FOR RELEASE UPON DELIVERY 12:30 P-M CST TUESDAY Posted by Clinton/Gore Email October 27, 1992 Exerpts from the remarks of SEN. AL GORE Rally at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, WI President Bush claims credit for successfully prosecuting the Persian Gulf war, so he should be prepared to have the record of his activities leading toward that war examined, particularly now, as he asks the American people for their support for four more years. The pattern of President Bush's own public statements on these issues is itself worthy of special attention and the reasons are increasingly evident. U.S. policy toward Iraq has been a first class disaster. Even more disturbing is the fact that blended in with violations of common sense may well be violations of law. The President has tried to divorce himself from any connection with events during the Reagan Administration, and he is also running from the truth concerning his policies and actions during his own time as President. Error can sometimes be excused, although when the error is so great that it brings us to the edge of disaster, a harsher judgment may be in order from the people. That the President erred is one thing. The fact he has not leveled with the American people is another. The facts show, with increasing clarity, that as Vice President, George Bush was centrally involved in the sale of weapons to Iran as payment for release of U.S. hostages who were being held in Lebanon by groups under Iranian control. President Bush denied for years in the most categorical terms that he was involved in the crafting or the execution of this policy. In his words, he was "out of the loop." But a growing weight of evidence points clearly to just the opposite conclusion. George Bush wasn't "out of the loop," he was right in the middle of it. That's what we know from the two most senior members of the Reagan cabinet -- then-Secretaries of State and Defense, George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger -- who registered shock and dismay that Vice President Bush, who they knew to be a proponent of the arms sale to Iran, was denying all knowledge. And that's what we know from a former member of the National Security Council staff, who says he personally briefed then-Vice President Bush on the details of the arms for hostages deal with Iran. And, now we are being told - in a major article just published in a national magazine -- that as Vice-President, George Bush not only knew about the arms for hostage deal, but was a central player in a plot that taught Saddam Hussein something about deception and double-double-crosses. Specifically, the article says that at the request of the late CIA Director, William Casey, Vice President Bush used a trip he took to the Middle East in the summer of 1986, to convince the timid Iraqi air force to bomb deep into Iran and increase Iran's need for American anti-aircraft defenses. That way, the U.S. could get more favorable terms in the arms for hostages deal. The arms for hostages deal must have rocked Saddam Hussein when he discovered that he was dealing with people who were capable of showing him a thing or two about deception and ruthless cynicism. Here he thought that the U.S. government was squarely in his corner, and then all of a sudden he discovers that his good friends were busy arming his deadly enemies in Iran. As a result, the Reagan Administration found itself obliged to increase earlier benefits to Saddam Hussein, to make-up ground lost by the arms for hostages deal. This is the process that George Bush pushed hard as Vice President, and then even more vigorously, as President, coddling Saddam Hussein and ignoring the warnings. As a result of that program of favoritism for Iraq, billions of dollars of credit flowed from our country to Saddam Hussein. Some of that money was guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers, and U.S. taxpayers are now holding the bag for almost $2 billion in these loans. Many billions more were siphoned off from the Atlanta branch office of an Italian bank. The Bush Administration had plenty of warning that these funds were being misused: specifically, that they were being diverted to military purposes by Saddam Hussein, and even more alarmingly, that they were being used to help him in a global effort to purchase the means to create chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The Bush Administration has denied that it proceeded recklessly in financing Saddam Hussein, and claims that it was merely trying to coax him into the "family of nations." President Bush himself has specifically and categorically denied that there was even a scintilla of evidence that U.S. money and U.S. exports helped to build up Saddam Hussein's military power. But the steady and quickening stream of new information raises serious questions about the President's explanations. Those explanations fall short for example in justifying how the Administration continued to push for loan guarantees to Iraq despite clear warnings from the federal prosecutor investigating fraud at that Italian bank funneling money to Saddam Hussein. New documents, just released, show that the Chief Prosecutor in the bank case told the Bush-Quayle Administration in the fall of 1989, that there had been a multi-billion dollar scam involving the bank, and that the Iraqi government was not only a party to fraud, but had been using the money to buy military goods, and also machines that could "among other things, remove burrs from nose cones of missiles and compress nuclear fuel." Now does that sound like someone you want to loan a lot of money to? It doesn't to me and it wouldn't to most of us. But to George Bush, unbelievably, Saddam Hussein still seemed a good bet. Despite this fire-bell warning, and others similar to it that we knew about before this latest revelation, the Administration went on to force through more than one billion dollars in new loan guarantees to Iraq. All this took place after the end of the war between Iraq and Iran, when our strategic need for Iraq had lessened. It took place despite our knowledge of Saddam Hussein's use of poison gas against Iraqi Kurds, and despite our knowledge of Saddam Hussein's continuing hospitality to terrorist groups. And the reason it took place is because of George Bush's fundamental misreading of Saddam Hussein. George Bush thought he could turn Saddam Hussein into a tame stooge. Instead, he got a raving and dangerous dictator. The result is that, like a pilot flying in dense fog, who refuses to believe his instruments, George Bush wound up flying upside down. He disregarded every warning right until the bitter end. President Bush would have us believe that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait despite tough warnings against any invasion. George Bush says he made it clear to Saddam that he meant business. But the text of President Bush's final message to Saddam was made public just last week, and it is not a warning but a plea. Even top officials in Bush's own Department of Defense thought George Bush's message to Saddam was so soft and misleading that it ought to be stopped. They tried but failed. With 30,000 troops massed on Kuwait's border, Saddam Hussein had to weigh the chances of a serious US response. He knew, what the American people did not: that George Bush had, as Vice President and as President, invariably accepted whatever abuse Saddam wanted to hand out. Not only that, he knew from experience that George Bush responded to such abuse not by cutting back on his secret generosity, but by redoubling it. And at the decisive moment, he had in hand a final message from an American President that deserves to be described as base appeasement. And so, Saddam Hussein invaded, and within months, the armed forces of the United States began to move into position for what ultimately would be a famous military victory. But let me remind you that the Iraqi forces we were preparing to deal with had been strengthened by the Bush Administration itself. President Bush denies this. But again, we know the truth: the Iraqis were particularly interested in obtaining high tech items from us, and the Bush Administration swept aside objections from the Department of Defense to make sure that the licenses were issued. The door was gladly opened to send Iraq a broad array of goods -- sophisticated computers and machine tools, and many other items that wound up in military production facilities and labs. Today, the Senate Banking Committee is holding a hearing to explore the manner in which the Bush Administration dealt with Iraq's export requests, and even more information has now become available. Very little dignity remains to the President's assertion that there was not "one scintilla" of evidence that U.S. exports had added to Iraq's war machine. He has been contradicted by no less an authority than the American who headed the U.N. inspection team, David Kay. Meanwhile, it is clear that thanks to political interference, the effort to get to the bottom of the Italian bank scandal has been set back for many months. Prosecutors in Atlanta as well as the original judge in the case have discovered that the Justice Department may well have interfered with their access to vital information. Now we have the spectacle of the Justice Department, the CIA, and the FBI involved in mutual recriminations -- it would be funny, if the result were not obstruction of justice, and if it didn't mean that the truth will not come out until after the election. At the very bottom of all this are two central issues: George Bush's foreign policy skills and our ability to trust him. George Bush brags about his expertise and experience in foreign policy, yet presides over a massive foreign policy failure and a cover-up that's even larger than Watergate -- fueled by his own mis- statements. Now he says he's going to do for our economy what he did for our foreign policy. It makes you wonder how much worse he could make this recession. ######################