here's what Clinton was saying in August 2002 (Link is no longer active):
And this is really where the question of Iraq comes in. There's a lot of
debate
about what
should we do with Iraq, and when. And you may want to ask
further questions, but
I will just
make one observation. Saddam Hussein presents no conventional
military threat
to us, and a
much smaller one to his allies than he did before the Gulf War.
His military
strength, it is
commonly conceded, is about 40 percent of what it was before
the Gulf War. He
did try to
assassinate former President Bush in 1993 with the most clumsy
terrorist
operation I ever
saw. The car bombs that we uncovered practically said, "made by
the operatives of
Saddam
Hussein in Baghdad." But after we bombed his intelligence
building, as far as we
know, he
never took another serious terrorist act himself. And the Bush
administration has
said that
Iraq was not involved in September the 11th.
http://www.cfr.org/public/Clinton_6-17-02_Transcript.htmlPowell made similar comments. THEY KNEW