See Hillary Run
By Scott Ritter
03/03/07 "AlterNet" -- - Senator Hillary Clinton wants to become
President Hillary Clinton. "I'm in, and I'm in to win," she
said, announcing her plans to run for the Democratic nomination
for the 2008 Presidential election.
Let there be no doubt that Hillary Clinton is about as slippery
a species of politician that exists, one who has demonstrated an
ability to morph facts into a nebulous blob which blurs the
record and distorts the truth. While she has demonstrated this
less than flattering ability on a number of issues, nowhere is
it so blatant as when dealing with the issue of the ongoing war
in Iraq and Hillary Clinton's vote in favor of this war.
This issue won't be resolved even if Hillary Clinton apologizes
for her Iraq vote, as other politicians have done, blaming their
decision on faulty intelligence on Iraq's WMD capabilities. This
is because, like many other Washington politicians at the time,
including those now running for president, she had been witness
to lies about Iraq's weapons programs to justify attacks on that
country by her husband President Bill Clinton and his
administration.
"While there is no perfect approach to this thorny dilemma, and
while people of good faith and high intelligence can reach
diametrically opposed conclusions, I believe the best course is
to go to the UN for a strong resolution that scraps the 1998
restrictions on inspections and calls for complete, unlimited
inspections with cooperation expected and demanded from Iraq,"
Senator Clinton said at the time of her vote, in a carefully
crafted speech designed to demonstrate her range of knowledge
and ability to consider all options. "I know that the
Administration wants more, including an explicit authorization
to use force, but we may not be able to secure that now, perhaps
even later. But if we get a clear requirement for unfettered
inspections, I believe the authority to use force to enforce
that mandate is inherent in the original 1991 UN resolution, as
President Clinton recognized when he launched Operation Desert
Fox in 1998."
Hillary would have done well to leave out that last part, the
one where her husband, the former President of the United
States, used military force as part of a 72-hour bombing
campaign ostensibly deemed as a punitive strike in defense of
disarmament, but in actuality proved to be a blatant attempt at
regime change which used the hyped-up threat of Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction as an excuse for action. Sound familiar? While
many Americans today condemn the Bush administration for
misleading them with false claims of unsubstantiated threats
which resulted in the ongoing debacle we face today in Iraq
(count Hillary among this crowd), few have reflected back on the
day when the man from Hope, Arkansas sat in the Oval Office and
initiated the policies of economic sanctions-based containment
and regime change which President Bush later brought to fruition
when he ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
"My vote," Hillary said with great sanctimony, "is not, however,
a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for
unilateralism, or for the arrogance of American power or purpose
-- all of which carry grave dangers for our nation, for the rule
of international law and for the peace and security of people
throughout the world." But by citing the policies of her
husband, there can be no doubt that this was exactly what her
vote was about.
I should know. From January 1993 until my resignation from the
United Nations in August 1998, I witnessed first hand the
duplicitous Iraq policies of the administration of Bill Clinton,
the implementation of which saw a President lie to the American
people about a threat he knew was hyped, lie to Congress about
his support of a disarmament process his administration wanted
nothing to do with, and lie to the world about American intent,
which turned its back on the very multilateral embrace of
diplomacy as reflected in the resolutions of the Security
Council Hillary Clinton so piously refers to in her speech, and
instead pursued a policy defined by the unilateral interests of
the Clinton administration to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
I personally witnessed the Director of the CIA under Bill
Clinton, James Woolsey, fabricate a case for the continued
existence of Iraqi ballistic missiles in November 1993 after I
had provided a detailed briefing which articulated the UN
inspector's findings that Iraq's missile program had been
fundamentally disarmed. I led the UN inspector's investigation
into the defection of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal,
in August 1995, and saw how the Clinton administration twisted
his words to make a case for the continued existence of a
nuclear program the weapons inspectors knew to be nothing more
than scrap and old paper. I was in Baghdad at the head of an
inspection team in the summer of 1996 as the Clinton
administration used the inspection process as a vehicle for a
covert action program run by the CIA intending to assassinate
Saddam Hussein.
