Clinton, Iraq and the 1995 Tokyo Sarin Gas Attack

By Daniel McKivergan
Published March 16, 2006 1:49pm ET
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The sarin gas attack that killed 12 and injured thousands in a Tokyo subway in 1995 is back in the news. “The Tokyo High Court has upheld the death sentence against Tomomitsu Niimi,” reports Singapore’s TODAY, “a key member of the Aum doomsday cult who was convicted of attacks including the deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway.” Following that attack, the Clinton administration would cite the incident in explaining why Saddam Hussein must be disarmed. On November 15, 1997, for example, President Clinton told an audience that Americans should not view the current crisis with Iraq [the administration was preparing the nation for possible military action] as a “replay” of the Gulf War in 1991. Instead, he told people to

“think about it in terms of the innocent Japanese people that died in the subway when the sarin gas was released [by the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo in 1995]; and how important it is for every responsible government in the world to do everything that can possibly be done not to let big stores of chemical or biological weapons fall into the wrong hands, not to let irresponsible people develop the capacity to put them in warheads on missiles or put them in briefcases that could be exploded in small rooms. And I say this not to frighten you.”

Nowadays, the Clinton folks (and many in the media) have historical amnesia on all this stuff.

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