Here is a nice run down of various quotes by high ranking Democrats arguing that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and that this made Iraq a serious threat to the world order in general, and the United States in particular.
Three names listed here are Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore. For example:
"(Iraq) admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability — notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And might I say, UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production."
— Text of President Clinton's address to Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff, Feb. 17, 1998
Here is Al Gore in September 2002, right after President Bush made his speech before the UN putting Iraq on notice that the United States would use force to gain Iraq's compliance with UN weapon inspections:
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
— From an address by Al Gore to the Commonwealth Club of California, Sept. 23, 2002
If the Bush Administration "obviously fabricated" intelligence, would not members of the previous administration be in a unique position to inform us of that? Or are we to believe that in the one year between Bill Clinton leaving the White House and George Bush putting Iraq in the "axis of evil" that the intelligence from Iraq had suddenly changed? Are we to believe that by October of 2002, when Congress voted to authorize force against Iraq, that the Bush Administration had found scads of new information that rendered all Iraq intelligence in the Clinton administration moot and then willfully kept that information from Congress? Or that the Bush Administration had found, miracle of miracles, that Iraq had actually come into compliance with international agreements on WMD, and the Bush administration knew it, and willfully kept that information from Congress? Both of these scenarios strain credulity.
There were members of the Democratic Party, one of them right there in the Senate, who were able to decipher whether intelligence coming from the Bush Administration was "obviously fabricated." Sen. Hillary Clinton wouldn't want her husband, the former president, to reveal state secrets, but she surely could have asked him, "Does this intelligence seem right to you?" Could not other Democrats in the House and Senate have called upon former Clinton officials and ask them if this was accurate or "obviously fabricated" intelligence? If the fabrication of intelligence was "obvious," would not former high ranking officials in the Clinton Administration be able to adjudicate that? Again, because of the sensitive nature of intelligence they shouldn't have gone into specifics, but surely they could have spoken in general terms and any "obvious fabrications" would have been exposed.
This much is clear. A Senator who was serious about his job should have asked these questions. A Democratic Senator who was about to vote to authorize military action didn't need to rely on the Bush Administration to justify his vote. There were members of his own party who surely could have spotted "obviously fabricated" intelligence. If that Senator didn't go to these rather easily accessible sources of information, then he was derelict in his duty. The point remains: if the Bush Administration "obviously fabricated" the intelligence on Iraq to lead us into war, then it seems the reasonably observant and diligent Senator would have figured it out. Given that there are no relevant distinctions between the Clinton Administration's pronouncements on Iraq and the Bush Administration's on the same, if one buys the "obviously fabricated" line, one has to believe that nearly miraculous events occurred in Iraq in the ensuing 21 or so months between the departure of the Clinton folks and the Senate vote on war. One has to believe that new intelligence was found that "obviously" countermanded the previous decade of intelligence, or that Saddam Hussein, after more than a decade of deception, woke up one day and decided he'd get rid of all his WMD's and stop all WMD programs and that the Bush Administration knew of this occurrence.
If intelligence that led us to war was "obviously fabricated" then a reasonably diligent Senator should have figured it out. So we are left with two conclusions. Either the evidence was not "obviously fabricated" and those saying so are re-inventing history, or, if the evidence was "obviously fabricated," those Senators who voted for war in Iraq are not reasonably diligent.
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