Bush Claims to Never Say Iraq Was "Imminent Threat"

[normalnoises]

Bush Claims to Never Say Iraq Was "Imminent Threat"

http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df01282004.html

Facing mounting pressure over charges that the White House deliberately misled the American people about Iraq's WMD, President Bush is now claiming that U.N. weapons inspectors were not allowed into Iraq before the war. Yesterday, the president said, Iraq "chose defiance. It was [saddam's] choice to make, and he did not let us in."1

But U.N. weapons inspections led by Hans Blix began on November 27th, 2003, as noted by the State Department at the time.2 Over the course of the next five months, those inspections found "little more than 'debris'" from a WMD program that had long since been destroyed.3 The weapons inspectors were forced to leave when Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq.4 President Bush then "refused to permit the U.N. inspectors to return to Iraq."5

When asked about the issue yesterday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan claimed the entire WMD issue was unimportant because the Bush Administration had never said Iraq was a threat. He said, "the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'" to describe the Iraqi "threat" - not the Bush Administration.6

But the record shows the Administration repeatedly said Iraq was an "imminent threat." On May 7th, less than a week after the president announced the end of major combat operations, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked, "Didn't we go to war because we said WMD were a direct and imminent threat to the U.S.?" He replied, "Absolutely."7 Similarly, in November 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, "I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?" Most notably, Vice President Cheney said two days after President Bush's 2003 State of the Union that Saddam Hussein "threatens the United States of America."8

Sources:

President Bush Welcomes President Kwasniewski to White House , 01/27/2004.

"Weapons Inspections to Begin in Iraq November 27", US State Department, 11/25/2002.

"Blix Downgrades Prewar Assessment of Iraqi Weapons", Washington Post, 11/22/2003.

"Weapons Inspectors Leave Iraq", CBS News, 03/18/2003.

"Bush bars UN weapons teams from Iraq", SMH, 04/24/2003.

Press Briefing, 01/27/2004.

Press Briefing, 05/07/2003.

"Confronting Iraq Crucial To War Against Terror", Truth News, 01/30/2003.

[jamiroguy1]

Back pedaling

[pattbateman]

that is how you spin shit

you cut and paste quotes where you deem necessary

i understand he said they were a imminent threat

where in that article did he say they were not a imminent threat??

[jamiroguy1]

Originally posted by pattbateman

that is how you spin shit

you cut and paste quotes where you deem necessary

i understand he said they were a imminent threat

where in that article did he say they were not a imminent threat??

I think David Kay has testified already that Iraq was not an immenent threat.

[igloo]

Originally posted by jamiroguy1

I think David Kay has testified already that Iraq was not an immenent threat.

Keep hanging yourself jerkoff:

He (David Kay) told the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now that you know reality on the ground as opposed to what you estimated before, you may reach a different conclusion — although I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."

And since you are always devoid of facts, and talk out of your ass, why don't you check out President Bush's EXACT words in the State of the Union address about Iraq and "imminent"....

The one where he stated " some believe we should way until the threat is imminent"....

Get your facts straight douche bag.......then again, you talk out of your ass so much, reason dictates that your goal is to be known as a jerkoff...

Congrats...your goal has been accomplished

[pattbateman]

BAM

[jamiroguy1]

"Based on the intelligence given..." but in actuality there was no threat. Bush was wrong.

[jamiroguy1]

"If the weapons programs existed on the scale we anticipated," Kay said, "we would have found something that leads to that conclusion. Instead, we found other evidence that points to something else."

[igloo]

Originally posted by jamiroguy1

"Based on the intelligence given..." but in actuality there was no threat. Bush was wrong.

So you mean you are off your "Bush lied" kick......can't blame you, you got your ass kicked, and came out looking like an even bigger jerkoff...

So, now that you admit that you are a fool for carrying on with the Bush Lied mantra despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary....let's kick your ass easily on Bush was wrong debate....

Actually, I will accept that Bush was wrong on WMD......but so was the Clinton admin, the U.N, France and Germany, weapons inspectors, think-tanks, Iraqi defectors, etc........

To simply point out that Bush, and only Bush was wrong, you again dismiss yourself as nothing but a clown

[pattbateman]

[igloo]

Transcript: David Kay at Senate hearing

Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Posted: 7:29 PM EST (0029 GMT)

Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay addresses the Senate Armed Services Committee.

(CNN) -- Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testified Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee about efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Following is a transcript of Kay's opening remarks before committee members began questioning him.

KAY: As you know and we discussed, I do not have a written statement. This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions, and I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability.

I would like to open by saying that the talent, dedication and bravery of the staff of the [iraq Survey Group] that was my privilege to direct is unparalleled and the country owes a great debt of gratitude to the men and women who have served over there and continue to serve doing that.

A great deal has been accomplished by the team, and I do think ... it important that it goes on and it is allowed to reach its full conclusion. In fact, I really believe it ought to be better resourced and totally focused on WMD; that that is important to do it.

