From: 75300.3115@compuserve.com (Clinton for President)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Al Gore Speech at Center for National Policy 9/29/92
Date: 10 Oct 92 05:39:43 GMT

[GORESP.TXT file date 9/29/92]   Please distribute


 SPEECH BY SENATOR AL GORE
 Center for National Policy
 September 29, 1992

 One of the most important questions in this campaign involves the
 judgment of the candidates on foreign policy.  The American people
 know the world is full of unexpected surprises and dangers -- and as
 a result they want to know whether or not a president can handle
 these uncertainties, recognize unanticipated dangers, and realize
 when national policy must be changed to reflect new realities.  The
 American people also want to know whether or not they can count on
 their president to tell them the truth.

 President Bush, in his handling of our policy toward Iraq, has failed
 all these tests, and failed them badly.  His poor judgment, moral
 blindness and bungling policies led directly to a war that should
 never have taken place.  And because of his na^Kvet^B and lack of
 candor, U.S. taxpayers are now stuck with paying the bill for $1.9
 billion President Bush gave to Saddam Hussein even though top
 administration officials were repeatedly told Saddam was using our
 dollars to buy weapons technology.  Bush, of course, believes that
 the war with Iraq was his finest hour as the organizer and leader of
 a vast coalition of armed forces, united for the purpose of
 frustrating the designs of an evil dictator.

 But the war with Iraq had deep roots, and if George Bush's
 prosecution of the war is part of his record, so too is his
 involvement in the diplomacy which led to it, both in the Reagan/Bush
 era, and far more so, during his presidency when he accelerated
 foreign aid and the sale of weapons technology to Iraq -- right up
 until the invasion of Kuwait -- in spite of repeated warnings that
 anyone with common sense would have had no difficulty understanding.

 The path leading us to that war, and the path which the President has
 followed after, are deeply shadowed in profound error, in duplicity,
 and in amoral disregard for our most basic values as a nation.  There
 is also substantial evidence that his administration intentionally
 falsified export records, and reports to Congress -- and in the
 process apparently violated a number of laws intended to prevent such
 horrendous mistakes.

 Nineteen months ago, President Bush called Saddam Hussein a new
 Hitler who had to be stopped at all costs.  Yet today, that same
 tyrant remains firmly in power, resisting by every means the will of
 the international community.  No wonder so many Americans ask
 themselves whether our victory over Saddam will ultimately prove an
 illusion.

 The conduct of the war will remain a proud memory for all Americans.
 But the full history must also include events before and after the
 war.  That detailed record requires a little more time and effort to
 understand.  And if we really want to judge President Bush's
 stewardship of policy, then we had better pay attention to that
 detailed record, which provides a deeply disturbing look at a blatant
 disregard for brutal terrorism, a dangerous blindness to the
 murderous ambitions of a despot, and what certainly appears to be an
 ongoing effort to hide the facts from the American people whose tax
 dollars paid for this policy and whose sons and daughters risked and
 lost their lives in its pursuit.

 George Bush wants the American people to see him as the hero who put
 out a raging fire.  But new evidence now shows that he is the one who
 set the fire.  He not only struck the match, he poured gasoline on
 the flames.  So give him credit for calling in the fire department,
 but understand who started the blaze.

 Let me begin by providing a basic historical frame of reference:  In
 September of 1980, Iraq invaded Iran.  Iraq was the odds-on favorite
 to win the war in short order.  However, by May 1982, Iraq was
 clearly in trouble. It had lost a major battle with Iran.  Our
 policy-makers began to imagine Iran under a radical Islamic
 government emerging as the dominant regional power: a nightmare.  I
 believe that is why, in February 1982, President Reagan took Iraq off
 the list of states that sponsored terrorism.  He did this not because
 Iraq had gone straight and given up terrorism, but because he wanted
 to help Iraq while there was time.  By taking Iraq's name off the
 list, President Reagan opened the way for Iraq to receive US credits
 through subsidized agricultural loan guarantees and Export-Import
 Bank credits.  Reagan's decision also removed certain kinds of export
 controls intended to block the transfer of US technology to countries
 on the official terrorism list.

