It’s still Clinton’s fault

November 2, 2005

When all else fails, the Bush White House still has one talking point that lets everyone know that they’ve officially run out of things to say: it’s Clinton’s fault.

The White House sought to deflect politically charged questions Wednesday about President Bush’s use of prewar intelligence in Iraq, saying Democrats, too, had concluded Saddam Hussein was a threat.

“If Democrats want to talk about the threat that Saddam Hussein posed and the intelligence, they might want to start with looking at the previous administration and their own statements that they’ve made,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Faced with a pressing Senate inquiry into the administration misuse of intelligence, McClellan is left with “Clinton thought Saddam was dangerous.” As if Clinton created the White House Iraq Group to manipulate intelligence for public propaganda. Or as if Clinton wanted an Office of Special Plans to circumvent the CIA and shape intelligence to fit policy. Or as if the head of British foreign intelligence had written a memo saying that Clinton wanted intelligence to be “fixed around the policy.”

Is this really the best the Bush White House can come up with today? The Plame scandal must have really thrown Rove & Co. off their game. Usually their spin is more compelling than this nonsense.

Or as if Clinton had actually invaded Iraq too.

  • Somebody should direct Scotty to actually read the “Iraq Liberation Act of 1998”, that piece of PNAC fantasy jammed down Clinton’s throat by a Republican Senate.

    It’s one of those feel – good pieces of legislation which throws some money to Chalabi and his pals who were then hangin in London. Bulletin Bulletin Bulletin to Scotty: It specifically prohibits the use of American forces in Iraq.

  • one of the interesting things about blog comments sections is that you can see the right-wing spin formulate, and the notion that “clinton thought saddam was a threat too” has been a popular line for quite a while.

    broadly, of course, fbg46 captures one important answer.

    another is that at no point in considering saddam a threat did the clinton administration decide we need to go take him out right…this…second.

    you can acknowledge someone is a threat without attacking them, or has scotty and the team forgotten comrade kim?

    really, the deeper intent here is to fuzz over the bush administration cherrypicking of intel to sell the war and replace it with an anodyne “everyone makes mistakes.”

    not that i want to generalize overly, but when lbj lied us into a major expansion of the vietnam war, the dem response wasn’t too say “eisenhower did it too.” it was to say “hey hey lbj/how many kids did you kill today.”

  • Ya know, that blame Clinton meme is getting old and frankly tired. The next thing you know they blame Clinton if it rains on some big GOP fundraiser.

  • I’m sure the Clinton administration did view Saddam as a threat – to his own people and the stability of the region. But I’d be willing to bet that “sexing up” the intelligence to justify an ill-prepared, ill-advised, illegal pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign country wasn’t on their list of possible responses to that threat.

    This is pathetic. It must be really embarrassing to be a Republican these days.

  • That was what I was implying – just because you are in favor of regime change, doesn’t mean that you automatically support a military invasion as a means to achieve that.

  • The Repug radio heads are spouting the same tired lines about Congress to. “The Dems in Congress saw the same info the Prez did. And they voted to go to war to.”

    Yeah. Difference being that the Congress didn’t manipulate the info the way the Prez did. Whatever. They want to try to re-write history let them. In the meantime, while they are trying to analyze it, we will be changing their reality (with the help of Fitzgerald) and exposing them for the lying, profiteering scum they are.

  • The Repug radio heads are spouting the same tired lines about Congress to. “The Dems in Congress saw the same info the Prez did. And they voted to go to war to.”

    Yeah. Difference being that the Congress didn’t manipulate the info the way the Prez did. Whatever. They want to try to re-write history let them. In the meantime, while they are trying to analyze it, we will be redefining their reality (with the help of Fitzgerald) and exposing them for the lying, profiteering scum they are.

    Funny how the tables turn, eh?

  • Pardon me, but wasn’t it Reagan and Bush the Elder who armed this dipstick with his chemical weapons and then gave him the coordinates to gas the Kurds after the first Gulf War?

    Why is Clinton being blamed for an oil-based Republican fuck up?

  • And don’t forget that it was the Reagan administration that was financing and supplying weapons to Osama bin Laden as he and his mujahadeen fought the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

    I guess that relationship didn’t work out too well, did it? Or…did it? Hmmmmmm.

    And I also recall that, according to former National Security Advisor and “terrorism czar” Richard Clarke, it was Dubya who was fixated with finding out if Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks…on 9/12/01. Clarke was an integral part of the previous administration, and HE KNEW it was Al-Qaeda and had nothing to do with Saddam.

    These fools are just grasping at straws right now. They’re like rats on a sinking ship. Pathetic.

  • Let’s not forget that a lot of these Repugs act like cult members. Any information contrary to “the Great Father” must be inaccurate, the product of some evil entity. And who is more evil than anyone?
    So, for those MILLIONS of deluded fools out there that still support Bush, there is no shame, no embarrasment. They are the victims, as is the embattled Great Father.

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