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Rumsfeld joins Bush counter-offensive on Iraq war

Posted on: Tuesday, 15 November 2005, 12:35 CST

By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday joined President George W. Bush's counter-offensive against Iraq war critics, retracing what Rumsfeld called the "actual history" of U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Bush has twice in recent days ripped into Democrats who have accused the Republican president and other top administration officials, including Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, of manipulating intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

No such weapons were found and the Bush administration has been hounded by Democratic critics over its use of prewar intelligence as public support for the war wanes amid rising U.S. casualties.

Echoing Bush's stance that the administration was not alone in believing Iraq posed a threat, Rumsfeld quoted former President Bill Clinton and senior Clinton administration officials as warning in 1998 that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein planned to use weapons of mass destruction.

In remarks prepared for delivery to a later news conference, the defense secretary quoted Clinton as saying in 1998 in an address that "other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles."

"With Saddam, there is one big difference: he has used them ... the international community had little doubt then, and I have no doubt today, that left unchecked Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again," Clinton added shortly after he ordered limited military action against Iraq in response to Baghdad's decision to expel U.N. weapons inspectors.

Democrats have responded to the administration's counter-attack by denying they saw the same intelligence as the administration before the war. They have accused the administration of trying to convince the U.S. public there was a link between Saddam and al Qaeda even though the intelligence community rejected that idea.

GORE AND ALBRIGHT ALSO CITED

Noting Bush's remarks last Friday that critics seemed to want to rewrite history, Rumsfeld said it might "be useful to take a moment to retrace the actual history."

He noted that, in 1998, the U.S. Congress passed, and Clinton signed, the Iraq Liberation Act, setting U.S. policy "to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power" and promote democracy in Iraq.

Rumsfeld also quoted then-Vice President Al Gore as saying later that year that "if you get someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons?"

Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also warned at the time that "the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us and our allies is the greatest security threat we face."

Bush, who is trying to battle back from the lowest job approval ratings of his presidency, has conceded that the administration was wrong in its assessment of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion.

But in a speech to U.S. troops in Alaska on his way to a trip to Asia on Monday, he said, "Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war -- but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people."

Source: REUTERS

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