 In other words, for strategic reasons, the Reagan/Bush Administration
 would overlook virtually any unpleasant reality in Iraq, and
 apparently subvert US laws in order to prop up Saddam Hussein's
 brutal regime.

 George Bush claims he was an outsider in another momentous Reagan
 decision -- to sell arms to Iran in exchange for American hostages.
 Of course by now, most people find that very hard to believe and the
 documentary record is closing in on him.  Recently, we learned that
 former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Secretary of
 Defense Caspar Weinberger were outraged when they heard then Vice
 President Bush was disclaiming any knowledge of the Iran arms deal
 and the fact that the two senior cabinet officers had vigorously
 opposed it.

 Notes taken at the time of their telephone conversation about this
 event have Mr. Weinberger saying that Bush's comments were "terrible"
 and that, far from being ignorant of developments, Bush had been "on
 the other side" of the struggle over policy.  Just last week, more
 evidence surfaced showing that Bush is recorded as having attended
 numerous meetings across a span of three years when White House
 senior officials debated the plan to sell arms to Iran and then were
 briefed on the status of the program.  He was also present at the
 meetings in which the trade for arms for American hostages was
 explicitly discussed.  And now two of the briefers have directly
 challenged the veracity of President Bush's claim that he didn't know
 arms were being swapped for hostages.

 Far from being "out of the loop", Bush seems to have been one of the
 most vigorous and vociferous advocates of the illegal side of the
 argument.  Indeed, his arguments to the contrary are simply no longer
 credible.  His national security advisor was clearly uncomfortable
 even going so far as to say that Bush's version was "possibly" true.

 Now, new evidence about his policy toward Iraq directly contradicts
 President Bush's repeated statements to the American people that he
 did nothing that helped Saddam's effort to acquire weapons of mass
 destruction during the months and years preceeding Saddam's invasion
 of Kuwait.  To begin with, George Bush cannot even try to claim
 ignorance where policy toward Iraq was concerned.  Not only was he
 directly in the loop, he was a principal architect of the policy from
 its earliest days.  For example, in April of 1984, Bush personally
 lobbied the Ex-Im Bank's chairman--a friend from college days--to
 disregard the views of his own economists, and extend credits to
 Iraq.  Doubts about Iraq's credit-worthiness were very well-founded.
 But the overriding issue was whether Iraq could continue to hold on
 in the war with Iran.  That's all that seemed to matter.

 In pursuit of that objective, the Reagan/Bush Administration would
 overlook the fact that it was an Iraq-based group that masterminded
 the assassination attempt against Israel's ambassador to the UK,
 which occurred in June 1982.  This event triggered Israel's invasion
 of Lebanon--not exactly a minor consequence for US policy.

 The Reagan/Bush Administration was also prepared to overlook the fact
 that the terrorist who masterminded the attack on the Achille Lauro
 and the savage murder of American Leon Klinghoffer fled with Iraqi
 assistance.  Nor did it matter that the team of terrorists who set
 out to blow up the Rome airport came from Baghdad with suitcase
 bombs.

 Iraq not only stayed off the terrorist list no matter what, but in
 November 1984, full diplomatic relations were established with the
 country.  The US government continued to exert every effort to
 channel assistance to Saddam Hussein--even with evidence that he was
 not only promoting terrorism, but was also pursuing a nuclear weapons
 program.  As early as May of 1985, Assistant Secretary of Defense
 Richard Perle warned about the suspected diversion of US exports of
 dual-use technology to the Iraqi nuclear weapons program.  But Bush
 ensured that the flow of technology continued.

 In March 1987, Bush again took a prominent role: when Iraq's
 ambassador complained that our Defense Department was taking too long
 and being too cautious about export licenses for high tech items,
 Bush apparently agreed with him that the Defense Department was being
 capricious and had to get with the program.

