← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Gabrielle
Thread ID: 20585 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-10-09
2005-10-09 19:22 | User Profile
Either Bill Clinton is not telling the truth now about the terrorist threat posed by Iraq during his administration - or he fibbed to the American people while he was in the White House.
Clinton recently told his former staffer-turned TV commentator George Stephanopoulos that the U.S. government had "no evidence that there were any weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq.
But a recent report in the The Weekly Standard headlined "Clinton **Revisionism" unmasks Clinton's flip-flops over the Iraq weapons of mass destruction issue.
For example, during an appearance on "Larry King Live" back in July 2003, the former president said:
"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for."**
In October of that year, six months after the war ended, Clinton discussed Iraq with Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso.
Barroso said: "When Clinton was here recently he told me he was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime."
Last month Clinton discussed the Iraq war with Wolf Blitzer and told him: "I never thought it had much to do with the war on terror."
But in a February 1998 speech warning of an "unholy axis" of terrorists and rogue states, Clinton stated: "There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
That summer six senior Clinton officials accused Iraq of providing chemical weapons expertise to al-Qaida in Sudan.
The Clinton administration cited this link to justify the destruction of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan supposedly involved in the production of chemical weapons.
The Standard concludes: "Clinton's revisionism is hardly surprising. He has his wife's future in an increasingly anti-war Democratic Party to worry about."
NewsMax.com
2005-10-09 19:36 | User Profile
WASHINGTON -- Louis Freeh, the FBI director appointed by President Clinton, says his relationship with his boss fell apart because Clinton's "closets were full of skeletons."
Clinton's spokesman said Freeh's account was "a total work of fiction."
Freeh's relationship with Clinton soured due to friction over investigations aimed at the president or his immediate circle, and disagreement over the probe into a 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans.
In the past, Freeh has strongly criticized the Clinton administration's response to the bombing of Khobar Towers, and has praised President Bush.
In his upcoming book, "My FBI," Freeh says Clinton failed to pressure Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to let the FBI question suspects the kingdom had in custody.
"Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis' reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton library," Freeh writes.
Jay Carson, Clinton's spokesman, said Freeh "wasn't even present for the meetings he describes. President Clinton repeatedly pressed the Saudis for cooperation on the Khobar Towers investigation and his pressure led to the eventual indictments."
Carson said Freeh's claims about the library "are more untruths in a book that clearly has many."
Freeh discussed the bad blood with Clinton in an interview to be aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes."
"We were preoccupied in eight years with multiple investigations," Freeh said in the interview, according to excerpts released Thursday.
In the book, according to CBS, Freeh writes: "The problem was with Bill Clinton - the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out."
Freeh bemoans having to send FBI medical technicians to draw blood for a DNA sample in the investigation into Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
"It was like a bad movie and it was ridiculous," Freeh said.
Carson said Freeh's book was "a total work of fiction written by a man who's desperate to clear his name and sell books."
[url]http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1152&slug=Clinton%20FBI[/url]