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seinfeldrules said:Care to post the quotes that show Clinton claiming what a threat Saddam was and how dangerous he was with his WMD.
This isn't about Clinton, it's about Bush. Bush is running for re-election, Clinton is not. I don't care what Clinton did or did not say on this subject as this is not about him. I only care about the actual intelligence was in the past, what it is in the present, and what Bush did with it. So yes, the intelligence information during the Clinton presidency is certainly relevant, but whatever he said or didn't say on the matter is not. Furthermore, Clinton's opinions don't mean anything in the face of later and present as information. Intelligence changes.
But yes, I'm more than happy to post the quotes concerning the intelligence about Iraq before Bush came to office. Here:
The intelligence community's view of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction changed from the late 1990s through late 2002. It expressed uncertainty about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in 2000, but did indicate in December 2001 that Iraq may have been doing more and did make definitive judgments in October 2002 that Iraq had some weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration's statements on Iraq from 2000 to early 2003 were somewhat consistent with the overall intelligence community's views, though the administration arguably did not recognize or share with the public the intelligence community's own doubts and arguably overstated the intelligence community's assessments at times.
Even before the United States began military action, United Nations weapons inspectors were finding indications that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and had not resumed its nuclear weapon program. U.S. inspectors began reporting in early 2004 that inspections after major combat operations had not found weapons of mass destruction and that prior intelligence had been wrong.
Background
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Two facts did lend much support to many people's belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the late 1990s and early 21st century.
First, Iraq did use some WMD during the 1980s and early 1990s against Iranians and against Iraqi Kurds. During this time, Iraq developed and deployed mustard gas and nerve agents against Iranian forces; Iraq also deployed chemical weapons against two Kurdish villages (Hallabja and Dojaila) within Iraq in March 1988. Moreover, Iraq developed long-range ballistic missiles that it began using in February 1988 against Iran and helped lead to the end of the war. Iraq also used these missiles during the Gulf War against Israel.
Second, from 1991 on, Iraq never fully cooperated with U.N. weapons inspections despite suffering economic sanctions for such non-cooperation, strongly suggesting that Iraq had something to hide.
With the end of the Gulf War, the UN Security Council established restrictions on Iraq's weapons capacities. Resolution 687 (1991) barred Iraq from having or retaining chemical weapons, biological weapons, ballistic missiles with a ranger greater than 150 kilometers (about 90 miles), and nuclear weapons. To ensure compliance, the Security Council created a Special Commission (UNSCOM) to monitor Iraq's chemical weapons, biological weapons, and missiles, and it delegated nuclear inspections to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which created a special Iraq Action Team.
Such inspections continued from 1991 to 1998 with difficulties.
Iraq responded to the UN's disarmament requirement first by trying simply to hide its weapons-related materials and to reveal only a small portion. It thus submitted a declaration to the United Nations on April 18, 1991 but UNSCOM quickly identified gaps in the declaration and the International Atomic Energy Agency caught Iraqi officials trying to transport undisclosed nuclear equipment in June 1991.
The UN passed a new resolution reiterating Iraq's obligation to disarm and to submit new "full, final and complete" declarations. Iraq decided to conceal some materials and conducted the unilateral destruction in June 1991 of some of its weapons programs, an effort that would make ever knowing the extent of the programs difficult and that was in itself a violation of the Security Council's resolution.
Iraq revealed its unilateral destruction several months later, in March 1992. Weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote in his book "Endgame" that the declaration "changed the dynamic of the inspection regime dramatically. All intelligence was suddenly obsolete. Any evidence that the inspectors may have had about Iraqi false statements was, literally overnight, invalidated."
Inspectors spent the next few years trying to verify the unilateral destruction and even moved towards accepting Iraq's declarations. Then, in August 1995, Lt. General Hussein Kamal defected to Jordan along with his wife, who was one of Saddam Hussein's daughters, and told UNSCOM that Iraq had been misleading weapons inspectors through a massive concealment mechanism. Iraq then reported that it had discovered about 1.5 million pages of documents regarding past programs and blamed Kamal for his illegal, allegedly unauthorized conduct.
