President Clinton told an audience two days ago that he had never "personally" seen any intel linking Iraq and Al-Qaeda and "no one I knew believed that was the case," reported the Westchester Journal-News. Well, the following quotes seem to indicate that the Clinton administration was "deeply worried" about terrorists getting their hands on wmd with Saddam as the possible supplier. If not al Qaeda, which terrorist groups were they referring to? Have any reporters bothered to ask President Clinton? A November 24, 1997 Time magazine piece, "America the Vulnerable," stated that:
officials in Washington are deeply worried about what some of them call "strategic crime." By that they mean the merging of the output from a government's arsenals, like Saddam's biological weapons, with a group of semi-independent terrorists, like radical Islamist groups, who might slip such bioweapons into the U.S. and use them.
Who were these officials? Intelligence community officials? Clinton White House officials? What intelligence did these officials base their "deep worry" on? And did President Clinton base his November 15, 1997 remarks in Sacramento on the same intelligence that prompted government "officials" to be "deeply worried" about a Saddam-supplied bioterror attack on U.S. soil?
think about it [Iraq's disarmament] in terms of the innocent Japanese people that died in the subway when the sarin gas was released; and how important it is for every responsible government in the world to do everything that can possibly be done not to let big stores of chemical or biological weapons fall into the wrong hands, not to let irresponsible people develop the capacity to put them in warheads on missiles or put them in briefcases that could be exploded in small rooms. And I say this not to frighten you.
Other examples: November 19, 1997, White House
The inspectors must be able to do so without interference. That's our top line; that's our bottom line. I want to achieve it diplomatically. But we're taking every step to make sure we are prepared to pursue whatever options are necessary. I do not want these children we are trying to put in stable homes to grow up into a world where they are threatened by terrorists with biological and chemical weapons. It is not right.
February 17, 1998, Pentagon
Saddam Hussein's Iraq reminds us of what we learned in the 20th century and warns us of what we must know about the 21st. In this century, we learned through harsh experience that the only answer to aggression and illegal behavior is firmness, determination and, when necessary, action. In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.
May 22, 1998, US Naval Academy
Rather than invading our beaches or launching bombers, these adversaries may attempt cyber-attacks against our critical military systems and our economic base, or they may deploy compact and relatively cheap weapons of mass destruction, not just nuclear but also chemical or biological, to use disease as a weapon of war. Sometimes the terrorists and criminals act alone, but increasingly they are interconnected, and sometimes supported by hostile countries.
There are also many examples of Defense Secretary William Cohen suggesting Saddam's wmd could end up in the hands of terror groups. He spoke about Saddam's VX program.
One drop [of VX nerve agent] on your finger will produce death in a matter of just a few moments. Now the UN believes that Saddam may have produced as much as 200 tons of VX, and this would, of course, be theoretically enough to kill every man, woman and child on the face of the earth.
Cohen then recalled Iraq's use of poison gas and the sarin attack in Tokyo. He warned that "we face a clear and present danger today," and reminded people that the "terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in New York had in mind the destruction and deaths of some 250,000 people that they were determined to kill." Cohen had another national television appearance in which he held a bag of sugar and warned that the same amount of anthrax "would destroy at least half the population" of Washington, D.C. There is also the issue of the Clinton administration's bombing of the al-Shifa chemical plant in Sudan -- explained here.