I'm really interested to see where this goes, and I don't wanna be a complainer, but do you have to italicize their arguments? It's pretty difficult to read . . .

Fixed!

Thanks, that helps.

I don't want to get in Jonathan Schwarz's way or to suggest that Sebastian Holsclaw will have other arguments in his bag, but I'm not sure how one speech made by just the president clears everyone in the administration of the charge that they claimed Iraq was a clear and present danger to the United States or even its allies.

Sorry, that should have read:

. . . that Sebastian Holsclaw WON'T have other arguments in his bag . . .

Futility. Pure futility. The planet knows that Bushco hyped the world to make war on Iraq. Parsing the application of the word "imminent" is futile.

Let's talk about something with substance, such as the pdf files provided to USNews with
the text of a briefing by analyst Sam Gardiner that suggests the White House and Pentagon made up or distorted more than 50 war stories. The pdf files lay out evidence of a massive propaganda effort, where the shaping of a story and its usefulness in advancing the WH's agenda became more important than the truth.

I urge all to read the pdf files at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/031020/whispers/20whisplead.htm

What I objected to at the time Bush gave his speech was the very thing quoted here. It is true he rejects the idea that an imminent threat was required before action against Iraq could be taken. But he doesn't put anything in its place, besides the argument that Saddam is a bad guy. He doesn't address the issue of why gassing his own people did not put Saddam in our crosshairs after his army was expelled from Kuwait in 1991 but must now, or the question of why sanctions could not be continued indefinitely.

My personal belief is that there was a good response to the second of these objections, though not the first. In the post-9/11 world, a leader with Saddam's history of reckless conduct, defiance of the world community on disarmament and friendlier relations with terror gangs than he had with us was not a risk we were prepared to run any longer.

Perhaps this is what Bush, in his usual hapless way, was trying to say. But in failing to relate his planned course of action with respect to Iraq to a comprehensive idea of American interests he invited misunderstanding. An iron law of politics everywhere is that vacuums will be filled. No administration unable to articulate clearly the reasons for what it does should be surprised when the resulting vacuums are filled in ways and by people it finds unhelpful.

In the SoTU address, President Bush says that the Iraq threat isn't imminent...

He just says that rogue and terror regimes are the biggest threat facing the US, and then says Iraq is pursuing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

-He accuses Iraq of deceiving the weapons inspectors because Iraq didn't lay out its banned weapons for the world to see and destroy them.

-He implies that Iraq is in possession of materials to produce 25000 liters of anthrax, 38000 liters of botulinum toxin, and 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent capable of killing millions of people.

-He implies that Iraq possess 29,984 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents.

-He accuses Iraq of pursuing an advanced nuclear weapons program, even recently buying aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

-He implies that Saddam personally aids and protects members (more than one) of Al Qaeda, and implies that Saddam will give them weapons or assist in their procurement of weapons.

While Bush does not call Iraq an imminent threat, he does say that Iraq IS a threat to the United States.

1. "The world has waited 12 years for Iraq to disarm. America will not accept a serious and mounting threat to our country..."

2. "If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."

3. "And this Congress and the America people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own."

4. "Our nation and the world must learn the lessons of the Korean Peninsula and not allow an even greater threat to rise up in Iraq."

While Bush may not have come out and said that Iraq is an imminent threat, it certainly seems implied. This speech, especially the talk about Iraq's nuclear/chemical/biological current weapons programs, changed the tone of the national debate. Several commentators who were still on the fence began to take a harder stance on Iraq than before. If Bush wasn't trying to make the case that Iraq was an imminent threat, he was at least trying to label it as a very serious and dangerous threat. That would be more than enough for most Americans to go to war.

The question isn't about whether Bush actually said whether the threat is "immenent". The question is whether the Bush administration was ignoring the intelligence community's caveats about Iraq's WMD capability IMO.

Look, folks, you're avoiding the question. Here it is:

"It is a complete fabrication that the Bush administration argued in the runup to the war that there was an imminent threat from Iraq."

It's not whether someone else says there was another fabrication, it's whether the use of the word "imminent" applied to what Bush and his administration said is correct, or a fabrication. MRP, you're assuming the conclusion -- clearly you don't have any interest in the question, your mind is made up, you don't care how the actual facts lay out. That's why they didn't ask you to moderate, I assume.

The Bush administration wants to pretend that "imminent" means "sometime in the next week." It doesn't. It just means the threat is impending, coming, arriving soon. If a threat is "grave and gathering," "serious and mounting," then it is imminent.

Plus, Ari Fleischer told me it was imininent and I believe him.

Q Ari, the President has been saying that the threat from Iraq is imminent, that we have to act now to disarm the country of its weapons of mass destruction, and that it has to allow the U.N. inspectors in, unfettered, no conditions, so forth.

MR. FLEISCHER: Yes.

and again on 5/7/03
Q Well, we went to war, didn't we, to find these -- because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn't that true?

MR. FLEISCHER: Absolutely.

Plus the Official Bush Blog told me so, too.
http://www.georgewbush.com/blog/archives/2003_10.html#000023

Next week: "Isn't it possible to threaten somebody without being able to back up that threat? So how can liberals deny that Iraq was threatening America with nuclear destruction? How can anyone deny that?"

replace "Bush Administration" with "Bush supporters." stupid knee-jerk anti-Bushism.

I'm going to address a bunch of stuff at once:

"but I'm not sure how one speech made by just the president clears everyone in the administration of the charge that they claimed Iraq was a clear and present danger to the United States or even its allies."

Here is the heart of the problem. Who said 'clear and present danger'? The president said 'grave and gathering danger', as in, not imminent but growingly so. Add together the covert programs outlined in the Kay report, Hussein's undeniable track record of chaos and evil, and the French and Russian unrelenting drive in the last decade to have the sanctions lifted, and what do you get? Grave and gathering danger I'd say.

"The planet knows that Bushco hyped the world to make war on Iraq. Parsing the application of the word "imminent" is futile. "

Document.

"But he doesn't put anything in its place, besides the argument that Saddam is a bad guy. He doesn't address the issue of why gassing his own people did not put Saddam in our crosshairs after his army was expelled from Kuwait in 1991 but must now, or the question of why sanctions could not be continued indefinitely"

Demonstrably false. Bush very well documents Hussein's very public and obious record of foriegn aggression and support of terrorist organizations (Hamas? Jihad? dont Jewish childrens' bodies count?).
Also, you may recall that Bush II wasnt president in 91. He had zero power to stop Iraq. If, as you seem to imply, the US was wrong to stop Hussein then, how is stopping him _now_ wrong? If we didnt fufill our moral obligations at the time, how is fufilling them now _more wrong_? Two wrongs, as they say, dont make a right.

"If Bush wasn't trying to make the case that Iraq was an imminent threat, he was at least trying to label it as a very serious and dangerous threat. "

Iraq was a serious and dangerous threat. The Kay report proves that. Would allowing Hussein to continue research into Congo Crimean hemorrhagic fever have enhanced our security? Further development of illegal UAV and SCUD technology?

We are asking the wrong questions. All of these arguments are presupposing that Bush knew in the spring of last year what we know know. This is _not the case_. Every intelligence agency in the world agreed that Hussein almost certainly had an active WMD program. WHICH HE DID. In direct violation of numerous UN mandates. Would you expect our leader, after 9/11 mind you, to assume that Hussein was at the low end or high end of the WMD risk? What kind of leader would he be, knowing everything we know about Hussein's track record of pure (forgive me my Sophist friends) EVIL, had he taken the man at his word WHICH THE KAY REPORT PROVES WAS A LIE (if not the extent of lying we anticipated). Take Hussein at face value? Wait until somehow we infiltrated his Stalinist police state enough to bring back actual anthrax spores? Madness. Forgive me, friends, but you are politicising this in retro. I dont recall many voices last spring claiming Hussein has no WMD and calling for proof. It was a given then. AS PRUDENCE DEMANDED.

