I have a concern people

[La_Serpiente]

The Freepers have been stating lately that Bush didn't say that Iraq was an imminent threat. They said that he was a gathering threat.

To me, that's bullshit...First of all, where is the evidence that he was a gathering threat? He sure the hell didn't buy pipes from Africa. Even those supposed "Biochemical Trailers" turned out to be for Weather Balloons. And the Botulism? Hmm....one flask in a refrigerator...I don't know, but Sadaam was neither an imminent threat nor a gathering threat.

However, I was watching Byron York yesterday (Writer for the Weekly Standard) on CSpan, and he said one of the main misconceptions is that Bush didn't say Iraq was an imminent threat. To me, that's bull shit because Bush mentioned the same statement that Tony Blair said about the "Iraq can strike Britain in 1 hour" or that Iraq "has drones that can fly over the Southern US?" If that's not imminent, that I'M STRAIGHT!!! ;-)

Am I right to believe that Iraq wasn't an imminent threat? Are there also other instances of Bush lying when he says that Iraq is an imminent threat?

THANKZ DU

Cheers :-)

[NicoleM]

1. Why we had to go to war, by Bushco

On Oct. 7, President Bush framed it this way: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” National security adviser Condoleezza Rice had used similar language Sept. 8, saying, “We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

CBS News

That sounds an awful lot like the threat is imminent to me.

Of course, the threat wasn't imminent or even gathering. The proof is that no WMD have been found, nor will they be. No WMD, no threat.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

2. Depends on what the meaning of "is" is

They beat Clinton with that particular stick for a long time.

I don't have sources in front of me, but there was very clearly a heavy campaign to make all of us think that Iraq was a grave danger to all citizens of the world. Most of us here never bought the line, but we were bludgeoned with it nonetheless.

I wouldn't bother arguing the point with a Freeper-type, personally. I'd just tell them that if they want to try and be that dishonest with themselves, theyh should never bring up the name of Bill Clinton again, because they're hypocrites.

[Birthmark]

3. I love that claim!

There's nothing like pointing out to the wingnuts that they are parsing words! :)

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Padraig18]

5. They're parsing words

Bill Clinton could have done no better than the * is.

[OldSoldier]

6. Try these...

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2002/10/08102002135121.asp

And, of course, the SOTU.

The problem is that Saddam wasn't a threat at all, or at least not much of one. The sumbitch wasn't even a threat to his neighbors. He was a little man with a big mouth who didn't even have control of his whole country.

Who just happened to be sitting on the second largest oil reserve in the world.

[RainDog]

7. bullshitters, liars, and traitors to our soldiers.

yes, everyone who now tries to go back and rewrite the recent history of Bush's illegal invasion is all of these things.

Who put our soldiers in the line of fire for weapons which, as Scott Ritter and the UN said, were effectively dismantled by the inspections? BUSH.

BUSH also lied recently when he said that the UN was kicked out. Rumsfield lied when he "concluded that the inspection process really wasn't working because of a lack of cooperation on the part of Saddam Hussein's regime."

The inspectors had both good and bad and intended and wanted to continue the process, and, again, Bush was lying about the threat of a mushroom cloud from Saddam, which was also an inference related to the fake Niger uranium claim which Bush chose to ignore and put in his SOTU address.

Bush's allie in lies, Blair, stated Saddam was an imminent threat and said he could attack within 45 minutes. Don't tell me that Bush's poodle was acting on his own in making these statements. anyone who now tries to distance themselves from Blair's claims is worse than a liar. they're buddy fuckers, too.

Cheney lied about Mohammed Atta meeting with Iraqis in the Czech republic. This never happened. This was also a way to make Saddam appear to be an imminent threat.

Bush is the biggest liar to come down the pike in some time. A bigger liar than Clinton. At least Clinton only lied about consensual sex. I'm sure no married Republican would ever lie about that one. (snark)

Bush's lies have endangered the entire world, made the US less safe from the threat of terrorism, have worked to destroy the middle class, have made the environment open to rape.

The republicans claim they support our soldiers, yet they allow such bullshit as cutting vet benefits while pharmaceutical companies are exempt from liability for any and all toxic crap they pour down our soldiers' throats?