 There might have been a moment's pause for reflection when Iraqi
 aircraft intentionally attacked the USS Stark in May 1987, killing 37
 sailors -- but the Administration smoothed it over very fast.  This
 was the spring when the Ex-Im Bank staff resisted another $200
 million loan for Iraq, but again the loan was granted after Bush
 again personally intervened to stress its political importance.  The
 loan went through in May, just two days before the attack on the
 Stark.

 Now, let me make a point about foreign policy and the real world.
 The actual conduct of foreign policy often bears as much resemblance
 to academic theory as the conduct of domestic politics bears to a
 civics course.  If we have to deal with someone bad in order to
 handle someone even worse, then for heaven's sake we should at least
 be ready to re-evaluate that relationship the moment it has outlived
 its value to the United States.

 In other words, whatever the arguments for temporarily supporting
 Saddam Hussein as a barrier separating Saudi Arabia's oil from Iran's
 militant fundamentalists, Bush deserves heavy blame for intentionally
 concealing from the American people the clear nature of Saddam
 Hussein and his regime, for convincing himself that friendly
 relations with such a monster were possible, and for persisting in
 this effort far, far beyond the point of folly.

 Throughout this period, Saddam's atrocities continued.  In March
 1988, Saddam Hussein used poison gas on the Kurdish town of Halabja,
 brutally murdering some five thousand innocent men, women and
 children.  None of us can ever forget the pictures of their
 bodies--of parents trying to shield their infants even in death --
 that were in our news media.

 The Iran-Iraq War ended in August of 1988.  Iraq had not prevailed,
 but neither had it been defeated.  As a result, you would think that
 the Administration would give our policies a second look to see if
 they should be altered.  But the Reagan/Bush Administration never
 hesitated even when the news became much, much worse.  Within days of
 the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein--seeing that he had
 gotten away with using poison gas against the Kurds
 previously--launched additional major gas attacks on them.  The war
 was over, and he was determined to settle accounts.  Saddam's attacks
 created, in addition to the wave of deaths, a flight of about a half
 million Kurdish refugees.

 The effect of these events on the public and on Congress was
 electrifying.  The outrage and disgust sparked action and ignited an
 intensification of efforts to pull the plug on US assistance to
 Saddam Hussein.  I myself went to the Senate floor twice  demanding
 tough action.  But these efforts were resisted to the bitter end by
 the Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle Administrations.  For example, they
 pulled out all the stops to defeat the Prevention of Genocide Act,
 after the US Senate had passed it unanimously in September of 1988.

 Meanwhile, the US Customs Service was reporting that in 1988, it had
 marked a notable increase in the activity of Iraq's network of
 procuring agents and front corporations.  A concerted effort was
 underway to obtain missile technology, chemical weapons technology,
 and biological weapons technology.

 In January 1989, George Bush was sworn in as President.  Based on
 plentiful evidence, he had reason to know that his ongoing policy
 regarding Iraq was already malfunctioning.

 Just last week, we learned of a memorandum written in March, 1989, to
 Secretary of State Baker, as he prepared to meet with a senior Iraqi
 official in which the author noted that Iraq continued to cooperate
 with terrorists, that it was "meddling" in Lebanon, and that it was
 "working hard at chemical and biological weapons and new missiles."
 What is especially interesting about this memo is that it notes that
 in the months preceding this meeting Iraqi oil exports to the US had
 increased dramatically and on favorable terms.  That point raised the
 question of a quid pro quo sought by the Iraqi officials -- cheap oil
 in exchange for "freer export licensing procedures for high tech."
 The memo's drafter notes -- somewhat critically and impatiently --
 that export applications were being held up by the Commerce
 Department, and by the Defense Department, out of concern that the
 proposed exports could enhance Iraq's military capabilities.

