Hillary Clinton recently admitted that "If I was President in 2002, I
wouldn't
have started this war".
She made this claim even after admitting in 2002 during a senate speech,
that "Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own
people,
even his own family members, to maintain his iron grip on power. He used
chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians, killing over 20 thousand
people."
She also stated that "intelligence re****ts show that Saddam Hussein has
worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile
delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid,
comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members."
But now, according to Hillary this would not justify going to war, even
though she voted for it with conviction.
It sounds like Hillary will be fighting terrorism by following in her
husband's footsteps.
So, lets take a look back at how her husband Bill Clinton fought terrorism
while he was President.
On February 26, 1993terrorists attacked the World Trade Center during the
Clinton administration. The explosion caused 6 deaths, 1,042 injuries,
and
nearly $600 million in property damage. Bill Clinton never visited the
World Trade Center sight after the attack, and during his weekly radio
address, advised Americans to "not over react" to the attack.
The attack was the first attack on U.S. soil since the attack on Pearl
Harbor.
The attack was planned by a group of conspirators including Ramzi Yousef,
Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, El Sayyid Nosair, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammad
Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Ahmad Ajaj, and Abdul Rahman Yasin. They received
financing from al-Qaeda member Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef's uncle, who
was the mastermind behind the 9-11 attacks.
Ramzi Yousef was later found with an Iraqi pass****t in Pakistan.
According
to phone records, Mohammad Salameh made 46 phone calls to Iraq after the
attack.
The FBI believed that Yousef was possibly an Iraqi intelligence agent who
worked for Saddam. They believed that Saddam was likely behind the attack
since the attack happened on the second anniversary of the end of the Gulf
War, and the attack was his revenge for the war.
Abdul Rahman Yasin fled to Iraq after the attack. He was the only member
of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to
remain at large in the Clinton years.
In the spring of 1994, a Jordanian stringer working for ABC News spotted
Abdul Rahman Yasin outside his father's house in Baghdad and learned from
neighbors that he worked for the Iraqi government. As recently as May
1998,
FBI director Louis Freeh affirmed that Yasin was in Iraq.
Yet the Clinton administration made no serious attempt to secure Yasin's
extradition. Baghdad might well have refused to turn him over, but the US
could have used Yasin's presence in Iraq to isolate and condemn the Iraqi
regime. It was as if the administration did not want to draw attention to
aspects of the case which suggested an Iraqi link to the Trade Center
bombing.
U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's
hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly
salary.
According to Laurie Mylroie, who served as Clinton's adviser on Iraq
during
the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton's decision to hit Baghdad
with
cruise missiles on June 26, 1993, was made in part because he believed
Iraq
had been involved in the first World Trade Center bombing four months
earlier. Yet during
Clinton's televised address, Bill Clinton only claimed the attack was in
response to the assassination attempt against former President George
Bush.
Five weeks after the World Trade Center bombing, four suspects were under
arrest. The mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, had fled. Still, at that point in
early April 1993, the FBI proclaimed that it had captured most of those
involved. The bombing, it claimed, was the work of a loose group of
fundamentalists with no ties to any state. The predictable media frenzy
followed and, perhaps as a result, some obvious questions were not asked.
How could the government know so early in the investigation that those it
had arrested had no ties to any state? If the government knew so much so
soon, then why did one of those arrested never stand trial for the
bombing,
and why were three others indicted much later? In short, the Justice
Department determined that the bombing had no state sponsor****p even
before
it decided definitively who had been involved.
Yet by responding to state-sponsored terrorism solely by arresting and
trying individual perpetrators, the U.S. government, in effect, invites
such
states to commit acts of terror in such a way as to leave behind a few
relatively minor figures to be arrested, tried, and convicted. This makes
it unlikely that the larger, more im****tant, and more difficult question
of
state sponsor****p will ever be addressed.
But there was no intelligence investigation of the World Trade Center
bombing. The CIA is, after all, prohibited from operating in America. Of
course, a crack inter-agency team could have been established to examine
the
question of state sponsor****p. But Clinton administration officials set up
no such team.
When Ramzi Yousef was later found in Paskistan and arrested, while flying
over New York city, he said, "you see the Trade Centers down there,
they're
still standing, aren't they?" Yousef responds, "They wouldn't be if I had
enough money and enough explosives."
In October 1995, the militant Islamist and blind cleric Sheik Omar
Abdel-Rahman, was sentenced to life imprisonment for masterminding the
bombing. In 1998, Ramzi Yousef was convicted of "seditious conspiracy" to
bomb the towers. In all, ten militant Islamist conspirators were convicted
for their part in the bombing, each receiving prison sentences of a
maximum
of 240 years.
On March 8, 1995, two U.S. diplomats are killed in Karachi, Pakistan.
Bill
Clinton had no response to the attacks.
On June 25, 1996 a fuel truck explodes outside the United States
military's
Khobar Towers building, killing 19 military personnel and wounding 515.
Bill Clinton had no response to the attacks.
On November 12, 1997 four U.S. businessmen are killed in Karachi, Pakistan
by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Council. President Clinton had
no
response to the attacks.
On August 7, 1998, in near simultaneous explosions at U.S. Embassies in
Tanzania and Kenya, Al Qaeda terrorists kill 291 and wound 5,000 in Kenya
and kill 10 and wound 77 in Tanzania .