Not to mention the use of DU in weapons which our soldiers, as well as the rest of the world, are exposed to. Go ask someone dying of leukemia, someone whose liver is failing, someone who is told by the military that there is no problem, when the GUY WHO TESTED THE DAMN WEAPONS IS NOW GOING ACROSS THE COUNTRY TO INFORM EVERYONE THIS IS A MASSIVE AND HORRIBLE LIE.

So all those who want to defend Bush for his abuses are nothing more than whores for traitors, if not traitors themselves, when they support the willful destruction of our troops, the willful placement of our troops in an illegal invasion which is a violation of the Nuremberg Convention.

Funny how they talk the talk but they don't walk the walk when the real issues won't go away, no matter how much Bush tries to spin, and get all his lackeys to spin with total bullshit.

eat it, Freeps. that's what they want you to do.

[imhotep]

8. What do you expect from partisans?

If Bush were a Democrat, 99% of DU'ers would be defending him.

[RainDog]

10. more bullshit

I don't condone, nor do I like what Clinton did in many ways, not just lying under oath about sex (which, in reality, was no one elses business, was it?)

I didn't agree with Clinton policies and did not defend him for those.

I don't agree with democratic whoring for corporate donations, and we need election reform badly because of this very real problem with democracy.

Clinton also used DU in weapons and he is also culpable for this.

ANYONE who would pursue and promote the policies which Bush has done would NEVER get my support.

And I know many, many on this forum who have voiced their differences with dem policy here on this forum.

But ultimately, I don' t see how any dem could fully embrace Bush's positions and be a democrat, because he or she could not win a nomination from the dems if these policies were honestly out there.

Yes, some here defend dems no matter what, but not all, and not a majority. This problem at this time is that there is so little space in public debate for alternatives to Bush proto-fascism or dem corporate whoredom.

It would be nice to have elections which aren't the lesser of two evils.

[StopThief]

9. Those making this claim are referring to Bush saying:

"We can not wait until the threat is imminent"

[screaming_meme]

11. The threat wasnt that Iraq would strike the West directly

But that he'd give weapons to outfits like Al-Qaeda surreptiously. Hence, old paradigms of containment weren't relevant, nor were ideas of striking once an imminent threat was realized. if these plans are hatched in secrecy and under the table, the chances of detecteing an imminent threat is low.

This was their rationale. not that I believe it and I know the war was to seize Iraq's oil and to neutralize a threat to Israel and the Likud party. But that was Bushco's rationale.

[revcarol]

13. And when they couldn't come up with even one legitimate

contact between al-Qaeda and the Saddam regime, THEN all of a sudden these fears were CREDIBLE?

And during the invasion, the soldiers weren't to protect known nuclear material sites, but went straight for protecting the oil?

You've been watching Fox too long. Welcome to DU, where the truth rules.:toast:

[screaming_meme]

14. Oh but they did establish a connection between osama and Saddam

Have you read this?

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_=9fd7f937600c2f34&pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1051359175040&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

[Terwilliger]

21. oh, but they didn't

so, Osama's name was whited-out...what's the document? What is it about? This is coming from Saddam's police agency: since Saddam and Osamam hated each other and anything to do with each other, why wouldn't his "police" agency have a file on Osama?

[sistersofmercy]

12. If the transcripts of speeches & interviews are read carefully...

What is to be found is a nasty little word association game. Without going into to much info, memory studies have proved when listening to or reading statements, lists etc, we remember more of the first of what we hear/see and some of the last of what we hear/see and pretty much forget the in between. By placing to unrelated subjects in a sentence or by following one sentence after another of unrelated subjects the listeners makes the connection between the two subjects but the actual statement does not support the misbelief. No make no mistake this deception was carefully planned.
BTW, they are doing it again. By stating, "we never said Saddam was behind 9/11 but there is no question Iraq had ties to al Qaeda." They are not saying "Saddam had ties to al Qaeda but rather Iraq had ties to al Qaeda." Kurdish controlled N Iraq did have an extremist Islam group, al Ansar Islam, operating there and fighting with the Kurds. Also had targeted Christians in N Iraq.
The only statement I have found so far which blatantly claims a link with Saddam and al Qaeda was given by Bush*. But it refered to the al Qaeda leader who received medical tx in Baghdad.