 These concerns were well-founded. In April 1989, a nuclear
 proliferation expert from the Department of Energy reported
 intelligence indicators that Iraq had a crash program underway to
 build an atomic bomb.  In June, the Defense Intelligence Agency
 reported that Iraq was running a major European network to procure
 military goods that were not supposed to be sold.  In August, the FBI
 raided the Atlanta Branch of the Italian Banca Nazionale del Lavoro
 (BNL) and seized evidence of over $4 billion in illegal loans to
 Iraq, as well as use of about $2 billion of those funds to buy
 nuclear and other military technologies.   And on September 22nd,
 Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly wrote a memo acknowledging
 that money coming to Iraq through the Atlanta branch of the BNL did
 "appear to have been used" to finance acquisition of sensitive
 military technology.  Also in September, the USDA reported kickbacks
 and possible diversions of US-supplied agricultural funds for
 military purposes.

 Most significant of all, in the same month, the CIA reported to
 Secretary of State James Baker and other top Bush administration
 officials that Iraq was clandestinely procuring nuclear weapons
 technology through a global network of front companies.

 Now, in the midst of this flood of highly alarming information, on
 October 2, 1989, President Bush signed a document known as NSD-26,
 which established policy toward Iraq under his Administration.  This
 document is the benchmark for judging George Bush's record for the
 direction of American policy toward Iraq in the period that would
 ultimately lead to war.  We have only a partial idea of what is in
 that document, since the version that was finally released to
 Congress has been heavily censored.  But the core statement of
 purpose and the fundamental assumptions behind it are clear.  And so
 is the incredibly poor judgment of George Bush.

 NSD-26 mandated the pursuit of improved economic and political ties
 with Iraq on the assumption that Iraqi behavior could be modified by
 means of new favors to be granted.  Perhaps so, if this were a state
 not under the complete control of a single man whose ruthlessness was
 already totally apparent.  The text of NSD-26 blindly ignores the
 evidence already at the Administration's disposal of Iraqi behavior
 in the past regarding human rights, terrorism, the use of chemical
 weapons, and the pursuit of advanced weapons of mass destruction.

 Instead it makes a heroic assumption of good behavior in the future,
 on the basis of an interesting theory--namely, that Iraq would
 suddenly and completely change its ways out of a fear of economic and
 political sanctions.

 It leaps from the page, that George Bush, both as Vice  President and
 President, had done his utmost to make sure that no such sanctions
 would ever apply to Saddam Hussein.  Consequently, the question is
 unavoidable:  why should Saddam Hussein be concerned about a threat
 of action in the future from the same man who had resolutely blocked
 any such action in the past?  To the contrary Saddam had every reason
 to assume that Bush would look the other way -- no matter what he
 did.

 In my view, the Bush Administration was acting in a manner directly
 opposite to what you would expect with all the evidence it had at the
 time.  Saddam Hussein's nature and intentions were perfectly
 visible.

 In October of 1989, representatives of the Departments of State and
 Agriculture met to discuss Iraq's diversion of US agricultural
 credits into the acquisition of US technology for its nuclear weapons
 program.  Later that same month, however, on October 26th, Assistant
 Secretary of State Kelly sent Secretary Baker a memo jointly written
 with the State Department's legal counsel, Abe Sofaer, urging that
 Baker push an additional $1 billion in agricultural loan guarantees
 for Iraq, notwithstanding the mushrooming scandal surrounding the
 diversion of BNL loans by Iraq for nuclear purposes.

 I will leave to others to debate whether Sofaer's efforts--or those
 of White House Counsel Boyden Gray's staff--to sound out the
 intentions of the Atlanta prosecutor constituted a crude form of
 intervention.  My point is that before and after consecrating a
 policy that tied us hip and thigh to Saddam Hussein, George Bush had
 all the information he needed to know that he was in deep, deep ...
 water.  But he persisted, although in November the CIA again reported
 that Baghdad was shopping everywhere for chemical, biological, and
 nuclear technologies and for ballistic missile technology.  And even
 though the CIA again reported a link between BNL funding and the Iraq
 nuclear and missile programs, in November the Administration agreed
 to go ahead with another billion dollars in US taxpayer subsidized
 loan guarantees to Iraq.