>>>>I dont recall many voices last spring claiming Hussein has no WMD and calling for proof.

You weren't listening. Millions of citizens of this country and the world demonstrated in the streets, asking for more time for continued U.N. investigations. 133 United States Representatives and 23 United States Senators voted against the Iraq resolution, urging more proof and more time. There might not have been much coverage of this on FOX news and hate radio, granted.

>>>>It was a given then. AS PRUDENCE DEMANDED.

You mean "as prudence demanded in the judgment of the neo-cons advising Bush." Prudence doesn't demand anything by itself. It isn't a force like "Mother Nature." A human must demand prudence. And, as is so readily apparent, millions of humans thought the prudent path in Iraq was in the hands of the United Nations, not Bushco.

This is doublespeak the likes of which makes Orwell turn over in his grave.

Bush: it wasn't imminent. Bush: the threat is so outrageously evil, we can't wait until it becomes imminent.

Inigo Montoya: this word imminent, I don't think it means what you think it means.

Is this Zeno all over again, or do we accept that the limit of the Bush statements of Husseini threats is the conclusion that Bush is in fact saying the threat is imminent?

Mark,

It is perhaps true that many people that Hussein had all these weapons and weapons programs. But who should've had the best intel? Clinton and his officials out of office for two years? And who was spinning his intel madly?

Many people, most people wanted sanctions then. Enforced sanctions. Bush cried imminent on his own bogus evidence, and moved forward.

If Bush had leveled with us, would enforced sanctions have kept the weapons programs at bay? Obviously yes. Would it have cost much less than $200B? Obviously yes. Would it have cost many many fewer lives than the hundreds of coalition deaths, thousands of Iraqi soldier deaths and thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths? Obviously yes.

If Bush had leveled with us, and we had an enforced sanctions program, would we be worried now about burnout and troop levels in the Guard and the Army? Would we be bogged down and unable to react to another crisis in the world? Would we be losing Afghanistan to the Taliban threat?

GC is on the right track. I'd like to incorporate by reference the last four comments in this thread, where "Mick McMick" and I are arguing this very question. Unfortunately, there's no $100, and Mick is the type of jerk who calls his opponents Saddam appeasers. Better I should move here.

Besides GC's quotes, more are available here. Only one uses "imminent" but others use "immediate". Unfortunately, both GC and the aforementioned link include only half of Ari Fleisher's apparent affirmation of "imminence". The other half doesn't seem to me to improve Bush's case, but Mick was angry that I had taken it out of context. Here is the full exchange taken from the White House web site (my emphases added).

Q Ari, the President has been saying that the threat from Iraq is imminent, that we have to act now to disarm the country of its weapons of mass destruction, and that it has to allow the U.N. inspectors in, unfettered, no conditions, so forth.
MR. FLEISCHER: Yes. [Mick insists that this was not an affirmation, but just an "I'm listening; go on" yes—A.L.]
Q The chief U.N. inspector, however, is saying that, even under those conditions, it would be as much as a year before he could actually make a definitive report to the U.N. that Iraq is complying with the resolutions and allowing the inspections to take place. Isn't there a kind of a dichotomy? Can we wait a year, if it's so imminent we have to act now?
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, that's why the President has gone to the United Nations to make certain that the conditions by which the inspectors would go back would be very different from the current terms that inspectors have been traveling around Iraq in as they've been thwarted in their attempt to find out what weapons Saddam Hussein has. But it's also important to hold Saddam Hussein accountable to make certain he no longer violates the will of the United Nations.

Although I intend to participate in this thread without expectation of compensation, it's late and I would like to make only two more points here. Nonpundit has hit the nail on the head that much of Bush's "denial" of the imminent threat has the flavor of Octavian's "And Brutus is an honorable man." That is, as a rhetorical matter he begins by denying that the threat is imminent, but then goes on to show that it is. And in this respect, as the second point, for purposes of the bet I think Bush is on the hook for any statements made by our British ally that he did not controvert. And in September, 2002, Blair released his now-infamous dossier asserting that Saddam could execute a WMD attack on 45 minutes' notice. This is not a statement that an attack is imminent, but surely Saddam's terrifying (fortunately, apocryphal) capability to launch an immediate attack against which there would be no effective defense constitutes an imminent threat.

Interesting concept, thanks dan.

Considering what we now know about our intelligence activity in Iraq, that proposition looks even more ridiculous now than it did then. Considering the failure of our intelligence services in discovering the North Korean nuclear capability before it was active, it was silly even then.

Aye there's the rub. Intelligence: Useful idiots, but lately, mostly just idiots, huh Sebastion? Screw it, somebody looks at you sideways, whack em. No time to discover their intentions, and even if they disclose said intent, would we be able to trust our ears? Kill em all, let Jeebus sort em out.

One speech -- versus a mountain of Meet the Press transcripts, minus the spooky organ music: "We don't want the smoking gun to be in the form of the mushroom cloud."

If, in a SOTU, I hear: the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons you've got my attention. If you alternate sentence subjects between "nukes" and "Iraq" and "threats" and inspections and an altogether uncooperative and malevolent dictator while giving that speech, though perhaps not explicitly linking them, I'm still tingly. If I'm being told by "the smart guys" there's "a bear in the woods" hurriedly working on a tactical nuclear device maybe just for a town like mine, well "imminence" stretches as far as my supply of Depends™.

Sebastian is parsing words, while this administration is traficking in paranoia and wiggle room. Hey, if I glare long and hard in your direction, I may not have said "I don't like you right now", but the inference is taken. Now, prove the inference.

The evidence of the hype continues to ooze out. Wednesday's 60 minutes will feature Colin Powell's former aide Greg Thielman, who will say that Powell misled the United Nations (and by extension Americans) regarding the WMD. Other comments on the program:

Steve Allinson and a dozen other U.N. inspectors in Iraq also watched Powell’s speech. “Various people would laugh at various times [during Powell’s speech] because the information he was presenting was just, you know, didn't mean anything -- had no meaning,” says Allinson.

Pelley (CBS) asks, “When the Secretary finished the speech, you and the other inspectors turned to each other and said what?” Allinson responds, “’They have nothing.’”

What are the OED synonyms for "imminent"?

They include the following:

alarming,
anticipated,
approaching,
at hand,
brewing,
close,
coming,
emergent,
forthcoming,
gathering,
going to happen,
immediate,
impending,
likely,
looming,
menacing,
ominous,
possible,
predicted,
sinister,
threatening

among others.

If this argument is going to be based on word parsing and "did he use the specific phrase?"... then it is already over.

"Grave and Gathering" IS imminent, as is "threatening" as is "looming" as is "alarming" or "emergent" or whatever.

Given the testimony of Thielmann, Wislon, Wilkie, the Hutton commission, and numerous others...it is pretty clear what happened and who did it.

mph. brmp. bwahahahaha!

First of all, let's clarify the meaning of the verb 'to argue.' For ordinary purposes the question of whether a particular entity 'argues' a particular position is intimately bound to intent. When an entity attempts to promote or defend a particular position X with arguments which ultimately support the opposite position Y we do not say that the entity is arguing position Y, regardless of how incompetent the arguer may be. As a consequence of this aspect of the word, inferences about the intent and motivation of the Bush administration are entirely relevant.

And is there is any indication that the Bush administration would have been in some way motivated to argue the presence of an imminent threat? Why yes, as a matter of fact. It turns out that per the UN Charter and absent explicit UNSC authorization otherwise*, an imminent threat is one of the absolute legal requirements for the United States to engage in an act of war

So... modulo some truly mind-boggling incompetence on the part of the Bush administration, Sebastian is arguing [heh] that they at least conspired (since they did not argue that the threat was imminent), and perhaps followed through in committing (depending on your interpretation of UNSCR 1441) a war crime.

oops.

