The Left Coaster thoroughly destroys the phony Administration argument that Bill Clinton believed the same things about Saddam that Bush did, and therefore Bush's invasion of Iraq was not an egregiously mistaken move. Bush's people have always argued that since Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998, he must have agreed with all of the neocons' assessments. Key section of the article:
Finally, and most importantly, if Clinton used the "same" intelligence to bomb Iraq in 1998, then wouldn't it be a natural question to ask whether the 1998 bombings destroyed any facilities/capabilities that Saddam Hussein had at that time? Well, it would be natural, say, for a 5-year old, but not for the Great Misleaders and their sheep.
As Bob Somerby highlighted back then (emphasis mine):
On the June 15 [2003] Meet the Press, Wesley Clark offered an intriguing thought about those AWOL WMD:
RUSSERT: Was there an intelligence failure? Was the intelligence hyped, as Senator Joe Biden said? Was the president misled, or did he mislead the American people?
CLARK: Well, several things. First of all, all of us in the community who read intelligence believe that Saddam wanted these capabilities and he had some. We struck very hard in December of ’98, did everything we knew, all of his facilities. I think it was an effective set of strikes. Tony Zinni commanded that, called Operation Desert Fox, and I think that set them back a long ways.
In other words, Clinton took effective and carefully delineated action to weaken Saddam, probably crippling his WMD program. Bush went in like a bull in a china shop. I'll give you one guess which approach I think made more sense.
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