Actually I think Clinton did a horrendous job of it. He should have clearly offered the carrot as well as the stick to Saddam, offering him full lifting of sanctions (like they did with libya) in return for specific compliance and sufficient weapons inspections.
He would have gone for it obviously, he had gotten rid of the weapons but just couldn't prove some residue remained. The UN inspectors always were looking for only a relatively small amount that was unaccounted for, which would have been out of date anyway.
So all those Iraqis under the sanctions died for little or nothing. I think there was a policy to never lift sanctions until Saddam was gone, which was cruel on the Iraqis.
Nonetheless Bush lying about WMD's is no way to make foreign policy. If he wasn't lying then it should be easy enough to show which analysts he and the others were quoting from in their statements. If they weren't quoting someone they were either exaggerating, making it up, or very careless in checking their facts.
One can argue Bush may have done a bad thing to do a good thing. First though you have to find out in an enquiry what bad things were done. If they were so outweighed by the good then no one should mind knowing all of it should they?
Current Events » in reply to re: sanctions
It was more Clinton's fault
The whole thread (38 posts)
- Kay: Intel Problems Hurt U.S. Credibility
- As long as the credibity of our ability to make war is there, the rest does not matter.
- The word parsing you guys do with Kay makes clinton so proud
- A Flawed Argument In the Case for War
- You don't need a reason to depose a scumball like Saddam Hussein, just an excuse. And ANY excuse will do. (n/t)
- He said, she said........
- This cartoon says it all