FLASHBACK

The day the vote was made to impeach President Clinton, Gore delivered a speech in front of a massed group of applauding Democrats at the White House, in which he said that Clinton “will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents”. That was on December 19, 1998. Three days earlier, as CNN wrote, Clinton launched “new military strikes against Iraq”:

The president said Iraq’s refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors presented a threat to the entire world.

“Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons,” Clinton said.

Operation Desert Fox, a strong, sustained series of attacks, will be carried out over several days by U.S. and British forces, Clinton said.

“Earlier today I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces,” Clinton said.

“Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors,” said Clinton.

Clinton also stated that, while other countries also had weapons of mass destruction, Hussein is in a different category because he has used such weapons against his own people and against his neighbors.

So here’s my question to Vice President Gore: Knowing what we now know about Iraq’s weakened capacity to make WMDs, does Gore still feel that his boss was “one of our greatest presidents”, or does he feel that Clinton, to borrow the language that Power Line used, “betrayed” the United States by ordering a war against Saddam Hussein that had been “preordained and planned before 9-11 ever took place”?