"thunder" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:43:10 -0500, John H wrote:

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to
develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them.
That
is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

I don't understand the logic in using the above quote. I would suggest
that the absence of WMDs in Iraq, shows that Clinton was successful in his
efforts, without the loss of 500 American soldiers and a couple of hundred
billion dollars.

Clinton would have made the same move as Bush had 9/11 happened 12 month
earlier. There were war plans against Iraq in the works back in 1998.
Madelaine Albright went on a trip to Europe to try and muster support for an
attack.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middl...raq_2-17a.html

Being the spineless politician that he is, Clinton backed off the threat of
war, and the weapons programs continued. Even in 1998, most of the
inpectors believed that Saddam had a chemical weapons program that could be
ramped up to produce large quantities of the stuff as soon as the missiles
to deliver them were developed.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middl...iraq_2-16.html

We have since learned that Saddam's missile program was much further along
than we had originally thought. At a moments notice, it's conceivable that
he could have replenished his stock of chemical weapons, loaded the
missiles, and launched against Israel, or our troops in the region.

The people were there. The know-how was there. The technology was there.
And the will was there. Saddam used the long period of build-up to the war
and all of the pussy-footing around with the UN to conceal his program...and
likely ship most of it to Syria.