* Careful now! I've argued 1441 with other people and I assure you that it's a tar baby for Bush apologists. There's basically no way that it can be interpreted as a legal grounding for unilateral action.

Holsclaw will argue that the administration never used the exact words "imminent threat". Schwarz will argue that the semantic content of administration claims is identical to that of the phrase "imminant threat". Both claims are true. Drezner will side with Holsclaw.

Now, what about the lies that got us into this mess?

you mean the lies outlined here and here (pay attention to the PDF files!!!??

Yowza.

Radish, you all over that like a bad leisure suit!!!

1441 = no trigger.

No imminent (gathering, nearing, impending, looming, likely, menacing) danger (threat, evil, harm) = No cause for unilateral or pre-emptive war...

War entered into absent imminent threat, and absent UNSC approval = Crime against the Peace, as per Nuremberg...

Just ask Alfred Jodl!

Mark Buehner,

The Kay report documents exactly NOTHING, and IMPLIES via the use of extremely conditional and future possible language like:

"could have potentially been used"

and

"may have enabled"

and

"might have been turned to the possible production of"

With reference to just about any industrial, chemical, manufacturing, bio-lab, hospital, prison in existence.

The Kay report is NOT what you want to be talking about right now.

Under the language used by the Kay report, we are justified in bombing the crap out of every nation that does not agree with our policies if that nation possesses a hospital, a university, a fertilizer factory, or a heavy industrial machine plant.

Furthermore, the Kay report SPECIFICALLY says that the WMD programs IMPUTED to exist in the language of the report ARE NOT ACTIVE, and HAVE NOT BEEN since at least 1998, if not 1995 or 1991.

Furthermore, with respect to your "we could not have known that then, and the only way to be sure was to invade argument"...the fact is that we DID know that then...as did Powell, as did any NUMBER of administration, CIA, NSC, DIA, and other government officials, operatives, analysts and policy makers.

Scott Ritter was RIGHT...and we knew it then...check the links I provided above.

Ahh, the Clinton years are back, and once again we're arguing over the meaning of is.

Yes Bush lied to hype the threat. The Washington Times told me so.

But more importantly, as the great cynic said: this is worse than a crime; it's a blunder.

Saddam was the best enemy we ever had, and I'd much rather have an incompetent enemy than a duplicitous ally (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia). When we get out of Iraq it will be far more of a threat to us than when we went in.

"...that there was an imminent threat from Iraq."

It all depends on what the meaning of "was" is.

Glad to see everyone came to this one with an open mind. Next time, Dan, you shuld turn off the comments until the debate is over. Otherwise the stupid crowd gets in the way, just like in the Cubs game last night.

The debate over whether Bush or his associates said the "I" word or not is rather beside the point, don't you think? The real debate here is not the use of a word, but the impression left by the administration that a failure to dispatch Saddam would mean that some day, not terribly far away, we or one of our allies would be threatened by WMDs.

The angry left would do itself a favor by concentrating on that issue. Because there seems a good argument that either the intelligence was wrong, or a lot of people were spinning it and flat out lying about it.

And Bush defenders may win the I word battle -- but who really cares? The Bush folks owe this country an explanation of why the $%^% there aren't piles and piles of WMDs. Because that IS what they implied was there. And they need to explain the intelligence they had, and why they used it the way they did.

Go Sebastian

The fact is Bush never said it was imminent. The thing about implications is that it often depends on the person hearing the statement to infer their desired meaning. Because now the left continues with this Bush Lied garbage, they can't argue that he lied unless he actually said the threat was imminent. So we are now down to Bush lied through his implications from his statements that Iraq was an imminent threat.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17424-2003Jul19?language=printer
The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say.

The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week. Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but in a "Global Message" issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given."

Again, you people are making assumptions in reverse. Bush didnt know six months ago what we know now. Neither did the majority of congress (including democrats, including many presidential nominees) who voted for war, nor the majority of the American people. Congressional leaders, for one, had access to the _identical_ raw intelligence the president had. And, if you look at their quotes over the last year, they reached the identical conclussion as the president based on the knowledge they had _at the time_. They also supported the same course of action, as they voted for it. The fact that in hindsight they are trying to parse this fact proves that they either didnt believe the intelligence and voted out of political cowardice of the highest order, or did believe it and now are engaged in an amazing show of raw partisan smear.

As far as the Kay report goes, Dan I suggest you bother to read it. Quite simply, Kay documents numerous UN violations proving that Hussein had all the facilities and intentions of instantly restarting his programs the moment the coast was clear. Any other reason his scientists were studying Ebolas evil twin? Looking for a cure perhaps?

Finally, this debate over semantics is tiresome. And notwithstanding Jerry's argument about how much better the world would be with Saddam Hussein still in charge of his torture chambers and mass graves, lets take a realistic look at how the world would have reacted had you guys had your wish. Happilly, we have a 12 year track record of recalcitrance on the Iraq issue as an example. So long as we held troops in sufficient strength in Kuwait, Hussein would have complied, grudgingly and partially, with UN inspectors demands. The second logistics forced us to remove those troops (6 months, a year, 5 years) Hussein would stop cooperating. Syria, along with their French and Russian partners would continue violating sanctions at will, as well as selling Iraqi oil illegally. France and Russia at some point would begin rallying to have the sanctions lifted again, with help from their cohorts in the peacemovment decrying the toll the sanctions were taking on the civilians Hussein intentionally starved. Another dozen or so resolutions get passed and ignored. Hussein gets bolder, knowing full well that the US isnt going to go through another fruitless troop buildup when his French/Russian/Peace activist allies can pull the rug out from under them. The sanctions eventually get lifted, or de facto ignored because no-one enforces them. Now, this might be 5, even ten years down the road. You people are asking the world to accept this probable outcome while Hussein maintains the same infastructure for his WMD, eventually will have no oversight, and a river of black gold to fund his revenge. Oh, and he is one of the most murderous, unpredictable tyrants of the last century, which is saying something. That is the logical conclussion of your argument. Wishful thinking about what the world _might_ do next time is not a viable policy. Look to what they did last time.

The 2003 SOTU was before the war resolution. Extra weight should be given to evidence presented before the Iraq war resolution was successfully passed. Rhetorical changes after the fact (the resolution vote) are not as substantial as Bush's allegations of an imminent threat in the build up to the Iraq war resolution.

It seems pretty clear to me that the Bush Administration's goals was to have the press actually say that there was an imminent threat, thus simultaneously making the case for war and maintaining plausible deniability.

I heartily recommend anonymousblogger

Mark,

Try not to be a dishonest putz. I never made the argument that Iraq was better off with Hussein in charge, and you know that.

Saying that the American People would not have wanted to go to war if the true evidence and true costs were known is not saying that Iraq is not a better place without Hussein.

Is your reading comprehension always this poor or are you being purposefully disingenuous?

The anti-war side debated itself over the "imminent" question.

Truly, if the administration thought that Iraq was an imminent threat, then letting more than a few months pass between the fall of the Taliban and the invasion of Iraq would have been dereliction of duty.

You don't deal with an imminent threat by launching the most telegraphed war in human history.

Personally, I do not understand certain elements of the left's obsession with proving that Bush lied about everything. Those kind of debates invaraibly lead to the unpersuasive "Ari agreed to the use of the I word in a daily news briefing so therefore Bush is a liar" arguments that populate this thread. You really want to base your argument on the answer to a question made by the Prez's flack, when it's possible under the circumstances the flack may not have heard the question? Hmm...makes me long for the days when all we had to worry about was what the meaning of "is" was.

