This is the second time I've seen this defense of
"What Bill Clinton really met with regime change in Iraq".
The first time was on PBS Newshour political commentary between Brooks and Shields, whereby Shields said that Clinton wanted regime change but not preemptive war. (New twist on an old story).
That doesn't seem right to me at all. Clinton bomb Iraq with the Desert Fox campaign because he couldn't get congress's okay for war with Saddam and Clinton did want war - but what kind of war?
If you watch FOX news - it was a must see today, than you would have noticed that Senator Jay Rockefeller is carefully to say that Bill Clinton wasn't pushing for pre-emptive war even though Bill Clinton did pushed for regime change.
Here is the Transcript: Lott, Rockefeller on 'Fox News Sunday'
And here is an except of text that shows Sen. Rockefeller's defense over Bill Clinton's push for regime change. (BTW, I think it's relevant that this exchange is with ex-Majority Leader Trent Lott instead of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Senator Pat Roberts.)
WALLACE: Senator Rockefeller, you now say that you believe this war was pre-meditated and pre-planned. What's your evidence for that?
Continued reading...
ROCKEFELLER: Several things. Number one, starting about 10 months ago, 10 months before the beginning of the war, there were about five different groups -- the State Department, DOD had a couple of them, the CIA, and a number of other groups, in and out of government -- were doing studies on what do we do in a post-Iraq war situation.
Ten months before the war started, and way before the National Intelligence Estimate, which influenced the vote of the Congress about authorizing, such a process came about.
WALLACE: But, in fact, wasn't regime change a policy of this government starting in the late '90s under Bill Clinton?
LOTT: And the Congress voted for that.
ROCKEFELLER: But with a difference. Regime change did not mean the way, what I would call the neoconservatives -- and Senator Lott will not be happy about that.
LOTT: Well, I'm not one of them.
ROCKEFELLER: No, you're not one of them. But you won't be happy that I said it.
WALLACE: You're just a conservative, right?
LOTT: Right. I'm not a new conservative.
(oh Mama, Lott is still pissed at Bush and there is of couse the fact that some of root base of conservative voters are falling out because of GOP overspending.)
ROCKEFELLER: In other words, they wrote President Clinton on January 1, 1998, and it was Rumsfeld and it was Wolfowitz and it was Cheney's top guy and it was everybody that runs the Defense Department basically. And they said, "Diplomacy isn't working, let's go in there. Let's take them out militarily."
That was not Clinton's policy. Regime change to him meant, you know, a revolution by the people, a quiet action, something of that sort. It was not a military attack.
WALLACE: But, Senator, let me ask you, in October of 2002, as you were explaining your vote -- because you voted for the authorization of force -- here's what you had to say: "I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat. Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America now."
What did you base that on?
ROCKEFELLER: I based it upon the intelligence, which was clearly flawed. And I have since said that that was a wrong vote and, as far as I'm concerned, it's a wrong war. Look...
This is NOT a good sign for George W. Bush AT ALL.
But then, I'm NOT sure that the Clinton defense can rest on "it was regime change but not -PREEMPTIVE War".
What kind of regime change did Clinton plan on having? I believe that Clinton did want preemptive war not some kind of coup.
HEY, if the Democrats want to fry Bush and company and not Bill Clinton, than I can live with that, just make sure that Howard Dean is President in the end.