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Leave it to those Waskly Wepubwicans to call for
the assination of a foreign leader like Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez!
Oh, but wait, fortunately,
Nexis-Lexis makes these kinds of things easy to
find.
Here's what Bill Clinton's
advisor George Stephanopoulos wrote for Newsweek
in 1997:
"When senior Clinton
advisor George Stephanopoulos publicly argued for
the same kind of assassination policy in 1997, the
press voiced no objection at all.
Fresh from his
influential White House post, Stephanopoulos devoted
an entire column in Newsweek to the topic of whether
the U.S. should take out Saddam Hussein.
His headlined? "Why
We Should Kill Saddam."
"Assassination
may be Clinton's best option," the future "This
Week" host urged. "If we can kill Saddam, we should."
Though Iraq war critics now argue that by 1997,
the Iraqi dictator was "in a box" and posed no threat
whatsoever to the U.S., Stephanopoulos contended
that Saddam deserved swift and lethal justice.
"We've exhausted other
efforts to stop him, and killing him certainly seems
more proportionate to his crimes and discriminate
in its effect than massive bombing raids that will
inevitably kill innocent civilians," the
diminutive former aide contended.
Stephanopoulos
even offered a way to get around the presidential
ban on foreign assassinations:
"If
Clinton decides we can and should assassinate Saddam,
he could call in national-security adviser Sandy
Berger and sign a secret National Security Decision
Directive authorizing it."
The Stephanopoulos
plan: "First, we could
offer to provide money and materiel to Iraqi exiles
willing to lead an effort to overthrow Saddam. .
. . The second option is a targeted airstrike against
the homes or bunkers where Saddam is most likely
to be hiding."
The one-time top Clinton
aide said that, far from violating international
principles, assassinating Saddam would be the moral
thing to do, arguing, "What's
unlawful - and unpopular with the allies - is not
necessarily immoral."
Stephanopoulos
also noted that killing Saddam could pay big political
dividends at home, saying the mission would make
Clinton "a huge winner if it succeeded."
Well waddya know!
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