Thursday, January 29, 2004
BUSH CLAIMS TO NEVER SAY IRAQ WAS "IMMINENT THREAT"
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."
But U.N. weapons inspections led by Hans Blix began on November 27th,
2002, as noted by the State Department at the time. 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.
The weapons inspectors were forced to leave when Bush ordered the
invasion of Iraq. President Bush then "refused to permit the U.N.
inspectors to return to Iraq."
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.
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." 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."
Big thanks to Dr. Masse for sending me this piece...
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