I do understand why the right is so anxious to address these questions. It gets us all away from the basic question of, well, where are the WMDs? How could the information on which we are making basic decisions about peace and war be so wrong? Did Bush lie, exaggerate or spin? Or did the CIA (and MI5 and a whole lot of other intelligence agencies) screw up?

These questions actually are important, even if the answers don't give the partisan advantage one side or the other seeks. Because, the next time a president gets before the nation,and says that we are facing a threat, I'd sure like to believe him (or her). And I know that I would not be able to himnow.

Jerry said: "If Bush had leveled with us, would enforced sanctions have kept the weapons programs at bay? Obviously yes. Would it have cost much less than $200B? Obviously yes. Would it have cost many many fewer lives than the hundreds of coalition deaths, thousands of Iraqi soldier deaths and thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths? Obviously yes."

Forgive me, but perhaps your concern for Iraqi deaths caused by US forces confused me. I dont see such a level of concern for the thousands of victims Saddam murdered every year. The simple assumption I made was that you only seem to give a rats ass about Iraqi deaths when the US is causing them. The thousands of deaths the US invasion prevented doesnt enter your equation, and hence its a logical assumption that you view Iraq as worse off without Hussein.

Just a note on 1441: It's a U.N. resolution. It directs actions within the U.N. Find the place in 1441 that authorizes any individual member to act on its own. (It ain't there.)

Here's the specific language:

4. Decides that false statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq’s obligations and will be reported to the Council for assessment in accordance with paragraphs 11 and 12 below;
5. Decides that Iraq shall provide UNMOVIC and the IAEA immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to any and all, including underground, areas, facilities, buildings, equipment, records, and means of transport which they wish to inspect, as well as immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted, and private access to all officials and other persons whom UNMOVIC or the IAEA wish to interview in the mode or location of UNMOVIC’s or the IAEA’s choice pursuant to any aspect of their mandates; further decides that UNMOVIC and the IAEA may at their discretion conduct interviews inside or outside of Iraq, may facilitate the travel of those interviewed and family members outside of Iraq, and that, at the sole discretion of UNMOVIC and the IAEA, such interviews may occur without the presence of observers from the Iraqi Government; and instructs UNMOVIC and requests the IAEA to resume inspections no later than 45 days following adoption of this resolution and to update the Council 60 days thereafter;. . .

10. Requests all Member States to give full support to UNMOVIC and the IAEA in the discharge of their mandates, including by providing any information related to prohibited programmes or other aspects of their mandates, including on Iraqi attempts since 1998 to acquire prohibited items, and by recommending sites to be inspected, persons to be interviewed, conditions of such interviews, and data to be collected, the results of which shall be reported to the Council by UNMOVIC and the IAEA;
11. Directs the Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC and the Director-General of the IAEA to report immediately to the Council any interference by Iraq with inspection activities, as well as any failure by Iraq to comply with its disarmament obligations, including its obligations regarding inspections under this resolution;
12. Decides to convene immediately upon receipt of a report in accordance with paragraphs 4 or 11 above, in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security..."

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/1441.pdf

Please note specifically that Iraq is held in breach of U.N. resolutions. It seems fairly reasonable that, if this is true, the only body authorized to determine how this breach would be adjudicated is the group that declares said breach - correct?

Additionally, the remedy for further determination of breaches or "failure by Iraq to comply" is reporting back to the Security Council - not rogue action by some individual member, who, by the way, were not authorized to carry out anything by the Security Council.

It seemed to me at the time, which I argued strenuously then, that we, on one hand, demanded said resolution 1441, and then, on the other hand, decided to ignore its very language when we went it alone.

If we wanted to go get Saddam for any reason (or no reason) we did not need the U.N.'s approval. Of course once we did this we might have to bear the weight of the U.N.'s disapproval, including sanctions.

The essential question in my mind, then and now, however, was this: Since we claimed that Iraq was in violation previous of U.N. resolutions (which 1441 spelled out), what was the logical basis for our own failure to follow the dictates of 1441? Did we want in on the game (i.e., the "U.N. vs. Iraq Resolutions" Board Game, which spelled out the terms and the resolution of disputes) or not? If the rules (specifically 1441) dictated that further evidence of breach required going back to the Security Council (much like getting a "Go to Jail" card in Monopoly requires going to the Jail space) just how did we reason that we were somehow "authorized" by 1441 to take own own action? (which, following my analogy, would be like simply seizing Boardwalk while we're in said jail - an action that, like attacking Iraq, anyone can do, particularly if the rest of the players are finishing that fifth of Jack Daniels and totally zoned out but otherwise would simply STOP THE GAME since I obviously didn't know or care about the damn rules!)

That was, by the way, the reason that Daddy Bush never entered Baghdad a decade earlier: U.N. resolutions at the time didn't authorize it. He apparently understood something rather essential that Junior still doesn't quite get.

This is probably one of the dumbest and ridiculous debates I have ever seen. Whether the threat from Saddam against the US was imminent, and whether who said what is completely immaterial at this stage of the game. The war was fought, the Iraqi people were freed, Saddam is not getting his toys back, and is history.

To some imminent means next week, or tomorrow morning, or in the next minute. To others it might mean next year, or 5 years down the road. Was Saddam a threat to the US, as well as his own folks? Geesh people, what do you want here, do you want Saddam back in power??????

Because that is what this argument is really about. Whether it was right to remove a murderous dictator who was developing WMDs and had ties to terrorists. Some of you wanted to wait until after the mushroom cloud, and some of you wanted to avoid that all together. Some of you want us to apologize to Saddam and return his country to him, and some of you want to help the Iraqis find their own leadership and voice, and govern themselves.

Playing word games like this is silly. Half of you out there should be ashamed of yourselves for even indulging in this kind of attempted revisionism. The war is far from over in Iraq, and there is still work to be done. Quibbling about the past is a futile gesture and wasted effort. It also indicates that some of you have no idea where to go from here, but only want to bitch and complain at the guys who actually did something about a potential threat.

This is a side and irrelevant issue, and is history. We got a future that is still uncertain, and you want to quibble about who said what.

Mark: You say:

The simple assumption I made was that you only seem to give a rats ass about Iraqi deaths when the US is causing them. The thousands of deaths the US invasion prevented doesnt enter your equation, and hence its a logical assumption that you view Iraq as worse off without Hussein.

Of course, this same issue must be raised about the Bushites who instigated this thing. On September 10, 2001 and before, when did they give ANY evidence of giving a rat's ass about the poor suffering Iraqi's? The answer is, of course, that they didn't. And if they didn't then their bringing it up subsequently is simply an effort to play the sympathy card for what are clearly other motives: "We're really attacking Iraq for (fill in the blank with your favorite reason) but since we won't tell the truth for this reason (fill in another blank) we'll sinply throw iin this fake concern for the fate of the poor Iraqi people (like calling this thing "Operation Iraqi Freedom) to distract you from our real reason for doing this - which is what again?

Whether any of us give or don't give a rat's ass about the Iraqi people is irrelevant. What matters is the motives of the decision makers - since they, by definition, make the decisions. What matters, further, is whether they told us the truth or not, since in the form of government we have we get the opportunity of throwing them out or keeping them every four years, unless we force impeachment. If they used the emotional ploy of claiming they (the decision-makers) care about their freedom and oppression, it is certainly appropriate to examine their own consistency in holding this position prior to this little boondoggle. What you and I feel or don't feel about the oppression of Iraqi's is irrelevent - unless the decisionmakers decide to use this emotional issue to manipulate us - which all evidence indicates is exactly what they did. It didn't work on those of us who knew we were being played.

Can an argument possibly be more tedious?

Bush argued that America should bear the cost of removing an odious, murderous tyrant. Most people agreed. I cannot see how anyone with a shred of intelligence was "misled" if they actually listened to his case. Then, as now, I agree with Bush on this matter simply because the larger geostrategic picture makes it, well, stupid to give in and play by the same rules as used before 9/11.

