frankenlies.com
#1: Al Franken's Own WMD
Let’s start with an easy one.
On page 225 of Truth, in writing about the lead-up to the Iraq war, Franken asserts that in 1998 (emphasis mine),
"[President Clinton] launched a series of bomb strikes, which, as Bush’s handpicked weapons inspectors would later confirm in the Duelfer Report, knocked out all that remained of Saddam’s atrophied WMD capacity. The threat to America was obliterated once and for all, even though Saddam was still in place."
The truth? The Duelfer Report says no such thing.1 There’s not even a hint of anything like Franken’s claim in the report. Franken’s assertion is simply baseless and false.
The entire Duelfer Report is over one thousand pages long. Apparently, Franken was hoping that readers wouldn’t actually take the time to study it for themselves and find out the truth on their own.2
[ADDENDUM: Franken repeated this bogus claim on the December 7, 2005, episode of Scarborough Country on MSNBC (link).]
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Notes:
1 “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD,” Volume 1 of 3, p. 11. http://www.foia.cia.gov/duelfer/Iraqs_WMD_Vol1.pdf
In fact, the Duelfer Report says this about Clinton’s bombings (emphasis mine):
“UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors departed Iraq just before the bombing and never returned. The Iraqis were satisfied with the outcome. They said, given a choice of sanctions with inspections or sanctions without inspections, they would prefer without."
Later (emphasis mine), with the inspectors gone,
“By 2000, the erosion of sanctions accelerated ... Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem ... Major items had no trouble getting across the border ... Indeed, Iraq was designing missile systems with the assumption that sanctioned material would be readily available.”
2 President Clinton's weak strikes on Iraq in December 1998 were called Desert Fox. "Where the WMDs Went" is a must-read article in which Bill Tierney is interviewed. Among his numerous credentials, Tierney was a United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspector (1996-1998) for overseeing the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles in Iraq. Here's what he says about Clinton's Desert Fox strikes (emphasis mine):
"Operation Desert Fox was a perfect example of the uselessness of strike operations. Iraqis have told me that the WMD destruction and movement started just after Operation Desert Fox, since after all, who would be so stupid as to start a bombing campaign and just stop.
"It was only after Saddam realized that President Clinton lacked the nerve for anything more than a temper-tantrum demonstration that he knew the doors were wide open for him to continue his weapons program. We didn’t break his will, we didn’t destroy his weapons making capability (The Iraqis simply moved most of the precision machinery out prior to the strikes, then rebuilt the buildings), but we did kill some Iraqi bystanders, just so President Clinton could say 'something must be done, so I did something'."