Have His Cake and Eat It Too?

Bill Clinton has been pretty good to President Bush about the War on Terror and the war in Iraq — up until now.

In July of '03 — right after the invasion — Clinton went on TV and said, "Hey, all you guys ticked at Bush, just remember we all knew we'd have to do something about Saddam someday."

That was good. It was actually brave because the Democrats were busy formulating the "Bush lied" lie which is now accepted on the blue side of things as absolute, unquestionable truth, when in fact it is the biggest cowpie I've ever stepped in.

But now Clinton has gone off the deep end.

Here's what he said to a group of students — one presumes Arab students — at the American University in Dubai:

"Saddam is gone. It's a good thing." I interrupt his statement here because this is where he should have stopped. But he didn't. He went on.

"But I don't agree with what was done," Clinton said. "It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors, one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country."

Now there is a certain truth in the latter part of the statement. It's obviously been easier to knock Saddam off than unite the country.

But uttering the words "it was a big mistake" in an Arab country, in front of an Arab audience, can mean only one thing: The ex-president thinks we shouldn't have gone into Iraq.

But he just said Saddam is gone and that's good. So what does this mean? That he wants his cake and eat it too? He wants Saddam gone, but doesn't want to do the hard thing that gets Saddam gone?

Clinton had eight years to get rid of Saddam without a war. It didn't work. It would never have worked.

Saddam was busy buying off the U.N. and France. He was busy killing his opponents and CIA spies. He was busy convincing his neighbors and the rest of the world that he had WMDs, because if they thought he didn't the U.S. wouldn't have had time to invade. Iran would have done it first.

Clinton has defined the Democrat position on Saddam: We are glad he's gone, now let's stone the guy who ran him out.

The beauty of this is that they say it with a straight face.

That's My Word.

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