Absent war, Saddam would have sooner or later been freed of the restrictions under which he labored. *Sooner or later* he'd have cranked up the bio/chem/nuke factories because the world would have let him. Absent someone willing to take him out, tyranny wins. Absent the leadership Bush showed on this matter, sooner or later, Saddam has full WMD production going again. Whether it is sooner OR later, this is an absolutely unacceptable outcome.

All the arguments about whether the threat was "imminent" are simply verbal masturbation. After 12 years we either had the courage of our principles or we didn't. Bush did. The left doesn't. Simple as that.

Indeed, NO MATTER WHEN THE ATTACK CAME, THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST IT WOULD BE THE SAME.

The left, of which I am now proudly an EX-member, looks craven, sophist and cowardly for attacking the liberation of Iraq. It will be a *years* before it gets my vote again.

The debate misses the crucial point, which is that it is not licit to attack another country absent an imminent threat. To the extent that GWB and his supporters now disclaim making any claim of imminent threat, they are admitting launching a war of agresssion.

Jon, your argument only holds true in the childish realm where activities should only be undertakin based on a single motive. We either attacked Iraq because of WMD _or_ in order to overthrow a horrible mass murderer. Fortunately, we have leadership in place unwilling to play a silly game like that. We take actions base on the sum totals of competing interests and morals. Agression is wrong, but allowing childrens mass graves to be filled is wrong too. War is bad, but allowing a mass murderer the tools to kill tens of thousands more civilians is bad too. And the left accuses the right of seeing things in black and white. The bottom line is that Bush added up the security interests of the US, our ability to complete the mission successfully, the undebatable humanitarian good we could do, subtracted out the negatives (France doesnt like us, dead soldiers)and came to a decision. Like a grown up.
PS, you are wrong that Bush didnt address Husseins humanitarian record before the war. He referred to it constantly. This is another revisionist meme easilly rebutted by the facts.

Why all the confusion over the word IMMINENT?
Has anybody checked the authority on the meaning of imminent- Webster`s unabridged dictionary - my copy 1951 ed.
"1. hanging over, projecting fom above(obs)
2. appearing as if about to happen, fraught with danger,real or imaginary, threatening, ...
synonyms- impending, threatening,menacing:
a)imminent is the strongest, it denotes that something is ready to fall on the instant
b) impending denotes that something hangs suspended over us and may so remain indefinitely
c) threatening supposes some danger in prospect, but more remote."

Definition of SYNONYM ( I`ll paraphrae this a bit) Although TRUE SYNONYMS are identical in meaning..."the term is generally applied to words not identical but similar in meaning."

So if you noticed the various lists of synonyms in the previous comments none has the identical meaning for the word IMMINENT. Therefore, no matter how :
alarming,
anticipated,
approaching,
at hand,
brewing,
close,
coming,
emergent,
forthcoming,
gathering,
going to happen,
immediate,
impending,
likely,
looming,
menacing,
ominous,
possible,
predicted,
sinister,
threatening
It is , it is not neccessarily IMMINENT.

One thing that is being overlooked here and that perhaps Bush didn't explain adequately is that this isn't just a matter of semantics. Imminent threat isn't just a turn of phrase, it is a term of art used in international law.

A situation of imminent threat is a recognized situation where a premptive attack is justified. It is an exception to the usual rule against the use of force. But the threshold of imminent threat has always been considered to be fairly high.

To give an example: Tanks being massed on the border of a country might be an occasion where imminenent threat would justify a preemptive attack. For example, Israel attacked preemptively in the Six Day War because of an obvious imminent threat. But the mere fact that a hostile country has tanks isn't an imminent threat unless they are massed in a way that clearly threatens an imminent attack. This is, generally speaking, settled customary international law.

What is not so settled is the idea set forth in the Bush Doctrine that a threat posed by the combination of WMD, rogue regimes, and possible links to terrorism means that countries that would be liklely targets of a WMD attack are justified in acting preemptively. The reason, of course, is twofold. First, the destructive power of WMD is enormous. Secondly, unlike tanks, you can't see when WMD are being "massed on the border." Thus, there is no visible imminent threat threshold to cross. By the time you know that the imminent threat threshold is crossed, it is probably far too late. So insistance on the imminent threat standard means in practice that you are insisting that countries absorb a WMD blow before they are permitted to respond. That is what Bush is saying is unacceptable, I just wish he would say it more clearly!

The other thing he ought to point out is that there are precedents for this change in policy. One is the successful preeptive attack on Iraq by Israel where they took out the nuclear reactor before is came online. But another is President Kennedy's response to the construction of nuclear missiles by the Soviet Union in Cuba. At the outset of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy declared that the missile sites were unacceptable. As a result, he was prepared to act militarily and preeptively. But the missile sites alone did not constitute an imminent threat. What tipped the scales for Kennedy was the combination of the destructive power of nuclear weapons, with the short flight time of missiles from Cuba. In other words, it was the combination of destructive WMD and the impossibility of receiving warning in time to respond preemptively. This is the exact combination faced today and which justified acting preemptively in Iraq BEFORE the imminent threat threshold was reached.

Re 1441:

Who cares? The only legal authority the US needs to "declare" war is a vote of the Congress, which was obtained. UN resolutions are neither a legal nor, in my view, moral prerequisite to going to war.

As to the notion that only an imminent threat justifies an attack on another nation, this is utterly misguided.

Was Israel wrong to bomb Osirak years before it was capable of producing weapons? Of course not.

Was the US wrong to declare war on Germany after the attack on Pearl Harbor? At the time, Germany had zero ability to attack or even threaten the US, and could not be called an imminent threat to the US.

Was the US wrong to enter WWI when it did? Germany's ability to threaten the US was even less at the time.

Was the US wrong to go into the Balkans and bomb the Serbs? No imminent threat there.

Was the US wrong to liberate Kuwait in 1991? Iraq was not threatening the US at the time.

How totally silly some of these comments are! We had U.N. inpectors in Iraq up until - when - TWO DAYS BEFORE the bombing started on March 19?? As long as the U.N. kept its foot on Saddam's neck (which of course meant that NO ONE died from fighting combatants on either side) just how was Saddam going to crank up his Factories of Evil??

The evidence we've found since then clearly shows that, as he claimed, he had dismantled everything he had. Inspections worked as far as deterring a threat was concerned. Also, the guy offered up NO RESISTANCE at all when we attacked him! NO chemical, biological or nuclear attack when we were jumping his shit! Damn, he was such a BIG THREAT, wasn't he????

Like all good analysis of the past, (which we call "history," and which, by definition, demands that unique human ability to REFLECT upon the past) we can now conclude that our fears about Saddam's threat to us were baseless as far as his having anything of substance to actually attack us with. We normally refer to such fears as paranoia. It is treatable. It is not defendable as a reasonable response to the outside world.

If, on the other hand, we now intend to go after any and everyone who just doesn't like us (as in "Why oh why do they hate us???") we have all just entered the Twilight Zone. If someone would just alert us all some of us would appreciate it.

Ben,

Super -- couldn't agree more.

This argument is a waste of time -- anti-Bushees have thrown plates of @#$% against the wall and are waiting for something to stick. Now, they want to bash the leaders who took care of a problem.

It's history -- let's move on and get Iraq on its feet. (Although, FOXNews reports the economy is picking up pretty well.)

Mark,

Well I guess the debate has been won in another thread.

I consider our actions of omission bad, but our acts of commision worse (ot why is there on m in omission and two in commission?).

I have been arguing since 1991 that we should remove Hussein on humanitarian grounds. American political leaders and our people disgreed with me completely.

Regardless, the war wasn't sold to us on humanitarian grounds, and if it had been the American people would not have bought into it.

And if given two alternatives:

Sanctions, low cost, low deaths that we create

vs.

