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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (15258)	11/5/2003 2:27:58 PM
From: Neeka	Respond to of 793637

Putting Words In The President's Mouth Accuracy in Media aim.org Putting Words In The President's Mouth By Notra Trulock November 4, 2003 Congressional Democrats and their friends in the media continue to distort President Bush’s case for war on Iraq. The controversy that erupted over the President’s reference to Iraq’s quest for uranium is one example of how his opponents have misrepresented what the President has actually said. Recall that in his State of the Union address, the President said the British have told us that Iraq had been seeking to purchase uranium in Africa. A British parliamentary investigation recently validated that conclusion. David Kay’s interim report on the search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq has occasioned another outburst. Kay reported that his team had uncovered dozens of WMD activities and programs that had been concealed from United Nations inspectors. But he also said that his team had yet to find stockpiles of existing WMD. Kay told reporters that the preliminary finding "does not mean we’ve concluded there are no actual weapons." But the President’s political opponents seized on Kay’s report to charge that the administration had misled the American public. In a New York Times "News Analysis," for example, David E. Sanger wrote that Kay’s report shows that "nothing found so far backs up administration claims that Mr. Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world." CBS News’ coverage of a recent speech by Vice President Cheney concluded that he had "offered no new evidence that Saddam posed an imminent threat as the administration claimed before the war." ABC News made similar claims on its Internet site. It ran a wire story that charged "administration claims that Iraq posed an imminent threat were unfounded." Other media outlets were content to endlessly replay similar allegations levied against the President by congressional Democrats. For example, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters that it was "very clear to me that there was no imminent threat of WMD." Similar allegations by Senators Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller received widespread media coverage. Senator Ted Kennedy could be seen over and over again charging that the President’s case against Iraq was all lies. But numerous Internet websites, like AndrewSullivan.com, reminded readers that the President had said no such thing in his State of the Union address. To the contrary, he rejected the advice of those who "said we must not act until the threat is imminent." Instead, he said America could not afford to wait until terrorists and tyrants "politely [put] us on notice before they strike." Journalists have yet to uncover an explicit Presidential reference to an "imminent threat." With a few notable exceptions, however, such distortions have gone unchallenged. On Fox News Sunday, host Tony Snow openly disputed Senator Rockefeller on this point. He even quoted Rockefeller as saying more than a year ago, "I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat." The fallback for the President’s opponent is now to claim that, even if he didn’t say it, that’s what he really meant. One said that while it was not an exact quotation, "it’s a summary of the president’s assessment." He didn’t say whose summary. Notra Trulock is the Associate Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at aimeditor@yahoo.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (15258)	11/5/2003 4:16:00 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793637

But now Republicans say it’s a bum rap. And it is. I see an answer was already posted on it. If Ari said "yes" in answer to a question that contained it, he misspoke, or is being misquoted. And he was just a Press Secretary anyway. I was reading everything coming out at the time and we all knew that Saddam was not an "Imminent threat." The Dems think they can get some mileage out of this. I don't think so. This is just an attempt to bolster a "The President lied" argument. Good Luck! Polls show it is not selling with the public.

To: Lane3 who wrote (15258)	11/5/2003 4:41:20 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793637

The 'imminence' spin Jonah Goldberg is a nationally syndicated columnist 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." Not once. In fact, in the State of the Union Address last January, Bush said the opposite: "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 (D., W. Va.) 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." 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." To be sure, administration sources often suggested imminence. 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 within 45 minutes. Various Cabinet members referred to this or that threat as "immediate" and "gathering." There was talk of "reconstituted nuclear programs" and even "mushroom clouds." Some of these quotes seem damning; others don't. But none supports the case that Bush lied or perpetrated a fraud. They might 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 do they have much to do with dispelling the case for war. Numerous Democrats, including Sens. Kennedy and John Kerry, originally opposed the resolution authorizing the use of force precisely because it wasn't hinged on an imminent threat (Kerry ultimately flip-flopped and voted for the resolution anyway). Sen. Robert Byrd (D., Va.) 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 because Bush wouldn't say the threat was imminent and now they're peeved because Bush "lied" when he said the threat was imminent. 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. philly.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (15258)	11/5/2003 4:43:20 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793637