Accordingly, UNSCOM resumed large-scale intrusive inspections in 1996. Ritter acknowledged that these inspections were "controversial and confrontational by design" in order to "elicit a detectable Iraqi response from the organization that was hiding Iraq's secret arsenal." Still, such inspections arguably lost some of their force because Iraq began avoiding some of the effects of sanctions by participating in an oil-for-food program under which it could sell some oil to fund humanitarian efforts overseen by the UN. Iraq agreed to participate in 1995 and exported its first oil in December 1996.
Confrontations between Iraq and inspectors escalated and became more frequent, and Iraq managed to limit inspections with agreements that declared some sites off limits out of respect for Iraq's sovereignty. At the same time, political pressure arguably was put on UNSCOM to let up on Iraq, with some countries believing that UNSCOM had actually succeeded in accomplishing its disarmament objectives even if it had been less successful in achieving its goals about confirming such things. UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter quit in August 1998, saying that the US and the UK were pressuring UNSCOM to ease up on Iraq in order to avoid intra-state conflicts.
The situation came to a head in December 1998, when the United States and the UK launched missile strikes against some Iraqi sites after what turned out to be the final expulsion of weapon inspectors. Operation Desert Fox lacked UN backing and in some ways reflects the limited international support that Operation Iraqi Freedom against Iraq would have in 2003.
By that time, some people believed that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs were limited at best, especially given the difficulty Iraq was having with funds and with maintaining a conventional army. In 1999, Ritter wrote that his assessment was that Iraq's WMD program was "little more than the bare bones of the massive projects undertaken prior to Operation Desert Storm." He wrote that it was "highly unlikely that Saddam would authorize the use of such controversial weapons until he has completely rebuilt his conventional arsenal. Iraq simply lacks the stocks of chemical and biological agent needed to have any militarily significant effect. Tens of thousands of munitions would be required, and at best Iraq has but a few hundred. The political losses that would be accrued by using weapons that it has declared it no longer possesses would far outweigh any short-term battlefield benefits."
Even assuming such conclusions were correct at the time, it was unclear what was happening in Iraq after inspections ended. The U.S. intelligence community regularly reported that it did not have any direct evidence that Iraq had reconstituted its weapons of mass destruction programs after 1998, but that Iraq had the capability of doing so at least with its chemical and biological warfare programs and that such activities "must be regarded as likely," as it stated in an unclassified report to Congress in 2000.
State of Knowledge as of early 2001
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As the Bush administration took office in 2001, the intelligence community's analysis of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was still uncertain. According to reports written by early 2001, Iraq had destroyed much of its WMD capabilities and its current capabilities were uncertain. No one in the United States intelligence community appears to have had any definitive idea as to what WMD capabilities Iraq had in early 2001.
For example, in one unclassified report covering all international WMD acquisition efforts in the second half of 2000, the CIA reported that it had "concerns" about whether Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program but did not conclude that Iraq had done so, and that Iraq had the capability of reinstating its chemical and biological weapons programs but there was no evidence that it had done either.
Given the lack of complete information about Iraq, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney talked in the 2000 campaign about the possibility that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and the Bush administration continued to discuss the issue in such terms in 2001.
Bush, for example, said in the 2000 debates that the United States did not know whether Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction and in February 2001 said that "we're going to watch very carefully as to whether or not he [Saddam Hussein] develops weapons of mass destruction, and if we catch him doing so we'll take the appropriate action."
Once in office, administration officials such as Powell and Rice generally were in line with such positions. For example, Powell said in a February 4, 2001 interview with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts that "we have to assume that he [Hussein] has never lost his goal or gone away from his goal of developing such weapons" and that the "people of the region are threatened, the children of the region are threatened by Saddam Hussein and his potential possession of these kinds of weapons."
Given the lack of complete information about Iraq, it was hard as of 2000-01 to come up with any definitive conclusions about Iraq's weapon capabilities or even its intentions, which Powell and Rice did acknowledge at times. In any event, it was unlikely that Powell and Rice would have definitive information that Iraq had not developed its weapons, and such statements ran counter to the intelligence community.
Definitive as they were, Powell's and Rice's statements could be seen as designed to achieve a political goal. In the summer of 2001, the Bush administration was pushing for a change in the sanctions regime imposed against Iraq, from one which forbade all exports to Iraq unless those specifically approved by a Security Council committee to one which allowed all exports to Iraq unless those specifically disapproved. The proposal was debated within the Security Council in June 2001 but failed due to the Russian Federation's opposition.
If you want to read more, then just look at the links.