War, high cost, high deaths that we create,

I am confident I know what most people would choose.

Mark: What I said was that Bush never brought us Saddam's oppression of his people before 9/11. That isn't a meme. And it is relevant. My point is that the "oppression of the Iraqi people" ploy was brought up as a manipulative tool - not because the administration really cared about those folk. If they did really care about these folk, it would have come up prior to 9/11, which it didn't.

I have necessary problem with an effort by the people of this country working to free the oppressed folks in this world. I just don't think the Bushites have any concern for any of these folks. Hell, I don't think they care about oppressed folks HERE in the U.S.! So when the pay the "poor oppressed folks" card I see it as bullshit. I also am interesting in what their REAL MOTIVES are.

My point is that you were played.

George W. Bush: C’mon baby, you’ll love it.
Miss Columbia: I like you George, but I’m saving myself for marriage
George W. Bush: But I really love you
Miss Columbia: Really?
George W. Bush: Yeah babe, I want to spend the rest of my life with you
Miss Columbia: Do you mean that?
George W. Bush: Columbia, I want you to be the mother of my children.
Miss Columbia: Really? Gosh!
George W. Bush: I want you to share the wealth and power of the Bush family and live in a big house with hot and cold running servants.
Miss Columbia: I’m not all that materialistic, but your Mom sure has a nice house.
George W. Bush: I’m gonna buy you a diamond the size of a baseball!
Miss Columbia Oh George!

One minute and fourteen seconds later

Miss Columbia: George that was fantastic! I can’t wait till we’re married and we can do this every month!
George W. Bush: Married? I never said I’d marry you.

Jerry wrote "Sanctions, low cost, low deaths that we create
vs.
War, high cost, high deaths that we create,
I am confident I know what most people would choose."

You've given a false comparisson. Those two protocols provided entirely different results, how are they comparable? On humanitarian grounds: sanctions didnt prevent Hussein from committing atrocities. The Shiites were slaughtered post GW1 in the teeth of sanctions. Thousands were murdered and tortured since. Iraqs were dying under Hussein's sword up until the day our troops rolled into Baghdad. Sanctions would have done nothing to prevent that. War undeniably did. So on that scale,

Sanction= Low cost, low deaths we create, extremely high deaths we dont create, rampant intentional starvation, torture, fear ongoing and permanent for the forseeable future.

War= High cost, low deaths we create (3000? Hussein managed that in a good day at his worst), permanent end to murders, starvation, torture, fear.

Your argument is telling, and I have heard it before. That when we kill people through our actions, it is wrong. When many, many more people die through our inaction, it is preferrable to us getting our hands dirty. That is moral cowardice. How about pragmatism here for a minute? Is the world a better place today? Is Iraq? That is the bottom line. It is an evil in and of itself to allow such suffering in order to keep our own consciences clean.

"I have necessary problem with an effort by the people of this country working to free the oppressed folks in this world. I just don't think the Bushites have any concern for any of these folks. Hell, I don't think they care about oppressed folks HERE in the U.S.! So when the pay the "poor oppressed folks" card I see it as bullshit. I also am interesting in what their REAL MOTIVES are."

I know exactly what you are saying. It's that the ultimate results are less imporant than your perception of the motives involved. I find that revolting. Human lives by the millions are at stake and your contempt for Bush overrides that. Forive me if I doubt your humanitarian impulses.

I think this article from the Weekly Standard should help end this asinine debate about imminence.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/236jmcbd.asp

The same liberals who founded and/or support moveon.org (an organization dedicated to get the country to "move on" from the Clinton sex scandal) now can NOT "move on" from the word imminent.

And my liberal friends wonder why I've become a conservative.

Jon:

I suggest that Gulf War I, twelve years of sanctions and inspections---funded in large part by the US through its UN obligations, and the imposition by US and UK air power of no-fly zones across two thirds of the country---allowing the Kurdish north at least to build a Saddamless society, represent something of a commitment to the well-being of the Iraqi people.

My primary reason for posting, though, is to point out that your argument displays in an elementary logical fallacy. "We care about the Iraqi people, therefore we liberate them" does not imply "We don't liberate the Iraqi people, therefore we don't care about them."

Anti-war types have used this fallacy repeatedly, the other prevalent example being to suggest that "We care about Iraqi WMD, therefore we invade Iraq" implies "We do not invade North Korea, therefore we don't care about North Korean WMD." The inference is simply invalid in both cases. (A-->B)-->(~B-->~A)has a truth value of False.

Jerry,

In order for the "low cost" sanctions to remain "in effect" (which is a questionable assertion given all the cheating that went on over the last 12 years by Saddam) didn't we have to have a fairly sizable, continuing troop presence in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait?
How much did this cost each year? How much would it cost to maintain it for another, what? Decade?
How many troops would we have lost in Cole like attacks in the future? Or like the barracks attack in Lebanon?
Should we have withdrawn the troops? When? Under what circumstances? How many more Iraqi deaths at the hands of Saddam would be acceptible over the next decade? Are they not worth calculating?
Until Saddam was removed the future for the whole Middle East remained in constant jeopardy. Argue if you like that Bush was unable to artfully articulate his case for war (unlike Clinton did in Kosovo) and bemoan the fact that troops had to be deployed on the ground, at far greater risk and cost than in Kosovo where bombing was the choice.
But the choice was clear and has been for a decade; accept the continuing risk of disaster with a well armed tyrant or do something, conclusive, about it.
Bush and Blair risked their careers on doing the right thing here. Sad that the left can't imagine anyone has that kind of leadership ability anymore.

I'm implying here and now, and you can quote me on this, the election of a Democrat in 2004 is not imminent. Or looming, or gathering.

Not while losers fixate on such trivial nonsense like this. Especially such outrageously fictitious trivlal nonsense.

Bush has been quite consistent on the reasons for war, since day 1. Unlike the Kennedys and the Kerrys and the Deans out there, who have changed their battle cry from one bumper sticker lie to another.

These are the same jerks who claimed, quite seriously, that Bush plotted the entire 9/11 attack, and that the Pentagon wasn't hit by a plane at all, but by a missile.

I'm sure glad Gore lost in 2000. Otherwise my city would by now be missing a certain Empire State Building, a Brooklyn Bridge, and a Statue of Liberty.

Niggling detail (but, I think, important).

The Brits have said that their idea of the forty-five minutes from order to attack using chemical or biological weapons was looking at battlefield weapons. Shells with Bad Stuff in them.
BTW, it is what I had always thought they were talking about, it seeming to make the most sense.
It seems reasonable, if you think of specified artillery units having certain ammo trucks hanging around among all the other HE and WP and so forth.
If there are any verification arrangements in passing on the order, forty-five minutes might not be much time at all.
But it could be done, if you were well-enough organized, which may not mean SH's Iraq.
But theoretically, certainly.

"To the extent that GWB and his supporters now disclaim making any claim of imminent threat, they are admitting launching a war of agresssion."

This is deliberatly obtuse too. Either that or really stupid. Saddam launched a war of aggression against Kuwait. He signed a cease fire to end that war under which he agreed to certain conditions, conditions he did not meet, the defensive war then restarted and finished the way that it should have the first time.

It seems that all of the anti war arguments have one of two properties, either they overlook some critical fact, such as the fact that Saddam got himself in the pickle in the first place by launching an aggressive war agains a US ally, or they presume knowledge of the motives of all of the actors involved without requirements for evidence.

OK Philip: So the sanctions were for the benefit of the Iraqi people? I guess that's why all the human rights folks protested all those years to have the sanctions lifted. And maybe you didn't notice it, but Gulf War I was all about expelling Saddam's forces from Iraq - Oh, no, my bad - that was Kuwait, wasn't it???

