WHY LIE?

Clinton Got a Pass but Bush Is Taken to Task: Critics outraged over the president's '16 words' have short memories. (Max Boot, July 16, 2003, LA Times)

Politically opportunistic Democrats are invoking preposterous comparisons with Watergate because of the president's statement that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Democrats smell blood because the administration has admitted that its own findings about Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium in Niger were based on forged documents. But it's quite a leap to go from faulty information to charges that the president deliberately lied. The real problem is that intelligence seldom provides certainty; it can only offer hints or clues that policymakers have to interpret as best they can.

That's precisely what Bill Clinton and his national security advisors did in 1998. In August, after Al Qaeda bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, they launched preemptive attacks
on Sudan and Afghanistan because they didn't want to risk having poison gas released in the New York City subway. Even though the evidence was hardly conclusive that the
Sudanese plant was working for Bin Laden, they decided to err on the side of safety. Based on the same precautionary principle, the administration bombed Iraq a few months
later, even though there was no hard proof that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. [...]

A leading senator was absolutely right when he fumed: "I find it outrageous. What have we come to? What in the hell is going on here? These guys seem like they are possessed by their desire to undo this guy."

No, that's not a Republican defending Bush today. That was Joseph Biden defending Clinton in 1998.

Unfortunately, the Clinton attack on al Qaeda came three days after he acknowledged lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the Desert Fox strikes on Iraq came during House impeachment deliberations, making it seem like he was just trying to change the subject. George W. Bush built up to the Iraq War for over half a year and had long before secured congressional approval. It's not at all clear what advantage would have possibly been gained from lying about the yellowcake story which was simply not determinative of the eventual war. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 17, 2003 8:05 PM