SOMERBY ON WHAT CLINTON SAID

1) President Clinton didn’t say: That Saddam could have a nuke within six months. That was the statement of Vice President Cheney—and it contradicted the state of the intelligence.
2) President Clinton didn’t say: That there was only one use for those aluminum tubes—that the tubes could only be used in nukes. That statement was made by Condoleezza Rice. It contradicted the state of the intelligence.
3) President Clinton didn’t say: That Iraq had unmanned aerial vehicles which it “could use...to deliver biological weapons to its neighbors or, if transported, to other countries including the United States.” That clownish claim was made by Colin Powell in his presentation before the UN—the presentation which ended debate about the war. (In Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward drew a devastating picture of the way Powell assembled this report. Liberal elites ignored it, though. Reading books is just too gosh-darn hard.)
4) President Clinton didn’t say: That Iraq could fire up its chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes. That was President Bush, in September 2002—making the statement which George Tenet derided as “the 45-minute shit.” President Clinton wasn’t talking this “shit;” it was Bush who was talking it. (In Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward describes Tenet ridiculing Bush’s statement this way. Liberal elites ignored it.)
5) President Clinton didn’t say: That Saddam was seeking uranium from Africa. Whatever you’ve decided about this claim—we’d say it played an extremely small role in the run-up to war—it wasn’t Bill Clinton who made it.
6) And, of course, President Clinton didn’t say: That Iraq was involved in September 11. That was the Bush team, over and over. The claim was made to build the impression that Saddam was inclined to attack us. With those UAVs, for example. In as little as forty-five minutes.