As far as my "logical fallacy" I think you might want to actually read what I've written here. I assume that the expressed "Iraqi Freedom" campaign isn't a misnomer - that we want to free these people because we want them to be free - which I assume has something to do with "caring". At least that was the ruse, wasn't it? That IS what we WERE told - we're doing this to free the Iraqi people, right? That IS what MSNBC continues to blare every 45 seconds (at least it seems so), right? No, just maybe, we can say that the stated U.S. desire to see them free (if we really assume the Bushites have that desire, which I don't) isn't "caring" - perhaps altruism or something else - I'm fine with that.

Perhaps, though, you can enlighten us - just what is the motive behind this "Iraqi Freedom" thing??

"If they did really care about these folk, it would have come up prior to 9/11, which it didn't."

Bullshit. Removal of Saddam Hussein has been in debate throughout the entire sanctions/inspections period. It has been proven that all the sanctions/inspections delivered was torture and oppression of the Iraqi people.

Adam in MA -- The 2003 SOTU took place in 2003, while the Iraq resolutions (Congress and 1441) took place in late 2002 (before the 2002 election in the case of the former).

Dan (not Drezner) -- A quick glance at the Gardiner report you touted indicates that the report is replete with errors, and the conclusions he reaches about the motives for the media reports are suspect. Just look at the credentials Gardiner lists in his bio -- advising the Swedish Defense Ministry and serving as an analyst for the Newshour, BBC and NPR -- and you will see his anti-war bias. The fact that he taught strategy at various US war colleges says nothing about his qualifications to analyze the veracity of media reports or to qualify him as an objective journalist. You have to come up with a lot more than this report to convince people that there was systematic lying going on re: Iraq.

>"Mick McMick" and I are arguing this very question. Unfortunately, there's no $100, and Mick is the type of jerk who calls his opponents Saddam appeasers. Better I should move here.

Buck buck buck buck buck. Bkaw!

This entire debate is a joke. You can't boil own Bush's unprecedented Big Lie campaign on WMD to the narrow question of whether or not Bush himself personally used the word "imminent."

There can be no serious question that Bush mislead the American people multiple different ways, including lying about wheter or not he KNEW that Iraq had WMD.

This debate, I'm sorry to say, is nothing but a smokescreen.

Poster Jon wrote on this thread a while back:

"That was, by the way, the reason that Daddy Bush never entered Baghdad a decade earlier: U.N. resolutions at the time didn't authorize it. He apparently understood something rather essential that Junior still doesn't quite get."

The comment is striking because it does not acknowledge that this "essential understanding" cost tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and led to an American commitment stretching over a decade to contain Saddam Hussein, a commitment that included punishing sanctions, continuous and expensive air patrols, and the permanent presence in Saudi Arabia that lent so much impetus to al Qaida. It would have been perfectly fair for the Bush administration to have argued that its predecessor's action had been a terrible mistake with consequences we were no longer prepared to live with -- especially as the pre-9/11 evidence was clear that the sanctions regime was being progressively undermined, in part by the same countries that struggled to prevent anything being done about Saddam Hussein this year.

It would have been fair, but the Bush administration never made this argument. Instead it chose to make its case for war using alarmist rhetoric that gave credence to every worst-case scenario while staying just this side of saying what administration officials knew they could not -- that Iraq was planning to attack us soon either itself or through terrorist allies. The administration chose the path of least resistance, and having compounded that error with others is facing attacks on its credibility.

As I suggested earlier, it has mostly itself to blame for that. What concerns me is that this path of least resistance is becoming one the administration travels on with some regularity, and not just where Iraq is concerned either. Too often we have seen incisive, even persuasive arguments for this or that administration initiative made by its supporters in the media, and sometimes in the blogosphere, that bear only the most tenuous relation to the administration's own statements. In part I think that has to do with the warring departments in the executive branch being unable to agree on a shared message. A more important factor, though, is Bush himself. Well known for his lack of interest in foreign affairs before becoming President as well as for chronic intellectual laziness, Bush's much admired resolve and simplicity looks to me like a man unprepared to think through major decisions and making them on the fly based on the lowest common denominator of his advisers' varying counsel and a large amount of wishful thinking. This seat-of-the-pants style is not at all consistent with public explanations of policy choices that do justice to the right ones and provide as little room as possible for bizarre alternate theories about the reasons for American conduct to gain credence here or abroad.

There are several misleading statements being passed around here by Bush supporters that need to be corrected.

1) In post above ( http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/000816.html#002652 ) , Mark Beuhner states:
"Congressional leaders, for one, had access to the _identical_ raw intelligence the president had. And, if you look at their quotes over the last year, they reached the identical conclussion as the president based on the knowledge they had _at the time_. They also supported the same course of action, as they voted for it. .."
In fact, Nancy Pelosi and Bob Graham, members of the Intelligence Committees , said well before the war that they saw no evidence
of Hussein being an imminent threat to the US --and they voted against the war resolution.

2) Mark also states: "As far as the Kay report goes, Dan I suggest you bother to read it. Quite simply, Kay documents numerous UN violations proving that Hussein had all the facilities and intentions of instantly restarting his programs the moment the coast was clear."
This, of course, is a crock. Kay's report had a lot of hype which was deliberating misleading. Consider Kay's primary piece of
evidence:
" One noteworthy example is a collection of reference strains that ought to have been declared to the UN. Among them was a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced. This discovery - hidden in the home of a BW scientist - illustrates the point I made earlier about the difficulty of locating small stocks of material that can be used to covertly surge production of deadly weapons."
(Ref: http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/000816.html#002652 )

What Daniel Kay doesn't tell Americans is that botulinum bacteria can be found everywhere -- a half empty jar of mayonaise left out (with the lid on) for a few days probably has more than what Kay found. Plus the Okra B strain is less harmful than some other strains which send some people to the hospital every month with commonplace food poisoning.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan made a big noise about the botulinum sample -- adding to the unfounded
hysteria that Bush is trying to create. I sent Glenn Reynolds several emails pointing out the commonplace occurrance of
botulinun bacteria and food poisoning --but I didn't see Glenn making any significant effort on Instapundit to correct the false impression created by his initial posts.

3) Re what Bush said about the threat from Iraq, look at the unsupported claims Bush made in the War Resolution he sent to Congress:
http://www.yourcongress.com/ViewArticle.asp?article_id=2686

Some excerpts:
"Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;..."

"Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq; ..."

" Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself;"

"Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council resolutions make clear that it is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of force if necessary;"

4) We, the American people, understood in January that the President could not give us all the intel he possessed -- but we
assumed that he would not lie to or mislead us and Congress re the necessity for war. Unless Bush can produce more than
he had found to date, I think the American people are entitled to judge that Bush --and Bush's supporters -- are two-faced liars
who are deliberating deceiving us in order to promote their hidden agendas.

5) We know what some of those agendas are:
a) sucking up to Sharon in order to court major campaign donors like billionaire Haim Saban away from the Democratic Party.
Bush knows that the major financial support for the Democratic Party comes from supporters of Israel and he hopes to
to destroy the Democratic Party by pandering to Sharon even though this causes great harm to the US
b)seizure of major oil reserves for Houston by setting up military bases and puppet dictators in Iraq and the Caspian Sea region along the lines of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,
c)creating a false impression among US voters which will allow hundreds of billions of $dollars to be diverted to defense
contractors

6) We know some of the damage this has caused and will cause to the US
a) Bin Ladin indicated that Sept 11 occurred due to US sale of advanced weapons to Israel . Bush sold 52 F16s to Sharon
in June 2001, several months before Sept 11 At the time, the Arab world was enraged because Sharon was using F16s
to bomb Palestinians. See http://www.hnn.us/comments/13865.html

b) Sept 11 cost us 3000+ dead, $300 Billion in direct costs and over $1 Trillion in indirect costs --all money which Bush is
stealing from our Social Security/Medicare Trust Funds
c) If Bush's corrupt and malign actions scare NATO countries into a secret alliance with Russia and China, then the danger to
the US will be thousands of times greater than anything Saddam could have done. It is possible, in my opinion, to deliver
several nuclear attacks into the US without leaving a trace to their source and a path for retaliation.
That would so damage our economy as to turn us into a second rate power within 5 years

> Bin Ladin indicated that Sept 11 occurred due to US sale of advanced weapons to Israel .