[melv]

15. Point naysayers to the PBS Frontline documentary.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/


That should clear up all misconceptions.

[Q]

16. I presented a thread on this yesterday...

- It's becoming more obvious because the RWing propaganda teams have been sent out on 'assignment' to revise history. And with no active opposition from the Left to set the story straight...it looks like they will be successful.

[dragonlady]

24. Heard this talking point today

on Wisconsin Public Radio interview, that the Bushies did not say the threat was imminent, only that we shouldn't wait until it became imminent (or some such thing). The speaker was a political science professor and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He must be on their mailing list.

[GumboYaYa]

17. That is complete an total nonsense.

There was no ambiguity in the statements by this administration regarding the presence of WMDs in Iraq and the threat posed by Hussein.

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

George W. Bush
Address to the Nation
March 17, 20

I see no ambiguity there. To say otherwise is revisionist history, as GWB likes to say so frequently.

There are lots more quotes like this one from Cheney, Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Powell.

[JNelson6563]

18. here is a response from a conservative

(Bush quote) "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," Bush said Oct. 7 in his nationally televised Cincinnati speech. "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving fingerprints." The terrorists he was referring to were "al-Qaida members."

By telling Americans that Saddam could "on any given day" slip unconventional weapons to al-Qaida if America didn't disarm him, the president misrepresented the conclusions of his own secret intelligence report, which warned that Saddam wouldn't even try to reach out to al-Qaida unless he were attacked and had nothing to lose – and might even find that hard to do since he had no history of conducting joint terrorist operations with al-Qaida, and certainly none against the U.S.

If that's not lying, I don't know what is.

What's worse, the inconvenient conclusions about Iraq and al-Qaida were withheld from the unclassified version of the secret NIE report that Bush authorized for public release the day before his Cincinnati speech, as part of the launch of the White House's campaign to sell the war. The 25-page white paper, posted on the CIA website, focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction, and conveniently left out the entire part about Saddam's reluctance to reach out to al-Qaida. Americans also didn't see the finding that Saddam had no hand in 9-11 or any other al-Qaida attack against American territory. That, too, was sanitized.

Over the following months, in speech after speech, Bush went right on lying with impunity about the Iraq-al-Qaida threat, all the while flouting the judgments of his own intelligence agencies.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34930

Julie

[Catherine Vincent]

19. Somehow I knew this would be the game plan.

Last week some C-Span caller got his talking points early and said that Bush didn't say imminent threat.

Those silly republicans.

[IndianaGreen]

20. "The disarming of Iraq has begun..."

Those were the words that Bush used on the night he announced the start of the invasion. There nothing "gathering" about it!

[Cat Atomic]

22. It's too late.

The public isn't as stupid as these guys seem to think.

The war was sold on the idea that Iraq posed and imminent threat. Whether or not the word "imminent" was actually used is meaningless.

People have the impression that the administration said Iraq was an imminent threat. And, as Rove might've pointed out just a year ago while selling this war, impression is all that matters.

[NoKingGeorge]

23. aWol does not have to declare it. The authorization by Congress

says he can use THE AUTHORIZATION if there is an imminent threat.

He used the baseball bat the Congress gave him(given to him for negotiations with UN) without the imminent threat required for its use. So what? It does not say 'he must declare a threat or show a threat'. The law only says if he has 'determined' there is an imminent threat.

This misleading. Let's focus on Congress gave him a tool to use in negotiaing with the UN . Which by the way he did not do once he saw that the world was not falling for the bs.

[Hamlette]

25. My reply is: he didn't say 'imminent' threat because he can't pronounce it

but he did say 45 minutes which MEANS imminent threat.

[caledesi]

26. * did call Iraq an imminent danger. How soon they forget?

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/iraqimminent.html


Bush Calls Iraq Imminent Threat

"Trusting in Hussein's Restraint 'Is Not an Option,' President Says

By Maura Reynolds, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- A somber and steely President Bush, speaking to a skeptical world Tuesday in his State of the Union address, provided a forceful and detailed denunciation of Iraq, promising new evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime poses an imminent danger to the world and demanding the United Nations convene in just one week to consider the threat.

Thank God for Google!

edit: usual stuff