I twice traveled to the White House to brief the National
Security Council in the confines of the White House Situation
Room on the plans of the inspectors to pursue the possibility of
concealed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, only to have the
Clinton national security team betray the inspectors by failing
to deliver the promised support, and when the inspections failed
to deliver any evidence of Iraqi wrong-doing, attempt to blame
the inspectors while denying any wrong doing on their part.
This last fact hits very close to home. As a former Marine Corps
officer, and as a Chief Inspector responsible for the welfare of
the personnel entrusted to my command, I take the act of
official betrayal very seriously. "I want the men and women in
our Armed Forces to know," Senator Clinton said during her
speech defending her vote for war, "that if they should be
called upon to act against Iraq, our country will stand
resolutely behind them." I am left to wonder if, in citing the
record of her husband when he was President, if Hillary would
stand behind the troops with the same duplicitous 'vigor' that
her husband displayed when betraying the UN weapons inspectors?
In February 1998 the Clinton administration backed a diplomatic
effort undertaken by then-Secretary General of the United
Nations, Kofi Annan, to help get the weapons inspection process
back on track (inspections had been stalled since January 1998,
when a team I led was prevented by the Iraqis from carrying out
its mission because, as the Iraqis maintained, there were too
many Americans and British on the team implementing the
unilateral policy of regime change instead of the mandated task
of disarmament). Hillary stated that she wanted a strong UN
resolution designed to promote viable weapons inspections, and
specifically singled out the compromises brokered by Kofi Annan
to get inspectors back into Iraq as a failed effort which
weakened the inspection process. What she fails to mention is
that her husband initially supported the Annan mission, not so
much because it paved a path towards disarmament, but rather
because it provided a cover for legitimizing regime change.
I sat in the office of then US Ambassador to the United Nations,
Bill Richardson, as the United States cut a deal with
then-United Nations Special Commission Executive Chairman
Richard Butler, where the timing and actions of an inspection
team led my myself (a decision which was personally approved by
Bill Clinton) would be closely linked to a massive US aerial
bombardment of Iraq triggered by my inspection. I was supposed
to facilitate a war by prompting Iraqi non-compliance. Instead,
I did my job and facilitated an inspection that pushed the world
closer to a recognition that Iraq was complying with its
disarmament obligation. As a reward, I was shunned form the
inspection process by the Clinton administration.
In April 1998 Bill Clinton promised Congress that his
administration would provide all support necessary to the UN
inspectors. In May 1998 his National Security Team implemented a
new policy which turned its back on the inspectors, seeking to
avoid supporting a disarmament process which undermined the
policies of regime change so strongly embraced by Bill Clinton
and his administration. When I resigned in August 1998 in
protest over the duplicitous policies of Bill Clinton's
administration, I was personally attacked by the Clinton
administration in an effort to divert attention away from the
truth about what they were doing regarding Iraq. Four months
later Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of Iraq, Operation Desert
Fox, referred to in glowing terms by Hillary Clinton as she
endorsed the policies of deception that led our nation down the
path towards war.
"So it is with conviction," Hillary said at the moment of her
vote, "that I support this resolution as being in the best
interests of our Nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to
war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands
of our President and we say to him -- use these powers wisely
and as a last resort. And it is a vote that says clearly to
Saddam Hussein -- this is your last chance -- disarm or be
disarmed."
It turned out Saddam was in fact already disarmed. And it turned
out that Hillary's husband, President Bill Clinton, knew this
when he ordered the bombing of Iraq in 1998. Hillary can try to
twist and turn the facts as she defends the words she spoke when
casting her fateful vote in favor of a war with Iraq. But no
amount of re-writing history can shield her from the failed
policies of her very own husband, policies she embraced
willingly and whole heartedly when endorsing war.
Run, Hillary, run. But your race towards the White House will
never outpace the hypocrisy and duplicity inherent in your
decision to vote for war in Iraq.
Scott Ritter served as a former Marine Corps officer from
1984 until 1991, and as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991
until 1998. He is the author of several books, including "Iraq
Confidential" (Nation Books, 2005) and "Target
Iran :"
(Nation Books, 2006).Click here
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