The Times Misfires (Again) on Bush's "Imminent Threat"
Message 19612176
The Times Misfires (Again) on Bush's "Imminent Threat"
The Times puts one of its favorite anti-war myths back in circulation in Thursday's story by Richard Stevenson, which employs the snide and misleading headline: "Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue." The article deals with two appearances by Bush in which he downplayed the failure thus far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and highlights criticism of Bush for deceptively claiming that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to the United States. But Bush never said that it did.
Stevenson quotes Sen. Bob Graham, Democrat and former presidential candidate: "'This was a pre-emptive war, and the rationale was that there was an imminent threat,' said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who has said that by elevating Iraq to the most dangerous menace facing the United States, the administration unwisely diverted resources from fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorists."
Then Stevenson recites, without comment, another of Graham's "imminent threat" accusations: "The overwhelming vote in Congress last year to authorize the use of force against Iraq would have been closer 'but for the fact that the president had so explicitly said that there were weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to citizens of the United States.'" Bush never said that, but Stevenson fails to challenge Graham on the point.
Then Stevenson himself gets into the "imminent" (or "immediacy") act: "Mr. Bush's answers to questions on the subject continued a gradual shift in the way he has addressed the topic, from the immediacy of the threat to an assertion that no matter what, the world is better off without Mr. Hussein in power."
But Bush never called Saddam an imminent threat. In fact, in his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush 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?" This isn't the first appearance of the "imminent threat" canard in the Times, and it apparently won't be the last.
timeswatch.org |