But I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.

Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.

Sen. [Edward] Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction.

I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war -- certainly, the French president, [Jacques] Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq's possession of WMD.

The Germans certainly -- the intelligence service believed that there were WMD.

It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.

We're also in a period in which we've had intelligence surprises in the proliferation area that go the other way. The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location.

The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.

There's a long record here of being wrong. There's a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies.

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [u.N.] Resolution 1441.

Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had.

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

I think the aim -- and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving -- is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine.

And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.

As leader of the effort of the Iraqi Survey Group, I spent most of my days not out in the field leading inspections. It's typically what you do at that level. I was trying to motivate, direct, find strategies.

In the course of doing that, I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance.

And never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, "I was pressured to do this." The explanation was very often, "The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it."

And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I'm convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, "inappropriate command influence" that led them to take that position.

It was not that. It was the honest difficulty based on the intelligence that had -- the information that had been collected that led the analysts to that conclusion.

And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that.

We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.

The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong, and we've got to figure out what was there. And that's what I call fundamental fault analysis.

And like I say, I think we've got other cases other than Iraq. I do not think the problem of global proliferation of weapons technology of mass destruction is going to go away, and that's why I think it is an urgent issue.

And let me really wrap up here with just a brief summary of what I think we are now facing in Iraq. I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.

A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."

I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.

The result is -- document destruction -- we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.

But I do think the survey group -- and I think Charlie Duelfer is a great leader. I have the utmost confidence in Charles. I think you will get as full an answer as you can possibly get.

And let me just conclude by my own personal tribute, both to the president and to [CIA Director] George Tenet, for having the courage to select me to do this, and my successor, Charlie Duelfer, as well.

Both of us are known for probably at times regrettable streak of independence. I came not from within the administration, and it was clear and clear in our discussions and no one asked otherwise that I would lead this the way I thought best and I would speak the truth as we found it. I have had absolutely no pressure prior, during the course of the work at the [iraq Survey Group], or after I left to do anything otherwise.

I think that shows a level of maturity and understanding that I think bodes well for getting to the bottom of this. But it is really up to you and your staff, on behalf of the American people, to take on that challenge. It's not something that anyone from the outside can do. So I look forward to these hearings and other hearings at how you will get to the conclusions.

I do believe we have to understand why reality turned out to be different than expectations and estimates. But you have more public service -- certainly many of you -- than I have ever had, and you recognize that this is not unusual.

I told Sen. [John] Warner [chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee] earlier that I've been drawn back as a result of recent film of reminding me of something. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the combined estimate was unanimity in the intelligence service that there were no Soviet warheads in Cuba at the time of the missile crisis.

Fortunately, President Kennedy and [then-Attorney General] Robert Kennedy disagreed with the estimate and chose a course of action less ambitious and aggressive than recommended by their advisers.

But the most important thing about that story, which is not often told, is that as a result after the Cuban missile crisis, immediate steps were taken to correct our inability to collect on the movement of nuclear material out of the Soviet Union to other places.

So that by the end of the Johnson administration, the intelligence community had a capability to do what it had not been able to do at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.

I think you face a similar responsibility in ensuring that the community is able to do a better job in the future than it has done in the past.

[pattbateman]

put a fork in'em

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by igloo

Keep hanging yourself jerkoff:

He (David Kay) told the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now that you know reality on the ground as opposed to what you estimated before, you may reach a different conclusion — although I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."

And since you are always devoid of facts, and talk out of your ass, why don't you check out President Bush's EXACT words in the State of the Union address about Iraq and "imminent"....

The one where he stated " some believe we should way until the threat is imminent"....

Get your facts straight douche bag.......then again, you talk out of your ass so much, reason dictates that your goal is to be known as a jerkoff...

Congrats...your goal has been accomplished

Ouch....

[jamiroguy1]

No. I still believed that he knew Iraq wasn't a god damn imment threat. The CIA knew that as well but the decision was already made to invade iraq. Even bush admin officials have admited this, along with others in his own fucking cabinet.

It's really pitiful every time Bush is caught lying whether it's the uranium in africa claim, knowledge beforehand of 9/11, or the false "imminent threat" of Iraq, the neocons seem to blame the CIA. Bush is a coward.

[igloo]

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [u.N.] Resolution 1441.

Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had.

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

If anyone wants to point the finger of blame----point it at Saddam Hussein.......case closed.

[pattbateman]

we should of done it in the first gulf war

[jamiroguy1]

Originally posted by pattbateman

we should of done it in the first gulf war

We should've supported the popular shiite uprising after Saddam was fought back out of Kuwait but we let Saddam crush the uprising.

[igloo]

Originally posted by jamiroguy1

No. I still believed that he knew Iraq wasn't a god damn imment threat. The CIA knew that as well but the decision was already made to invade iraq. Even bush admin officials have admited this, along with others in his own fucking cabinet.