 In January of 1990, President Bush issued a determination that
 exempted Iraq from section 512 of the Foreign Operations
 Appropriations Act of November 1989 prohibiting further loans to
 Iraq.  On grounds of "national security," the President declared that
 the Act's prohibition would not apply.  And yet, this was the season
 when the RAND Corporation reported that an estimated 1400 terrorists
 were operating out of Iraq.

 In February 1990, Saddam Hussein called for the removal of US
 military forces from the Persian Gulf.  And yet, the same month, the
 Administration actually apologized to Saddam for the content of a
 Voice of America broadcast criticizing Iraq's human rights record.
 Coddling tyrants is a hallmark of the Bush foreign policy.

 March, 1990, brought no improvement, when US and British agents
 arrested several Iraqis in the act of trying to smuggle nuclear
 triggering devices into Iraq.  In April, Saddam Hussein issued his
 infamous threat to burn up half of Israel with chemical weapons.
 Still, Bush toadied up to Saddam.

 Also in April, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted that BNL
 money was diverted to purchase nuclear triggers in the United States,
 which had later been seized by British customs.  That same month,
 British Customs also seized pipe sections heading for Iraq, which
 were determined to have been parts of a super-gun.  Similar shipments
 were seized in Greece, Turkey, Italy, West Germany and Switzerland.

 Yet, on April 12th, at the personal request of Bush, Senators Bob
 Dole and Alan Simpson -- the number one and number two Republican
 leaders in the Senate -- travelled to Baghdad and told Saddam Hussein
 that President Bush was still ready to veto any sanctions bill that
 Congress might pass.  They added -- again at Bush's personal request
 -- the comforting news that the author of the offending Voice of
 America criticism had been fired that same day in an effort to please
 Saddam.

 In April and May, Commerce Under Secretary Dennis Kloske attended two
 meetings at the White House where he recommended that the US tighten
 restrictions on exports of high technology, but he was overruled, and
 the flow of technology from the US continued.  As a side-note, when
 Kloske testified about this before the House Foreign Affairs
 Subcommittee on International Economic Policy and Trade about a year
 later, he was fired within forty-eight hours.   May arrives, and a
 terrorist attack on the public beaches of Tel Aviv was launched and
 thwarted.  It was planned by a Palestinian group operating openly in
 Baghdad.  On May 21, the USDA sent up another warning about
 diversions of funds from US-guaranteed loans.  But on June 15th,
 1990, Assistant Secretary of State Kelly told the Senate Foreign
 Relations Committee that the Administration still opposed any
 Congressional sanctions against Iraq.  And in July, as Iraqi tanks
 and soldiers massed on the Kuwaiti border, the Senate tried to pass
 another sanctions bill against Iraq...and the Administration opposed
 it.  Not only that, but on the eve of the invasion, the Bush/Quayle
 Administration kept selling Saddam dual- use technology such as
 sophisticated computers, flight simulators, and equipment to
 manufacture gun barrels.

 At that very moment, however, high level officials in the
 Administration, including Secretary of State James Baker, were
 finally forced to confront what they had known from the outset of
 Bush's administration: that Iraq had grossly abused the benefits
 extended to it by Bush.  In July, a memo jointly drafted by four
 senior officers of the Department of State was sent to Secretary
 Baker and approved by him.  According to this memorandum--the
 existence of which just came to light a few days ago-- the
 Administration acknowledged that "Iraq is actively engaged in
 developing chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile
 systems, and may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons as well.  Iraq
 has been attempting to obtain items to support these proliferation
 activities from US exporters, in some cases successfully."  The
 memorandum concludes that the time had come for the Administration to
 "move now on Iraq because of its very active proliferation-related
 procurement efforts" and because "there is a danger that US exporters
 could become implicated in these efforts."

