I wonder what peole will say about this:
President Bush’s erroneous reference to an Iraqi-Africa uranium link was understandable, former President Clinton said Tuesday, in part because Saddam Hussein’s regime had not accounted for some weapons by the time Clinton ended his term in 2001.
Clinton’s comments reinforce one of the pillars of Bush’s defense of the war in Iraq — that his Democratic predecessor was never satisfied that Saddam had rid himself of weapons of mass destruction.
“When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for,” Clinton said during a televised interview.
Clinton said he never found out whether a U.S.-British bombing campaign he ordered in 1998 ended Saddam’s capability of producing chemical and biological weapons. “We might have gotten it all, we might have gotten half of it, we might have gotten none of it,” he said.
In his State of the Union (search) speech in February justifying the planned war in Iraq, Bush referred to British intelligence reports that Saddam had tried to purchase uranium for nuclear weapons production. His administration says it now believes those reports were based in part on forged documents.
Clinton confined his remarks to biological and chemical weapons, and did not say whether he would consider credible any report that Saddam had wanted to build a nuclear weapons program.
Nonetheless, he suggested that Bush’s mistake was par for the course — and that it was time to move on now that Bush had acknowledged the error.
“You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president,” he said. “I mean, you can’t make as many calls as you have to without messing up once in a while. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now.”
Clinton said ending tensions in Iraq should be the priority now — another echo of the current White House’s talking points. “We should be pulling for America on this. We should be pulling for the people of Iraq.”
Speechless.
(Via Hanks)
Matthew
I was wondering if Tony Blair was going to put in a call to his friend Bill. Looks like he did.
I expect left-wing blogs to respond by saying “Big deal, we don’t like Clinton, anyway.”
M. Scott Eiland
Clinton’s going to need a rather charitable standard of evaluation to rate above Calvin Coolidge in the evaluation of historians a century from now. It’s not surprising that he’s decided that legitimizing BS loosening of what “lie” means is going to hurt him a lot more in the eyes of history than it will GWB, and is acting accordingly, though I expect he will continue to snipe at the current administration when the opportunity arises and he doesn’t think it will harm his precious legacy.
Markus
They’ll (especially Dean-supporters) will remark that Clinton’s too far right of what the Democratic party should be.
But it will be interesting to see how Clinton-supporters go after this one.
Let’s not forget, most conservative-backers say Clinton did right was start the military action against Hussein. (too bad he never followed through), and it’s the one thing that most Democratic supporters disapproved of.
Moe Lane
I can think of three ways to explain why Clinton said this, and two of them aren’t sordid. Heck, the third one is only mildly so, and won’t adversely affect the War. For a politician, that’s practically canonization level. :)
HH
Judging by Media Horseshit Online’s reaction to the last time he said something like this, he will be applauded for his genius in saying something they almost completely disagree with.
Perry
Maybe he realized that his party has completely off the deep end with this “Bush Lied” rubbish and he’s trying (most likely in vain) to pull them back a bit. Afterall, he was pretty good at reading opinion polls and positioning himself to appear to agree with most Americans on the issues of the day. He could simply realize that most people aren’t falling for the Dems current strategy even a little bit.
Barney Gumble
Hell, I can move on. It’s not like bumbling buffoon Bush doesn’t constantly supply us with fresh screw ups.
Emperor Misha I
Big deal…
He’s just stumping for Hillary!’s bid for the Presidency in ’08 by distancing himself and his family from the Donk meltdown.
Frank DiSalle
I would add to the Emperor’s comments, with which I agree, that when the Democrats, one by one, begin to pull their heads out of their asses, they’re going to remember that they were in office WITH Clinton when that nuclear material was believed to be there, and NOTHING was done about it. I think the pull away from the uranium / Nee-zher story may have begun with Clinton. Let’s see what his toadie, McCauliffe, says next.