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Clinton: Bush made mistake
12/05/2004 20:24 - (SA)
New York - President George W Bush wasted international sympathy for the United States after the 2001 terrorist attacks by shifting from the search for Osama bin Laden to the ousting of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, former President Bill Clinton said on Tuesday.
The move alienated many US allies and created a false impression among Americans that Saddam had a key role in the al-Qaeda-engineered terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Clinton said.
"I think the world was really pulling for us after 9/11," he said, but the Bush administration "divided the world ... to pursue our vision - not because of any imminent threat but because that's what they wanted to do."
Answering questions after a speech to the annual World Business Forum, Clinton mingled criticism of his successor's Iraq war and tax cut policies with measured praise for early actions by the Bush White House to fight Aids and support education in poor countries.
However, he said, even those initiatives suffered setbacks when administration officials "started doing things their own way and acted like we didn't care what other people thought."
Clinton, whose administration defined Saddam's removal as a key US policy objective but did not act on it, told the audience of 4 000 that Bush had antagonised allies by ignoring or rejecting the nuclear test ban treaty and agreements on global warming, the international court and other issues.
That could come back to haunt the United States on other issues on which it needs international support, Clinton said.
"What happened?"
"The people in Washington DC, find something wrong with all of these things, and they could be right" he said, "but most people expect partnerships to be two-way streets".
Clinton was not asked, nor did he volunteer any comments, about the current uproar over revelations of brutality by US prison guards against Iraqi detainees in Iraqi prisons.
His strongest words were aimed at Bush's decisions to attack Iraq two years after September 11.
"Keep in mind that we had unanimous support from the United Nations to do what we had to do, unanimous support for going into Afghanistan, for going after the Taliban" Clinton said.
"They (the United Nations) participated in the hunt for bin Laden ... they also supported giving an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to open his country to inspections for weapons of mass destruction.
"We were in good shape. What happened?
Clinton called it "unbelievable" that polls show that "half of the American people still believe Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, when there is not a shred of evidence".
"To be fair to the president, they don't even say it anymore" Clinton said, yet half the nation remains convinced that "US forces went to Iraq and their sacrifices occurred because of some relation to 9/11, which is not true". - Sapa-AP
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