 Bear in mind that Saddam Hussein was then only one week away from an
 act of open aggression that would bring us to war.  It had taken this
 long for an awareness of what was going on for years to be
 acknowledged within the Administration.

 Much has been said about the record of our Ambassador to Iraq April
 Glaspie's famous interview of July 25th with Saddam Hussein.  But the
 Ambassador's servile message was a clear expression of Bush's
 personal views.  Her message was totally in line with US policy as
 laid down by President Bush in October 1989, and clung to until
 August 2, 1990, when Iraq invaded, conquered, and annexed Kuwait.

 Within a month, our sons and daughters were to be sent to risk their
 lives facing a threat that had been built up through US technology
 and US tax dollars by our own President, who now summoned them to
 battle.  In answer to this charge, President Bush has explicitly
 denied that his policies enhanced Saddam Hussein's nuclear,
 biological and chemical capabilities.  He denied this, not only in an
 official report to Congress in the fall of 1991, but as recently as
 June 13th and July 1st of this year, when Bush said: "We did not
 enhance Saddam Hussein's nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons
 capability."  But as I have just mentioned, his own Secretary of
 State knew differently at least as of July 1990, and the actual
 record of our exports shows the facts rather differently than the
 President wants to remember them:

 *    Almost 30% of our non-agricultural exports to Iraq between 1985
      and 1990 went to the Iraqi military-industrial complex.

 *    Of these exports, there were 162 items that were licensed for
      sale despite their potential nuclear applications.

 *    The Administration permitted the sale of powerful computers
      comparable to those used in our own missile test ranges, despite
      objections from the Department of Defense.

 *    It allowed shipment of high-tech equipment needed for Iraq's
      Condor II missile, which was to have been able to deliver a
      nuclear warhead at a range of more than 600 miles.

 *    It allowed for the export of materials needed for the infamous
      "supergun" project, intended to have the ability to launch
      nuclear weapons like artillery shells over hundreds of miles.

 *    Machine tools, lasers and other equipment for the manufacture of
      rocket casings used in SCUD missiles were sold.  When UN
      inspectors got into Iraq, they found at Saddam Hussein's main
      nuclear weapons complex a carbide-tipped machine tool factory
      which had been built with technology and equipment licensed for
      export by the Bush Administration.

 *    The Administration licensed technology and equipment for
      fabricating shapes out of glass fiber over the objections of the
      Department of Defense, which noted that the purchaser was part
      of the Iraqi military-industrial complex, and that this kind of
      equipment was needed for a nuclear weapons program.  The
      Administration preferred to blindly accept the importer's
      ludicrous claim that the equipment would be used to make shower
      stalls.

 *    Equipment for a "detergent" factory was licensed, yet this same
      factory was used to make chemical weapons.

 *    17 licenses for the export of bacterial and fungus cultures to
      Iraq were granted, even though the CIA specifically linked the
      Iraqi government agencies involved to "biological warfare
      support and numerous other military activities."

 *    The UN Special Commission, once it finally got inside Iraq, is
      reported to have found equipment from eleven American companies
      in Iraqi missile and chemical weapons plants.

 It is astounding to look at the list of Iraqi customers approved by
 the Administration:

 *    The Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization (known
      as MIMI), which was headed by a brigadier general who was Saddam
      Hussein's son-in-law, and which the CIA identified as
      "controlling Iraq's nuclear network."

 *    The Saddam State Establishment and Salah Al Din, called in an
      intelligence report "typical of Iraq's arms production
      facilities."

 *    SAAD 16, identified back in 1986 as a key missile production
      site, where as much as 40% of the equipment was reported to be
      US- made.

 *    The Administration even sold Saddam Hussein helicopters for his
      personal use, equipped with special infra-red guidance and
      defensive systems.

