Slick Willy: Lying Or Maybe Telling The Truth?

We report, you decide.

The November 28 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe featured a discussion of former President Bill Clinton's November 27 comment that he "opposed [the war in] Iraq from the beginning," which contributor Willie Geist called "revisionist history." Similarly, in a November 28 "On Deadline" column discussing Clinton's comments, Associated Press writer Ron Fournier asserted: "In truth, Clinton did not oppose the Iraq war from the start -- at least not publicly." Fournier continued: "If the former president secretly opposed the war but did not want to speak against a sitting president (as some of his aides now claim), what moral authority does he have now?" But absent from either the Morning Joe discussion or Fournier's column was any mention of Clinton's comments on March 14, 2003, just days prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- which the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) posted on its website the evening of November 27 -- opposing war at that time. In those remarks, he said "let's give him [Saddam Hussein] a certain date in which, in this time, he has to destroy the missiles, reconcile the discrepancies in what we believe is the truth on chemical weapons, reconcile the discrepancies on biological weapons, reconcile the issue of the Drones, and offer up 150 scientists who can travel outside of Iraq with their families for interviews. If you do that, then we'll say this is really good-faith disarmament, and we'll go on without a conflict."

Clinton's March 14, 2003, comments were posted on The Fact Hub -- a fact-check website produced by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign -- on November 27. From Clinton's March 14, 2003, remarks:

Do you believe this matters? If you believe it matters -- as I do -- then you have to decide if it matters whether we bend over backwards to try to disarm him in a way that strengthens rather than divides the world community. If you don't think it matters, then you're with a lot of the people in the current administration who think that we'll just go over there and this will take a few days, after we win -- victors always get to write history -- everybody will get over this and we'll get everybody back together and they'll be glad he's gone because he's a thug and a murderer. That's what they think. If you believe it matters to keep them together, then you've got to support some version of what Prime Minister Blair's doing now, which is to say, okay, he's finally destroying his missiles. And the administration, to be fair, is nominally in favor of what Blair's trying to do.

He's finally destroying his missiles, so let's give him a certain date in which, in this time, he has to destroy the missiles, reconcile the discrepancies in what we believe is the truth on chemical weapons, reconcile the discrepancies on biological weapons, reconcile the issue of the Drones, and offer up 150 scientists who can travel outside of Iraq with their families for interviews. If you do that, then we'll say this is really good-faith disarmament, and we'll go on without a conflict. Now if that passes, however, then you have to be willing to take yes for an answer. You see what I mean? I'm for regime change too, but there's more than one way to do it. We don't invade everybody whose regime we want to change. There's more than one way to do this, but if that passes and he actually disarms, then we have to be willing to take it, and then work for regime change by supporting the opposition to Saddam Hussein within and outside Iraq, and doing other things.

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