A Brief History of The Imminent Threat Canard Al Gore September 23, 2002 President Bush now asserts that we will take preemptive action even if the threat we perceive is not imminent. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi October 3, 2002 "As the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I have seen no evidence or intelligence that suggests that Iraq indeed poses an imminent threat to our nation. If the Administration has that information, they have not shared it with the Congress. (It's fair to assume that if the administration did not share such information with the House Intelligence Committee, it is because the administration was not trying to tell Congress that Iraq posed an imminent threat) Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz December 6, 2002 Some people said [during the Cuban Missile Crisis] that Kennedy should have waited until the threat was imminent. We hear that again today. But we cannot wait to act until the threat is imminent. The notion that we can do so assumes that we will know when the threat is imminent. That wasn't true even when the United States was presented with the very obvious threat of Soviet missiles in Cuba. As President Kennedy said 40 years ago, "We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril." If that was true in 1962, facing a threat that was comparatively easy to see, how much more true is it today against threats developed by terrorists who use the freedom of democratic societies to plot and plan in our midst in secret. Stop and think for a moment. Just when did the attacks of September 11 become imminent? Certainly they were imminent on September 10, although we didn't know it. In fact, the September 11 terrorists established themselves in the United States long before that date - many months or even a couple of years earlier. Anyone who believes that we can wait until we have certain knowledge that attacks are imminent has failed to connect the dots that took us to September 11. President George W Bush, State of the Union speech January 28, 2003 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. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option. Senator Edward Kennedy January 28, 2003 [in reaction to the State of the Union speech] [The President] did not make a persuasive case that the threat is imminent and that war is the only alternative New York Times on the State of the Union, January 29, 2003 [archive only] The heart of Mr. Bush's argument, however, is that America and the world cannot afford to wait until it is clear that Iraq will attack America, or its allies. ''Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent,'' he said, a clear reference to European nations that argue that Mr. Hussein is contained. Los Angeles Times January 29, 2003 THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS; Bush Calls Iraq Imminent Threat The above front-page headline in the L.A. Times is the earliest media report that I can find which claims that the administration called Iraq an imminent threat. San Francisco Chronicle February 6, 2003 For all the damning evidence of Hussein's tyranny and evil ambitions -- neither of which has been in doubt since the Persian Gulf War -- Powell did not show that Iraq amounted to an imminent threat to the United States. Robert Scheer in the Los Angeles Times March 4, 2003 The second lie was that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction represent an imminent threat to U.S. security. Paul Krugman in the New York Times June 3, 2003 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 the Iran-contra affair. Indeed, the idea that Americans were deceived into war makes many commentators so uncomfortable that they refuse to admit the possibility. Seattle Post-Intelligencer June 5, 2003 The justification for going to war against Iraq was the imminent threat its weapons of mass destruction posed to the safety and security of Americans. San Francisco Chronicle July 15, 2003 THE WHITE HOUSE has told us "to move on" and forget that the president used questionable evidence to persuade Congress that Iraq's nuclear weapons program represented an imminent threat to our national security. Washington Post August 10, 2003 The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes -- made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. Senator Edward Kennedy September 18, 2003 "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," Washington Post October 3, 2003 ...when it comes to Iraq and the aim of transforming the Middle East, this administration will say and do just about anything to get its way. One day it's the imminent threat from Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction... So there you have it a nutshell. The administration was criticized before the war for not making a case that Iraq was an imminent threat, denied at that time that war was based on the supposition of an imminent threat, and was criticized after the war for having lied that Iraq was an imminent threat. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 21, 2003 07:00 AM usefulwork.com