As is often the case, Polimom came across one thing while looking for another. This morning, it was the Snopes (Urban Legends) page titled “Words of Mass Destruction“:
Claim: Quotes reproduce statements made by Democratic leaders about Saddam Hussein’s acquisition or possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Status: True.
The page contains a host of quotes we’ve seen for years, back into the Clinton years, about Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and what people said (and did) about those now-infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Nothing really new there; those quotes have been reproduced everywhere.
What I haven’t seen, though, is the context in which those statements were made.
In the section below where we highlight these quotes, we’ve tried to provide sufficient surrounding material to make clear the context in which the quotes were offered as well as include links to the full text from which they were derived wherever possible.
There are some interesting nuggets on this Snopes page, and you might be surprised by some of them. I was.
What I didn’t find was a comparable collection of statements by Republicans about WMD (and their context), and I have no doubt they’d be just as interesting.
Anybody have a link to share to balance this Snopes page?
The interesting thing about the context is that many of those quote came from the time we all say the Colin Powell dog and pony show for the UN that was quite convincing. Of course, the administration had access to intelligence that contradicted the claims, which was kept away from everyone… so yes, context does indeed matter.
Sorry, John, but if you read Polimom’s post, she said (emphasis mine):
While I don’t know the exact dates the quotes in the Snopes article were made, I do remember the Iraqi WMD program (and the weapons that came out of it) mentioned, even before Gulf War I. And, I do remember people – on both sides of the aisle, and in different countries – discussing them during the years of the Clinton Administration.
So, while you may have a bone to pick with the current Administration, or how it handled the reports it was getting from the intelligence community (and I have some issues with that whole thing, as when I worked with classified info it would have been my head to have leaked it), let’s not pretend that the whole WMD thing didn’t exist prior to January 2001: it’s intellectually dishonest to do so.
~EdT.