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Kennedy, Clinton, Gore Target
Bush On Iraq And Terror War
By Chuck Noe
NewsMax.com
9-30-2

The Democrat establishment's campaign against President Bush heated up Friday as Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy opposed U.S. policy on Iraq and Al Gore accused Bush of ignoring warnings about Sept. 11.
 
Meanwhile, at the invitation of dictator Saddam Hussein, three Democrat congressmen visited Baghdad to try to undermine U.S. policy.
 
"I have come here today to express my view that America should not go to war against Iraq unless and until other reasonable alternatives are exhausted," Sen. Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a speech before Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
 
Kennedy, the dean of Capitol Hill's leftists, said the U.S. should:
 
* Focus on to returning weapons inspectors to Iraq without conditions.
* Work closely with the United Nations to force dictator Saddam Hussein to comply with resolutions on disarmament.
 
The U.S., of course, has long been cooperating with the U.N. on Iraq, but the globalist body continues to fail to take action.
 
Kennedy admitted the danger posed by Hussein but said al-Qaeda terrorists were a graver threat than Iraq.
 
"To succeed in our global war against al-Qaeda and terrorism, the United States depends on military, law enforcement, and intelligence support from many other nations ... It is far from clear that these essential relationships will be able to survive the strain of a war with Iraq that comes before the alternatives are tried or without the support of an international coalition," he said.
 
 
"It is possible to love America while concluding that it is not now wise to go to war," said Kennedy, taking a cue from Senate plurality leader Tom Daschle, who quoted from the Washington Post's false account of a speech by Bush.
 
"The standard that should guide us is especially clear when lives are on the line. We must ask what is right for our country and not party."
 
Gephardt: Playing Politics
 
Echoing the theme of Daschle and Kennedy, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, writing in Friday's New York Times, charged that Bush had "decided to play politics with the safety and security of the American people. ...
 
"If Mr. Bush and his party continue to use the war as a political weapon, our efforts to address the threat posed by Iraq will fail."
 
However, as Fox News Channel noted Friday, Democrats themselves were obviosly also playing politics with the war effort.
 
 
Bush: 'Now Is the Time'
 
In Denver Friday, the president told a cheering crowd that Hussein "can either get rid of his weapons and the United Nations can act, or the United States will lead a coalition to disarm this man.
 
"I'm willing to give peace a chance to work. I want the United Nations to work. I want [Hussein] to do what he said he would do. But for the sake of our future, now is the time. ...
 
"For the sake of your children's future we must make sure this madman never has the capacity to hurt us with a nuclear weapon, or to use stockpiles of anthrax that we know he has, or VX, the biological weapons which he posseses."
 
 
Clinton: 'Go to the U.N.'
 
Clinton kept playing the Democrat tune of letting the U.N. call the shots.
 
"I think we ought to go to the United Nations. I think we ought to get a tough resolution which basically says we'll take Saddam Hussein up on his commitment to free and unfettered inspections," he said Friday from Africa on ABC's "Good Morning America."
 
He, too, conceded Hussein's threat.
 
"He's got a very dangerous program. We need to eliminate it," the impeached former president said.
 
"If he doesn't comply," a U.N. resolution should state that the world "is authorized to use force."
 
Clinton avoided the harsh tone his former vice president, Al Gore, took against President Bush earlier this week and said he had not read Gore's speech.
 
"I'm overseas, and I don't like to get into comments on our foreign policy when I'm there," Clinton said. But, "I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. That is, I think we can turn up the heat on Iraq and retain our focus on terror.
 
"Let's don't relax our efforts. Let's intensify our efforts. They [al-Qaeda terrorists] still have plans to target Americans within the United states and elsewhere, and I think we should all support the administration and whatever has to be done to eradicate this network.
 
"I do think that all of us should not forget that it was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda who murdered those 3,100 people on Sept. 11," he said.
 
Clinton questioned Bush's new pre-emptive military policy.
 
"I think, obviously, the further you get away from the imminence of an attack, the slipperier the slope," he said. "But when you have ongoing terrorist networks, for example, you see the argument for it. But it also is fraught with difficulty."
 
Appearing on CBS' "The Early Show," Clinton said he thought there was "still a chance" for Bush and Democrats to unite on a strong congressional resolution. "I don't think we should characterize every difference of policy opinion as a partisan difference," he said.
 
 
Gore: White House Ignored 9/11 Warnings
 
Clinton's former sidekick Gore, perhaps because he still harbors ambitions for the presidency, took a much more partisan tone against Bush. He now accuses the administration of ignoring signs that Osama bin Laden planned to attack the U.S. on Sept. 11, the Washington Times reported Friday.
 
 
"The warnings were there," Gore claimed Thursday at a Democrat fundraiser in Wilmington, Del.
 
Sounding like ousted Rep. Cynthia McKinney, he accused the administration of ignoring intelligence from the FBI and CIA.
 
He asserted that the White House and the Justice Department were violating Americans' rights in rounding up terror suspects.
 
"What's going on nationally, with the attack on civil liberties, with American citizens in some cases just disappearing without right to counsel, without access to a lawyer - I think that is disgraceful," he fumed.
 
"I think we need to stand up for our principles in this country and stand up for what this nation represents, even as we face the terrible dangers that we have to confront in the world today."
 
Republicans dismissed Gore's latest attack as the rantings of a White House wannabe.
 
"This has nothing to do with civil liberties. It has everything to do with Al Gore putting points on the board to improve his image," a Senate Republican leadership official told the Times.
 
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Friday: "The charges are without merit. Al Gore changes his stories and his tune so often on so many different issues that it's not an effective use of time to pay much attention to what he says."
 
'Nomination Strategy'
 
Political analysts also saw Gore's tactic as partisan posturing.
 
"He has gotten out in front of all the other Democrats, even those who have offered some criticism of Bush," said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia.
 
Gore, he said, is trying to distinguish himself as "the peace candidate," which can especially help in Iowa, the first presidential caucus and home to many anti-war Democrats.
 
"This is a nomination strategy," Sabato told the Associated Press.
 
 
The Times noted: "Ironically, while Mr. Gore was escalating his attacks on the administration, former President Bill Clinton was planning to attend a Labor Party conference in Great Britain to help Prime Minister Tony Blair persuade skeptical party members to support Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush in taking military action against Iraq. ...
 
"Mr. Gore's stance is an almost 180-degree turn from his previous position on Saddam's regime. When he was a senator from Tennessee, he was one of a small number of Senate Democrats in 1991 who voted for a resolution to give Mr. Bush's father authority to go to war to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. As vice president, he pushed for a resolution giving Mr. Clinton authority to take military action in Iraq in 1998. And earlier this year, he said there must be a 'day of reckoning' for Saddam."
 
Hollywood Tells What to Do
 
The partisan bickering took on comical tones as Barbra Streisand, the left-wing former film and singing star, ordered the Democrat establishment to increase its attacks on the president, even as movie star Tom Cruise and top director Steven Spielberg broke with the Hollywood left in supporting Bush.
 
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/9/27/143443.shtml





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