It's really pitiful every time Bush is caught lying whether it's the uranium in africa claim, knowledge beforehand of 9/11, or the false "imminent threat" of Iraq, the neocons seem to blame the CIA. Bush is a coward.

Wow....every time that I think you have reached your potential on the moronic jerkoff scale, you hit new heights...

You are certainly an amusing clown......dumb as dirt, but amusing...

[dkny8]

Originally posted by igloo

Wow....every time that I think you have reached your potential on the moronic jerkoff scale, you hit new heights...

You are certainly an amusing clown......dumb as dirt, but amusing...

Like a bobo doll, just keeps coming back for more punishment and never hits back meaningfully.

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by igloo

Wow....every time that I think you have reached your potential on the moronic jerkoff scale, you hit new heights...

You are certainly an amusing clown......dumb as dirt, but amusing...

This kid has to be home all day in his skooby doo underoos doing bong hits.. He has the facts all screwed up...

[igloo]

Originally posted by mr mahs

This kid has to be home all day in his skooby doo underoos doing bong hits.. He has the facts all screwed up...

I will post this here too, just to put the final nail in yet another jamirolost coffin:

'Imminent threat' is revisionist spin

'Imminent threat' is revisionist spin

Jonah Goldberg

October 17, 2003

Jimmy Carter never used the word "malaise" in his "malaise speech." Abraham Lincoln never said, "God must have loved the common people, he made so many of them."

And George W. Bush never said that the threat from Iraq was "imminent."

He never said it. Seriously. Not once.

Teams of rhetoric inspectors have been pouring over Bush's comments, utterances, speeches and gesticulations for about as long as we've been looking for WMD in Iraq and, to date, nobody has found a shred of proof that the president - or anybody in his Cabinet - ever once said Iraq or Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent" threat to the United States.

In fact, one of the only good finds on this score actually says the complete opposite. In President Bush's State of the Union Address last January, he said:

"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."

This is important because the favorite talking point of Democrats and liberal pundits right now is that the president "lied" when he said that Iraq posed an "imminent threat."

Just the other day Sen. Jay Rockefeller said on Fox News Sunday, "What I keep having to remind myself is that we went to war in Iraq based upon an imminent threat which was being caused by weapons of mass destruction." And New York Times columnist Paul Krugman hyperventilated: "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra."

Ted Kennedy offered the most infamous summary: "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership, that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."

It would make things so much easier to say that all of the war's critics are as intellectually dishonest as Kennedy or Krugman. Unfortunately for the war's defenders, but fortunately for the republic, not everyone is willing to stoop to their level.

Indeed, there are quite a few facts on the side of those who say the administration claimed the threat was imminent. In Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush said, "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." Bush reiterated the claim from British Intelligence that Saddam could launch a chemical missile attack with 45 minutes. Various Cabinet members referred to this or that threat as "immediate" and "gathering." There was a lot of talk about "reconstituted nuclear programs" and even "mushroom clouds."

On inspection, some of these quotes seem damning, others don't. But none of it supports the case that Bush "lied" or perpetrated a "fraud." It might - and almost surely does - help the case that Bush was wrong about the extent of the Iraqi threat (though even that door isn't completely closed yet). But these statements don't prove deception. Nor, in my opinion do they have much to do with dispelling the case for war.

Regardless, to argue persuasively that Bush lied, you'd have to demonstrate that he knew that our own intelligence agencies, numerous U.N. teams and the intelligence services of Britain, Germany, France and other allies were all wrong. And, by the way, President Clinton - who just last July said, "When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for (in Iraq)" - would have to be wrong, too.

The "made up in Texas" stuff is only possible if you're filming an Oliver Stone movie.

Moreover, while the public debate may have left the impression that the threat was more imminent than it turned out to be, the formal deliberations in Congress and the United Nations had nothing to do with imminence.

That debate was about Iraq's ongoing, globally undisputed and flagrant defiance of U.N. resolutions and the need to be pro-active against anything like another 9-11. Read the actual congressional resolution authorizing force. It's mostly about Iraq's defiance of the United Nations.

Indeed, numerous Democrats, including Senators Kennedy and John Kerry, opposed the resolution authorizing the use of force precisely because it wasn't hinged to an imminent threat from Iraq (Kerry ultimately flip-flopped and voted for the resolution anyway). Senator Robert Byrd even offered an amendment requiring that imminence become the standard for war. After a debate, he lost.

In other words, Kennedy & Co. objected to the war before it was launched because Bush wouldn't say the threat was imminent and now they're peeved because Bush "lied" when he said the threat was imminent. That's laugh-factory logic.

This spin probably won't stick. After all, as Abraham Lincoln once said, "You cannot fool all the people all the time."

Oh, wait. Lincoln never said that either.

Jonah Goldberg is editor of National Review Online, a TownHall.com member group.