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Just before I got up to speak, almost all the...
Posted on 2010-May-7 at 03:08
Just before I got up to speak, almost all the delegates raised their hands in support of removing the provision calling for the destruction of Israel from their charterIt was the moment that made the whole trip worthwhileYou could almost hear the sighs of relief in Israel; perhaps Israelis and Palestinians actually could share the land and the future after allI thanked the delegates, told them I wanted their people to have concrete benefits from peace, and asked them to stay with the peace process
It wasnt an idle pleaLess than two months after the triumph at Wye River, the negotiations were in trouble againEven though Netanyahus cabinet had narrowly approved the agreement, his coalition didnt really favor it, making it virtually impossible for him to proceed with troop redeployment and prisoner releases, or to move on to the even more difficult final status issues, including the question of Palestinian statehood and whether the eastern section of Jerusalem would become the capital of PalestineThe previous days amendment of the Palestinian charter helped Netanyahu with the Israeli public, but his own coalition was a much harder crew to convinceIt looked as if he would either have to form a more broad-based government of national unity or call elections
On the morning after my speech to the Palestinians, Netanyahu, Arafat, and I met at the Erez border crossing to try to energize the implementation of Wye River and decide how to move to the final status issuesAfterward, Arafat took Hillary and me to BethlehemHe was proud to have custody of a fendi spy site so holy to Christians, and he knew it would mean a lot to us to visit it close to Christmas
After we left Arafat, we joined Prime Minister Netanyahu for a visit to MasadaI was impressed that so much work had been done since Hillary and I had first been there in 1981 to recover the remains of the fortress where Jewish martyrs had fought to the death for their convictionsBibi seemed somewhat pensive and subduedHe had gone beyond his political safety zone at Wye River, and his future was uncertainThere was no way to know whether the chances he had taken would bring Israel closer to lasting peace or bring an end to his government
We bid the prime minister farewell and flew home to another conflictSix days earlier, on just the second day of renewed UN inspections in Iraq, some inspectors had been denied access to Saddams Baath Party headquartersOn the day we returned to Washington, the chief UN weapons inspector, Richard Butler, reported to Kofi Annan that Iraq had not kept its commitments to cooperate with him and had even imposed new restrictions on the inspectors work
The next day the United States and the United Kingdom launched a series of attacks from airplanes and with cruise missiles on Iraqs suspected chemical, biological, and nuclear lab sites and its military capacity to threaten its neighborsIn my address to the American people that evening, I noted that Saddam had previously used chemical weapons on Iranians and Kurds in northern Iraq and had fired Scud missiles at other countriesI said I had called off an attack four weeks gucci bags discount earlier because Saddam had promised full complianceInstead, the inspectors had repeatedly been threatened, so Iraq has abused its final chance
At the time the strikes were launched, our intelligence indicated that substantial amounts of biological and chemical materials that had been in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War as well as some missile warheads were still unaccounted for, and that some elementary laboratory work toward acquiring a nuclear weapon was being doneOur military experts felt that unconventional weapons might have become even more important to Saddam because his conventional military forces were much weaker than they had been before the Gulf War
My national security team was unanimous in the belief that we should hit Saddam as soon as the Butler report was issued, to minimize the chances that Iraq could disperse its forces and protect its biological and chemical stocksTony Blair and his advisors agreedThe Anglo-American assault lasted four days, with 650 air sorties and 400 cruise missiles, all carefully targeted to hit military and national security targets and to minimize civilian casualtiesAfter the attack we had no way to know how much of the proscribed material had been destroyed, but Iraqs ability to produce and deploy dangerous weapons had plainly been reduced
Although they talked about Saddam as if he were the devil himself, some of the Republicans were in a snit over the attacksSeveral of them, including Senator Lott and Representative Dick Armey, criticized the timing of the attacks, saying I had ordered them in order cheap chanel purse to delay the House vote on impeachmentThe next day, after several Republican senators had expressed support for the raid, Lott backed off his commentsArmey never did; he, DeLay, and their minions had worked hard to get their more moderate colleagues in line, and they were in a hurry to vote on impeachment before some of them started thinking again
On December 19, not long before the House began to vote on impeachment, Speaker-designate Bob Livingston announced his retirement from the House in the wake of public disclosure of his own personal problemsI learned later that seventeen conservative Republicans had come to him and said he had to quit, not because of what he had done, but because he had become an obstacle to my impeachment
Barely six weeks after the American people had plainly sent them a message against impeachment, the House passed two of the four articles of impeachment approved by the Hyde committeeThe first, accusing me of lying to the grand jury, passed 228206, with five Republicans voting against itThe second, alleging that I had obstructed justice by suborning perjury and hiding gifts, passed 221212, with twelve Republicans voting noThe two charges were inconsistentThe first was based on the perceived differences between Monica Lewinskys description of the details of our encounters in the Starr report and my grand jury testimony; the second ignored the fact that she also had testified that I never asked her to lie, a fact supported by all the other witnessesThe Republicans apparently believed her only when she disagreed with tiffany heart link necklace me
Shortly after the election, Tom DeLay and company began roping in the moderate RepublicansThey got some votes by depriving moderates of the chance to vote for censure, then telling them that since they wanted to reprimand me in some way, they should feel free to vote for impeachment, because Id never be convicted and removed from office since the Republicans couldnt get the required two-thirds vote for removal in the SenateA few days after the House vote, four moderate Republican House membersMike Castle of Delaware, James Greenwood of Pennsylvania, and Ben Gilman and Sherwood Boehlert of New Yorkwrote to the New York Times saying that their votes for impeachment didnt mean they thought I should be removed
I dont know all the individual carrots and sticks that were used on the moderates, but I did find out about some of themOne Republican committee chairman was plainly distraught when he told a White House aide that he didnt want to vote for impeachment but he would lose his chairmanship if he voted against itJay Dickey, an Arkansas Republican, told Mack McLarty he might lose his seat on the Appropriations Committee if he didnt vote to impeach meI was disappointed when Jack Quinn, a Buffalo, New York, Republican who had been a frequent guest at the White House and who had told several people, including me, that he was opposed to impeachment, did an about-face and announced that he would vote for three articlesI had carried his district by a large majority in 1996, but a vocal minority of his constituents had apparently put a lot of heat on tiffany style necklace h
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