Hillary Clinton again lies about Iraq

In Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton lied again about Iraq.

At the forum in Los Angeles, Hillary Clinton declared, “We bombed them for days in 1998 because Saddam Hussein threw out inspectors.”

That statement was totally false. The bombing campaign had been planned for months and the inspectors were not thrown out. They were ordered out by President Bill Clinton in anticipation of the four-day U.S.-led bombing campaign.

The chronology, which is on the public record, is as follows:

In early 1998, the Clinton Administration began to raise concerns about Iraq’s refusal to allow inspectors of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) to visit so-called “presidential sites,” a liberally-defined series of buildings and grounds across the country that Iraq claimed were used by government officials. Even though subsequent evidence has revealed that the Iraqis had nothing to hide, since all proscribed weapons and weapons material had long since been eliminated, Saddam Hussein held firm. Given that a number of prominent American political leaders from both parties had called openly for assassinating him, however, the Iraqi leader’s reluctance to allow Americans into presidential palaces may have been a result of concerns that such access would make him and other top officials personally vulnerable. Furthermore, the Iraqis had complained that, despite a stated policy of avoiding staffing UNSCOM with experts from “intelligence providing states,” there was a disproportionate number of Americans involved in the inspections, who would deliberately prolong the process and could potentially provide information to the U.S. military. The Iraqi dictator also reportedly had an obsessive compulsive disorder which led him to order that his palaces be kept meticulously clean and made him particularly reluctant to allow large groups of foreigners to move about his homes.

The Clinton administration’s insistence upon raising this issue at that time was rather suspect: Such Iraqi restrictions on these “presidential sites” had existed since the beginning of the sanctions regime nearly seven years earlier without any concerns publically expressed by United Nations officials. Yet suddenly, in January 1998, the Clinton administration decided that it had become an intolerable violation of UN Security Council resolution 687, which called upon Iraq to verify its disarmament, and warned Iraq that the United States - despite the lack of Security Council approval as required - would engage in a sustained bombing campaign against their country if the Iraqis did not allow these inspections of presidential palaces to go ahead. By February, a large-scale U.S. military assault seemed likely. However, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was able to broker a deal late that month that opened the presidential palaces to UN inspectors, but with an additional diplomatic presence in recognition of the sites’ special status.

The disappointment by Clinton administration officials that the bombing campaign would not be able to go ahead as planned was palpable. Clinton did not give up on its search for an excuse to attack Iraq, however.

At the end of October, Iraq imposed new restrictions on UNSCOM as a result of revelations that the United States was indeed illegally using UNSCOM as a vehicle for spying on the Iraqi government. On November 10, in response to pressure from President Clinton, UNSCOM chairman Richard Butler announced his decision to pull UNSCOM out of Iraq without the required authorization from the Security Council. Iraq then reversed itself and agreed to allow the inspectors to resume their activities. The United States, however, was eager to launch military action, particularly by mid-December in order to take advantage o