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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nolimitz who wrote (487736)	11/5/2003 6:44:31 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

No. Of course not. If a non-imminent threat is capable of being converted into an imminent threat without advance warning, then dealing with it before it becomes imminent is certainly within the range of rational options. And that is precisely what Bush said. I would also suggest that 12 years is hardly "post haste", and that giving Saddam several "last chances" to cure his intentional violations of the agreements under which he was allowed to stay in power was hardly "post haste". In essence, the "post haste" argument is that 13 years would have been preferable to 12. Which would have been followed by "14 better than 13" and so on. There is room for debate about whether and when the threat should have been dealt with. But Bush did not respond to the "non imminence" argument by claiming "imminence".

To: nolimitz who wrote (487736)	11/5/2003 8:25:44 PM
From: mph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

consider this analogy. The situation leading to the California wildfires (i.e., dead trees from beetle infestation,etc.) presented the potential for disaster. The threat was not "imminent" until the first arson or accidental fire was lit. By then it was too late to take proactive measures, such as clearing out the dead brush. Based on the text of Bush's speech, he was referring to clearing the forest before the fire started not after the careless match was tossed or, in more specific terms, after the hijackers were already enroute for another run at the Pentagon. The threat is imminent when the planes are commandeered or the missiles are ready to be deployed. I'm frankly surprised that this has become an issue. My understanding was that the war on terror would take years and that we as a country were taking a proactive stance to eradicate the sources of terror before each threat could become, not only imminent, but actually in play. The true irony, it seems to me, is that the same people who are now parsing the speeches to find proof of a misrepresentation of an imminent threat are largely the same ones who blamed the President/Administration for failing to prevent 9/11. I have to wonder exactly how anyone could have prevented 9/11, if they did not take proactive measures in advance of the problem becoming an imminent threat.