Bush says he inherited policy of "regime change" from Clinton

DoYouEverWonder

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Mon Jan-12-04 09:48 PM
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Bush says he inherited policy of "regime change" from Clinton

http://www.kplctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1597608

January 12, 2004

Monterrey, Mexico-AP -- President Bush is declining to criticize former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who claims in a new book that the White House planned to topple Saddam Hussein before Nine-Eleven.

Bush says he inherited a policy of "regime change" in Iraq from the Clinton administration and adopted it as his own. He says the administration was working out its policy when Nine-Eleven hit.

Funny, Collin Powell said the same thing just before the invasion last March. However, his spin on this policy is in the totally opposite direction.

Powell Acknowledges Iraqi Regime Change as a Goal of U.S. Policy

08 March 2003

SECRETARY POWELL: The previous American administration, President
Clinton and his colleagues in that administration, also had a similar
policy of regime change, which was adopted in 1998 and, frankly, was
also endorsed by the United States Congress at that time. And the
reason that policy was adopted because it was thought that's the only
way you're going to be able to get disarmament, because this regime
will not do it on its own, it will never change its spots, so to
speak. And so regime change became American policy.
We inherited it, looked at it, and said this is still sensible. But we
have no illusions about the nature of this regime or the nature of its
leader, Saddam Hussein. And do we believe that the Iraqi people would
be better off with a different leader? Do we believe the region would
be better off without a Saddam Hussein? Sure we do. But our principal
objective, and the reason we brought it to the UN, was to eliminate
weapons of mass destruction. We never brought regime change into the
UN.

Even funnier is the fact that the PNAC wrote a letter to Clinton in Jan. 1998, urging him to change his policy because it was not succeeding. They told him, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. From what I heard, Clinton tore this letter up after he read it.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

January 26, 1998

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

<snip>

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

So once again, Bu$hler and Co are proving that they are so full of it, they can't even keep their own bs straight anymore.