IS THE LEFT BEING DUPED BY ITS OWN POLICY MAKERS?
Facts on Secretary Albright and the Clinton Administration's Positions

Obviously, a fair amount of high-level political people in the Democratic Party know or agree what President Bush did was the right thing to do, and a reason why many major Democrats have put in their support for Bush in 2004. The left's leadership has wisely politicized the war in Iraqi and led many people to believe they would have acted differently. Would they have? It seems after reading Albright below and other briefings and testimonies that they were on course to do the same. Whether Clinton would have actually executed on it is another story since he is swayed so much by the polls. If they executed on the same course, some can argue they would have done it more diplomatically, which I agree with if it was Clinton. And I will admit Cheney and Rumsfeld are coarse and can present themselves as assholes, so Bush's road to war in the global theatre was not laid out smoothly. But the principles of war and invasion were the same by some of the policy makers from the left, which I believe many Democrats and anti-war people on the ground-level do not realize or want to know... I mean finding out you've been manipulated by a political elite, no matter how dumb you are, is not a good feeling. It has been a great campaign by the Democrats and Iraqi will continue to be in the forefront of this election year. May truth prevail.


"[S]addam’s decision to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and U.N. special commission is a violation of the agreement he reached with Secretary General Kofi Annan less than six months ago and is a direct challenge to the authority of the Security Council. This is a confrontation between Iraq and the United Nations. It is up to Mr. Annan and the Security Council to make sure that Saddam reverses course and cooperates with UNSCOM. And if they fail to persuade him to back down, we will have laid the foundation for taking our own decisive action." - Secretary Of State Madeleine Albright, "The U.S. Will Stand Firm On Iraq, No Matter What," The New York Times, 8/17/98

"Our purpose now is to get the Security Council to face up to its responsibilities to the U.N. special commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency. These organizations have been clearly mandated by the Security Council to carry out the necessary measures to disarm Iraq. If the Council fails to persuade Saddam to resume cooperation, then we will have a free hand to use other means to support UNSCOM’s mandate." - Secretary Of State Madeleine Albright, "The U.S. Will Stand Firm On Iraq, No Matter What," The New York Times, 9/17/98

“[T]he short-term goal at the moment through this military campaign is to degrade [Saddam Hussein’s] ability to develop and deploy his weapons of mass destruction, to degrade his command and control of some of his security areas in order to degrade his ability to threaten his neighbors. … A medium-term goal is, in fact, to have him comply with the Security Council resolutions. And I believe that he can’t have two contradictory things, which is to have sanctions lifted and retain his weapons of mass destruction. … The only way here is for UNSCOM, a strong, professional, functioning UNSCOM with unfettered access to be able to continue to do its work; and, again … just keep in mind that it has not been able to do that. So if we can get a functioning UNSCOM back in, that is a plus. We will continue our policy of containment of Saddam through the economic embargo and, generally, in terms of keeping him in his box. Longer term, we have come to the determination that the Iraqi people would benefit if they had a government that really represented them. So we know that this is something that cannot be done overnight, and we are working with the various opposition groups on a longer range way of trying to help them help themselves to have a regime that represents them." - Secretary Of State Madeleine Albright, Press Conference, 12/17/98

"Fox News Sunday"
February 22, 1998:
FOX NEWS’ TONY SNOW: "A lot of people say, well, why should we go to war unless there’s an attack on us? Is Saddam going to attack us?"

BERGER: "Well, he’s going – the danger here is that he is able to have sanctuaries, safe havens, to rebuild his weapons of mass destruction, which he can use to threaten or intimidate his neighbors in a region of the world. And that’s something we simply cannot permit to happen. This is not in our own national interest. It’s not so much a question of him in the short term delivering these weapons to the United States, but that region of the world - for security, strategic, economic and other reasons – is extraordinarily important to the United States."