So you are quick to take the word of Bin Laden, but call Bush a liar based on your own fabrications.

Poke a Bush-hater long enough, and the anti-Israel diatribe starts gushing out.

As for the Kay report, it proves one thing: Saddam did not take the UN inspections seriously, and I certainly can't blame him.

Those who still lick Hans Blix's boots are now inventing new meanings for "material breach."

I think the Bush claims of wanting to
deliver democracy to Iraq are utter bullshit --
although Karl Rove obviously
can't fix an election and install a puppet government in Iraq unless Bremer goes through the motions of holding an election. Anyone want to bet on the likelihood of CIA carrying around suitcases of dollars in Iraq as they reportedly did among the Northern Alliance prior to the Afghanistan campaign?

Altruistic claims of delivering the people of Iraq from Hussein are also bullshit --I've seen a photo of Rumsfeld shaking Hussein's hand in the 1980s when Hussein was actually gassing Iranians.
Dick Cheney has never preached the joys of democracy to the oil dictators of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or Kazakhstan.

Re torture, I wonder why we get continual reports of information revealed by captured Al Qaeda? I would have thought those guys would have said little more than "Die, infidel dogs!" Wonder what's making them so talkative?

The "Bush never said 'imminent threat'" claim is the "technically true" sort that allowed Rice and Rumsfeld a little wiggle room on the Yellowcake-gate issue. Yes, it is true that Bush never said Iraq posed an "imminent" threat. And yes, in the SotU, he said we must not wait until the threat is imminent. But as I've argued before, these assertions belie the reality of Bush's public statements on Iraq. The SotU laid out a case that Iraq was probably armed to the teeth with exceptionally dangerous weapons and that the threat was not merely to middle east neighbors, but quite possibly and quite soon to the U.S. itself. Bush and his aids argued that the situation was so dire that we couldn't wait for inspectors to finish their work. All over the media, the hawks pushed and paniced and issued grave and urgent warnings. As Atrios points out above, Bush twice threatened that Saddam could use WMDs with 45 minutes of the order. Rumsfeld ominously (and in retrospect, certainly incorrectly) told Congress that,"[N]o terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." Conservative mouthpiece and Weekly Standard Editor characcterized the threeat as the gravest in the world, and, indeed, imminent, saying on Fox News: "He's [Hussein] a greater imminent threat than the Iranians or the North Koreans." If, when U.S. cruise missiles started flying into Baghdad, an average citizen thought the threat was anything but imminent, he or she was paying too much attention to the international media. Afterall, as I've demonstrated, and others have quoted, the Bush administration was completely comfortable allowing the U.S. media to construe the threat as imminent. They did so repeatedly. They asked Fleischer if it was "imminent" and he agreed. Rumsfeld called it "immediate." Bush's National Security Strategy of the U.S. definied the phrase to specifically apply to states like Iraq.

I've read piles of news transcripts on this issue. The sheer number of times the Bush administration has had a chance to say to reporters, "Hey wait ... we don't want to say Huseein is an 'imminent threat'" is staggering. Hundreds at least. But the WH press office has never once, not once, attempted to change the press's characterization. Come on now people: I really don't think it's fair to let the WH have it both ways.

The Bush administration can claim the mantle of being technically accurate (if you ignore Fleischer's answers and Barnes statement) and generally deceitful. A dubious claim, but one the WSJ and others seem happy to make.

It all comes down to this. The left has been accusing Bush of lying for months. It turns out Bush never said Iraq was an imminent threat, and the left was lying when it said he did. Now to cover their ass, they make up some garbage about "imminent" being implied by the sum of all Bush's comments.
Well this is all BS. It is clear Bush didn't lie about Iraq being an imminent threat and the left is just playing games. I hope they continue to use the Bush lied meme, because they will continue look like hysterical partisans.

That's weak.

I find all the talk of "UN Resolutions" by Bush supporters to be hysterically funny --Bush violated the most important rule of international law and of the UN when he attacked a country which did not pose an imminent threat to the US. That is a far worse violation than whether Hussein tried to hamper arms inspections. Recall also that Bush attacked Iraq after the UN explicitly refused to approve the attack.

The obvious two-faced hypocrisy of Bush's supporters dishonors America and
our values.

Re my being anti-Israel, I think there is a difference between supporting Israel and supporting Sharon's/Likud's aggression. Besides, if our national leaders are whores for Israel, the fault lies with those who vote for Bush, not with Israel--who is simply pursuing her interests.

I fail to see how the neo-cons placing support for Sharon above their duty to the USA --especially after Sept 11 -- is patriotism.

I think it's clear why Bush attacked Iraq:
a) Sharon saw Hussein as a threat
b) Israeli Haim Saban, who has dual US citizenship, gave $12 Million in donations in 2002 and also funded creation of a Brookings Institute program to "advise" US officials on Middle Eastern policy. Some other supporters of Israel have also given $millions in campaign donations. Donations by Arab Americans are trival by comparison

Think of it as "market-driven foreign policy"

Don

There is no Medicare Trust fund. There is no Social Security trust fund. They are pay as you go systems. The US does not have a bank that they put the extra money that's collected into, it is spent. So there is no "stealing". That would be a lie.

That we have violated International law, we actually didn't since Saddam violated the cease fire agreement we could have gone in anytime we wanted to, that we chose to go through the UN (ie the dictators club) and lay out the danger that we the world faced and France and Russia thought putting coin in thier pocket more important (who are the imperialists here) well who gives a rat's ass.

So this whole Bush lied theme is just smoke being blown by a bunch of people who lost the debate and are deciding to change actual debate after the fact. The fact that you think Bush lied does not make it so. Bush, eventhough he is so "stupid" kept in sight what his job was, to protect the US, he did that move on.

If the threat Iraq supposedly posed wasn't "imminent," what was it? Grave? Serious? Immediate (Rumsfeld's word)? Horrifying? Potential? Silly?

I presume no one will argue "non-existent"?

Reg, I believe we could call a post like your last: seeing a tree, missing the forest.

>b) Israeli Haim Saban, who has dual US citizenship, gave $12 Million in donations in 2002 and also funded creation of a Brookings Institute program to "advise" US officials on Middle Eastern policy. Some other supporters of Israel have also given $millions in campaign donations. Donations by Arab Americans are trival by comparison

See? You post kooky drivel like this, and then claim Bush lied. Why am I supposed to take you seriously?

Re Kevin's comment that "There is no Medicare Trust fund. There is no Social Security trust fund. They are pay as you go systems. The US does not have a bank that they put the extra money that's collected into, it is spent. So there is no "stealing". That would be a lie."

Even Bush's Budget acknowledges that there are Trust Funds for Social Security, Medicare, Government Employee Retirement,etc.. Bush's Administration even sent me a statement showing how much I have paid into my Social Security account and how much I receive when I retire.

Bush's budget also shows that Bush is taking surplus funds from those Funds--from excess worker payroll taxes -- and leaving worthless IOUs. He has to do this to pay off Treasury Bonds coming due, since he is not collecting sufficient income taxes from the rich to pay off the rich's share of the federal debt.

His budget indicates that by 2010, the Trust Funds will be holding over $5 Trillion in IOUs , up by $3 Trillion from when Bush took office.

The only way future governments will be able to pay off those IOUs will be to levy very high taxes (e.g., 60% ) on m