genuine belief that saddam was a threat. i’m giving him the benefit of the doubt in the case, since he ordered U.S. strikes on iraqi military and security targets on december 18th, 1998. it should be a serious consideration for any US president to order military strikes, and i would hope that the same was true back then.
there have been previous posts by me and by other bloggers documenting past statements by democrats which show that this “bush tricked me” meme is absolute nonsense. hillary shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this line. the right doesn’t buy it. neither does the left.
i suppose that senator clinton could be forgiven for not believing anything her husband had previously said or written about iraq, but that’s not what she said to codepink in 2003. (yes, i know it’s a link to rush limbaugh’s website…i would be happy to provide an alternate link if i had one.)
There is a very easy way to prevent anyone from being put into harm’s way, and that is for Saddam Hussein to disarm. And I have absolutely no belief that he will. I have to say that this is something I have followed for more than a decade. If he were serious about disarming, he would have been much more forthcoming. I ended up voting for the resolution after carefully reviewing the information, intelligence that I had available, talking with people whose opinions I trusted, trying to discount political or other factors that I didn’t believe should be in any way a part of this decision. I would love to agree with you, but I can’t, based on my own understanding and assessment of the situation.
she did her own homework. she consulted with people she trusted. she carefully reviewed the information. if she got it wrong, i don’t see how she can blame bush for that. besides, we are in a different place now in the iraq debate. second-guessing isn’t useful to the current debate on what to do next in iraq. maybe that’s the point for all these revisionist democrats. they want to keep dealing with the past so they can avoid dealing with the future.
tags: hillary clinton, bill clinton, iraq