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Clinton Admits, "We have a lot to answer for, and he [Saddam] is basically partly our creature."

Excerpts From Clinton Interview between former President Bill Clinton and James Fallows, of The Atlantic Monthly, on October 21, 2002. 

I'm neither fish nor fowl. That is, I believe that he [Saddam Hussein] is very bad. We have a lot to answer for, and he is basically partly our creature. I'm not criticizing President Bush on this because I did the same thing. I've sat there and pontificated about how [Saddam] is the only guy to use chemical weapons on his own people. Yeah he did it, and the Reagan Administration was for him when he did it. Nobody raised a peep then, because he was against Iran. We now know that he got his anthrax strain from an American company while we looked the other way. We also know that, or at least a British journalist has alleged, that Casey [the head of the CIA under Reagan] tried to give him cluster bombs. I don't know if that's true or not 'cause I read it in the British press and you never can tell. I wouldn't give it the same credence I would if I read it there [points at The Atlantic].

I think they [the original Bush Administration] feel badly about abandoning the Shiites. At least we tried to protect the Kurds. And, so... I'd like it if it happened. On the other hand, if it happened as a result of our initiative, it would be a very high price to pay. Because of what I said out here today. We are trying to create a process. I didn't exactly adhere to the Levin view [referring to Senator Carl Levin of Michigan], because I don't think you can treat the UN like a shrine. It is an institution that is still becoming, it's not where we want it to be. We, and others, sometimes cast our veto votes in ways that are more about us than about the global interests.

So I think we have to try to give the sanctions one more chance. He's not going to live forever, there are options for regime change short of bombing the living daylights out of them. And we know that these... we know that the inspectors have gotten a ton of stuff out of there. But the effort of trying will bring us together.