In response to the attack, on August 22, 1998, President Clinton launched
airstrikes on Afghanistan and a ****fa Pharmaceutical company in Sudan.
According to a
New York Times article, Clinton admits that the air missiles were not
aimed
at Bin Laden. "Let our actions today send this message loud and clear,"
Clinton said in an address from the Oval Office. "There are no expendable
American targets. There will be no sanctuary for terrorists." Apparently
the
strike was to just send a message, but not to kill Bin Laden.
To justify the Sudanese plant as a target, Clinton aides said it was
involved in the production of deadly VX nerve gas. Officials further
determined that Bin Laden owned a stake in the operation and that its
manager had traveled to Baghdad to learn bomb-making techniques from
Saddam's weapons scientists.
On November 4, 1998, there was an indictment against bin Laden charging
him
with murder in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
The indictment disclosed a close relation****p between al Qaeda and
Saddam's
regime, which included specialists on chemical weapons and all types of
bombs, including truck bombs, a favorite weapon of terrorists.
The 1998 indictment said: "Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the
National
Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its
associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together
against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the
United
States. In addition, 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."
On December 16, 1998, Bill Clinton launched military strikes against Iraq.
The president said "Iraq's refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons
inspectors
presented a threat to the entire world. "Saddam (Hussein) must not be
allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison
gas
or biological weapons," Clinton said.
Clinton also stated that, while other countries also had weapons of mass
destruction, Hussein is in a different category because he has used such
weapons against his own people and against his neighbors.
"Iraq failed to cooperate with the inspectors and placed new restrictions
on
them", Clinton said. He said Iraqi officials also destroyed records and
moved everything, even the furniture, out of suspected sites before
inspectors were allowed in.
"Instead of inspectors disarming Saddam, Saddam has disarmed the
inspectors," Clinton said. President Clinton said the strike was
necessary
because Saddam could rebuild its chemical, biological and nuclear programs
in a matter of months, not years".
Clinton also called Hussein a threat to his people and to the security of
the world.
"The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi
government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a
government that respects the rights of its people," Clinton said.
President Clinton announced a new policy toward Iraq of "regime change."
On
October 31, 1998 the president signed into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq
Liberation Act." The new Act appropriated funds to Iraqi opposition groups
in the hope of removing Saddam Hussein from power and replacing his regime
with a democracy. (But apparently that mission was never completed.)
So why was it ok to try to remove Saddam Husssein from power in 1998 when
Bill Clinton was President, but NOT ok for President George Bush to do it
after the horrific attacks on 9-11?
On December 4, 1998, Bill Clinton received a Presidential Daily Briefing
entitled, "Bin Laden Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks".
This was almost 3 years before the 9-11 attacks.
On October 12, 2000 The U.S.S. Cole, a destroyer in the United States
Navy,
is rammed by a boat full of explosives in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. 17
sailors are killed and 39 more are injured.
Investigators in Yemen uncovered evidence suggesting the bomb attack on
the
war****p USS Cole had been a meticulously organized conspiracy, which a
leading US terrorism expert said may have been a joint operation
between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
In the wake of the USS Cole bombing, National Security Adviser Sandy
Berger
met with Defense Secretary William Cohen to discuss a new approach to
targeting bin Laden. Berger says, "We've been hit many times, and we'll be
hit again. Yet we have no option beyond cruise missiles." He once again
brings up the idea of a "boots on the ground" option-a Delta Force special
operation to get bin Laden. A plan is drawn up but the order to execute it
is never given. Cohen and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Henry Shelton
oppose the plan. By December 21, the CIA re****ts that it strongly suspects
that al-Qaeda was behind the bombing, but fails to definitively make that
conclusion. That makes such an attack politically difficult. Says a former
senior Clinton aide, "If we had done anything, say, two weeks before the
election, we'd be accused of helping [presidential candidate] Al Gore.
In December 2000, the military not only drew up plans to directly target
bin Laden, but also comes up with a larger plan looking at alternatives to
assassination. Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, the director of operations for
the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, prepared a plan to incor****ate military, economic,
diplomatic, and political activities to pressure the Taliban to expel bin
Laden. A "Phased Campaign Concept" calls for wider-ranging military
strikes
against the Taliban and other targets, but doesn't include contingency
plans
for an invasion of Afghanistan. The concept is briefed to Deputy National
Security Adviser Donald Kerrick and other officials, but it is never acted
on.
Former CIA terror analyst Michael Scheur claimed that Bill Clinton had at
least 8 to 10 chances to kill or capture Bin Laden, but Bill Clinton
refused
to have him killed or captured.
On March 16, 2004, NBC News had exclusively obtained a secret CIA
videotape
of what is believed to be Osama bin Laden a year before 9/11. Lisa Myers
explores: Why didn't the United States strike, and why was he never killed
or captured? NBC exclusive video.
So we now know that Hillary admits she would not have invaded Iraq, even
though she voted for it. She at one time understood that Saddam was a
threat
like her husband did, but admits she would take the same inactive approach
to fighting terror that her husband did. Her husband never had the
political will to really fight against the terrorist threats. Can
Americans
really afford to sup****t someone who cannot stick to their core
convictions,
and go back to the pre-9/11 mentality of taking an inactive approach to
fighting terror? Apparently she sees the war in Iraq, as the same
"over-reaction" as her husband did when the first attack occurred on the
World Trade Center, and told Americans to not "over-react".
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