Lots of clickable longer stories embedded.
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/07/bush-clinton-iraqWhy Bush’s Case On Iraq Was Different From Clinton’s
The Bush administration’s talking point these days in defending its use of false pre-war intelligence is to blame Clinton. Scott McClellan said last week that critics “might want to start with looking at the previous administration.” Sen. George Allen (R-VA) repeated the mantra on CNN this Sunday: “
ecognize that even the Clinton administration thought Saddam posed a threat.” And Bill Kristol writes in the Weekly Standard that the White House should “fight back” by pointing out that Clinton administration officials “believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.”
To justify the war against Iraq, the Bush administration made a number of exaggerated and misleading claims about the Iraqi threat that went far beyond the public statements issued by the Clinton administration. Going beyond the argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration made a unique case on two specific fronts to justify the war: the supposed connections to al Qaeda and the Iraqi nuclear threat.
The administration argued that the evidence in these two areas amounted to a “grave and gathering threat” in a “post-September 11th world.” On the eve of the Iraq war, Bush said:
The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other. ........