President Bill Clinton Orders Military Strikes Against Iraq's WMD Programs in 1998

A few years before President George W. Bush sought the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 , the Democrat President Bill Clinton was attacking Iraq because of their WMD programs.

Excerpted from History.com

On December 16, 1998, President Bill Clinton announced that he has ordered air strikes against Iraq because it refused to cooperate with United Nations (U.N.) weapons inspectors. Clinton’s decision did not have the support of key members of Congress, who accused Clinton of using the air strikes to direct attention away from ongoing impeachment proceedings against him. Just the day before, the House of Representatives had issued a report accusing Clinton of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” related to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, in which Clinton had–and then lied about–an illicit sexual liaison with an intern in the Oval Office. 

At the time of the air strikes, Iraq was continuing its attempts to build weapons of mass destruction including nuclear, chemical and biological agents. Fearful of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s belligerence, and his penchant for using those weapons against his own people, the U.N. sent in weapons inspectors in 1997. After repeatedly refusing the inspectors access to certain sites, Clinton resorted to air strikes to compel Hussein to cooperate.

Ultimately, the American public’s attention, and that of the press, stayed fixated on Clinton and his battle to save his presidency. Both the air strikes and the impeachment threat proved anti-climactic. Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in February 1999 and the air strikes on Iraq failed to intimidate Hussein into allowing weapons inspectors full access to Iraq’s weapons facilities.

The full video:


Democrats & The Iraq War: WMDs & the Surge