I mention it because, while Obama was in Texas, his White House director of legislative affairs, Miguel E. Rodriguez, wrote to Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) that the U.S. intelligence community had assessed “with some degree of varying confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.”
The assessment, the letter said, was based in part on “physiological samples,” meaning cells or skin samples, while others have said some soil samples were also involved.
During a White House backgrounder for reporters about the letter, a senior official clearly had Iraq in mind when he said, “It is crucial, given our own history with intelligence assessments, including intelligence assessments on weapons of mass destruction, that we are able to present evidence that is airtight.”
Unlike Bush and his top advisers, who took every shred of intelligence to magnify claims that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Obama and his team are proceeding cautiously.
The day after he returned from Texas, Obama said the current assessments were preliminary, based on intelligence gathered so far on which “we have varying degrees of confidence about the actual use.” He added: “There are a range of questions around how, when, where these weapons may have been used. So we’re going to be pursuing a very vigorous investigation ourselves,” along with others in the region and the United Nations.
Go back to Oct. 7, 2002. Three days before the House and Senate were to vote on a resolution authorizing Bush to use force if Iraq refused to give up its weapons of mass destruction — which it did not have — Bush gave a televised speech outlining “a grave threat to peace, and America’s determination to lead the world in confronting that threat.”
After referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush said, “We agree that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons.” Surveillance photos, he said, revealed that the Iraqis were “rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons.”
He said Iraq “has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons” and is “exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.”
He said, “Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade” and the United States “learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bombmaking and poisons and deadly gases.” He said Iraq “could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists,” which “could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.”
Source Article from http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iraq-history-at-bush-center-shows-need-for-caution-on-syria/2013/04/29/ea124816-ae80-11e2-98ef-d1072ed3cc27_story.html
Iraq history, at Bush center, shows need for caution on Syria – Washington Post
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Iraq history, at Bush center, shows need for caution on Syria - Washington Post
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