Muscatine

"Good read.......... Thanks"

No surprise there.

Ahhhh; the memories...

Remarks by Secretary Albright during special briefing on Operation Desert Fox at the U.S. State Department, December 17, 1998:

"We are now dealing with a threat, I think, that is probably harder for some to understand because it is a threat of the future, rather than a present threat, or a present act such as a border crossing, a border aggression. And here, as the president described in his statement yesterday, we are concerned about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's ability to have, develop, deploy weapons of mass destruction and the threat that that poses to the neighbors, to the stability of the Middle East, and therefore, ultimately to ourselves."

Desert Fox and a "threat of the future"

On December 16, 1998, President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a four-day missile and bombing attack on Iraq. "I acted quickly because, as my military advisors stressed, the longer we waited, the more time Saddam would have to disburse his forces and protect his arsenal," Clinton explained in his December 19 radio address to the nation. "Our mission is clear: to degrade Saddam's capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction." (It should be noted that on July 27, 2003 President Clinton assessed the effectiveness of Desert Fox. He stated: "When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know."

On February 18, Secretaries Cohen and Albright and National Security Advisor Berger held a global town hall meeting on the campus of Ohio State University. They noted that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had used them.

"Saddam Hussein," Cohen said "has developed an arsenal of deadly chemical and biological weapons. He has used these weapons repeatedly against his own people as well as Iran. I have a picture which I believe CNN can show on its cameras, but here's a picture taken of an Iraqi mother and child killed by Iraqi nerve gas. This is what I would call Madonna and child Saddam Hussein-style."

Berger declared that "in the 21st century, the community of nations may see more and more of this very kind of threat that Iraq poses now, a rogue state with biological and chemical weapons."

The "record will show that Saddam Hussein has produced weapons of mass destruction," Albright stated, "which he's clearly not collecting for his own personal pleasure, but in order to use." She continued: "Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."


At Tennessee State on February 19, Albright told the crowd that the world has not "seen, except maybe since Hitler, somebody who is quite as evil as Saddam Hussein." In answering a question, she sketched some of the "worse" case scenarios should Saddam "break out of the box that we kept him in."

One "scenario is that he could in fact somehow use his weapons of mass destruction."

Even more cuties, mobman....

Clinton-Gore 'Amnesia'

Hayes goes on to point out that the most "striking case of political amnesia" goes to the top two Clintonites - former Vice President Gore and the man himself, Bill Clinton.

On June 24, "Today" show co-host Katie Couric, not known for her tenacity of questioning regarding Democrats and liberals, interviewed Clinton and asked, "What do you think about this connection that Cheney, that Vice President Cheney continues to assert between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida?"

Clinton, of course, didn't know. "All I can tell you is I never saw it, I never believed it based on the evidence I had."

The same day, Gore - in a venomous speech at Georgetown University School of Law - accused Bush of "intentionally misleading the American people by continuing to aggressively and brazenly assert a linkage between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. If he is not lying, if he genuinely believes that, that makes them [sic] unfit in battle against al-Qaida. If they believe these flimsy scraps, then who would want them in charge?"

Really?

Back on Feb. 17, 1998, Hayes notes, Clinton - speaking at the Pentagon - warned of the "reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals." He said these "predators of the twenty-first century," who are America's enemies, "will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

And later the same spring, Clinton's Justice Department prepared an indictment of al-Qaida's leader, Osama bin Laden, in which a prominent passage located in the fourth paragraph reads:

"Al-Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al-Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."

Always remember your history, mobman...when 9/11 happened and was investigated by the 9/11 joint commission, the intelligence community caught the brunt of the blame.

On 9/11, Clinton holdovers, including FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet, the backbone agencies for the nation's intelligence, were still in office and still operating their departments the same way they had for Clinton. People conveniently forget that sometimes.