WHAT THEY SAID

The wingnuts love to quote Clinton and others on Iraq from 1998 but they seem to forget these statements:

“We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs”,
TENET, 2/07/2001

POWELL, 2/24/2001: "He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors"

BREMER, 2/26/01: "The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism."

POWELL, 5/15/01: "The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained."

RICE, 7/29/01: "He [Saddam] does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."


MR. RUSSERT: Do we have evidence that he's harboring terrorists?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is--in the past, there have been some activities related to terrorism by Saddam Hussein.But at this stage, you know, the focus is over here on al-Qaida and the most recent events in New York. Saddam Hussein's bottled up, at this point, but clearly, we continue to have a fairly tough policy where the Iraqis are concerned. LINK