 Incredibly, the Bush administration knew all along that the chief
 purchasing agent for much of this material was the head of an Iraqi
 weapons complex.  "The tentacle of the octopus," as one law
 enforcement official put it, was a US company called Matrix-
 Churchill.  It was a key player in Saddam Hussein's efforts to
 acquire nuclear and other weapons technologies.  The chairman of this
 so-called "American" corporation was one Safa al-Habobi, who was
 simultaneously the Director General of the Iraqi Nassr State
 Enterprise for Mechanical Industries, well-known by our intelligence
 agencies as a major Iraqi military-industrial complex where missiles
 and nuclear weapons equipment were manufactured.

 There was report after report linking Habobi's firm, Matrix-
 Churchill, to Iraq's global network of front companies and even back
 to the Iraqi Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization
 (MIMI) and Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamal.  But the Bush
 Administration kept issuing licenses.

 And as for how Iraq paid for all this when it was already far over
 its head in debt as the result of the war with Iran and Saddam
 Hussein's economic policies, a large part of the answer is:  on
 credit in the form of loans guaranteed by the Bush/ Quayle
 Administration.

 In the fall of 1989, Bush pushed hard to make sure that $1 billion in
 new loan guarantees were provided to Saddam Hussein.  It didn't
 matter that federal agencies were reporting severe abuses of prior
 loan guarantees from the United States.  In the end, the US taxpayer
 has been left holding the bag for almost $2 billion of loans to Iraq
 which will never be repaid.  After bailing out the savings and loans,
 American taxpayers are now being forced by Bush's poor decisions to
 bail out Saddam.

 When it came time to confront the consequences of these years of
 serious mistakes, when it came time to confront Saddam Hussein's
 invasion of Kuwait with an international coalition united in its
 resolve and purpose, George Bush, all the way up until the moment the
 combat ended, displayed fortitude and skill.  But the chestnuts he
 pulled from that fire were his own.  His policies nurtured Saddam
 Hussein. He was deaf to information that to any other ear was a
 fire-bell in the night, ringing clearly that our policies were
 disastrously wrong.

 And incredibly, immediately following the war, President Bush
 reverted to form.  At President Bush's encouragement, an armed
 resistance to Saddam Hussein sprang up in Iraq.  But at the critical
 moment, it was George Bush's decision to betray that resistance by
 tolerating Saddam Hussein's use of attack helicopters to put down the
 rebellions.  That was a clear violation of the terms of the
 ceasefire, and it was a violation we had more than enough power to
 suppress.

 Had we insisted on the terms of the ceasefire, there would have been
 a much better chance that today we would not be facing Saddam Hussein
 in power.

 Should a man who mistook Saddam Hussein for a docile ally--and who
 then pursued that error to the point where the lives of hundreds of
 thousands of Americans had to be put on the line--have a second term
 as President of the United States?  Has George Bush told the truth,
 the whole truth about a policy that left our nation facing a brutal,
 murderous dictator?  If he will take credit for the victory, will he
 also take responsibility for the policy that made war inevitable?
 The answer to these questions is no.

 George Bush sent loan guarantees to an oil rich dictator.  George
 Bush sold dangerous technology to a criminal who was intent on
 developing and using lethal weapons.  George Bush sent secret
 intelligence reports to a man who, by any stretch of the imagination,
 could not be trusted.  George Bush refused to face the truth or hear
 the urgent warnings coming from his own Administration.  And then,
 George Bush put American lives on the line to cover in a war that
 never would have happened except for his mistakes.

 In so many ways, George Bush does not fit the requirements of the New
 World Order his own speechwriters once summoned up.  We require a
 fresh approach from a new leader of vigor and high intelligence, of
 courage and vision, who believes to the core that the enemies of
 freedom cannot be anything but the enemies of our country.  I think
 that the people of the United States have and will take the
 opportunity to select such a leader.  Bill Clinton is that man.



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