"Every Intelligence Agency in the World" on Iraq WMD

[andyfox]

"here's the quote where the White House 'expressly said' that Iraq posed no imminent threat?"

In Bush's 2003 SOTU speech he said, "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"

[Knockwurst]

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"here's the quote where the White House 'expressly said' that Iraq posed no imminent threat?"

In Bush's 2003 SOTU speech he said, "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"

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nh, sir.

[Chris Alger]

That's not it. Bush's rhetorical question suggesting that "imminence" is a dubious rule of self-defense is not the same as an "express" statement that no Iraqi threat was imminent. It doesn't even qualify or retract the many administration statements to the effect that Iraq posed just such a threat.

[Chris Alger]

I keep seeing your name under my posts but there's never anything there. I must be getting under your skin, which is good, but since you seem to be helpless I hereby relieve you of any duty you think you have to respond. From now on, presume that nothing I say is directed to guys like you who think criticizing the war is treason.

[Copernicus]

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I'd like to add that imo the argument that the Clinton Admin. and our allies believed Iraq had WMD's is a red herring.

This simplistic iteration fails to acknowledge that there are differing levels of certainty in assessing intelligence, and there were certainly differing levels of certainty as to Iraq's WMD holdings.

Moreover, there were certainly differing views of Iraq's delivery capabilities, and only the Bush administration offered forth the imminent nature of the threat to justify their pre-emptive war.


Thus, to say even the Clinton Admin. and the French believed Iraq had WMD is a proposition with little relevance in relation to whether a full-scale invasion was justified.

The more relevant question is whether anyone but the Bush Admin. and its neo-con cohorts believed with sufficient certainty that Iraq had WMD and the threat was imminent to justify an invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Clearly, the answer is no.

Sorry for the hijack, but this Administration and this war have got me on some serious tilt.

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Wrong. Bush and the administraion NEVER claimed the threat was imminent, in fact they expressly said it was NOT imminent.

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You, sir, are the one who is wrong, again, but what can one expect of a purely partisan hack. For your edification, here is a list of quotes from the Bush Admin. re the imminent nature of the threat gathered at americanprogress.org:


The Bush Administration is now saying it never told the public that Iraq was an "imminent" threat, and therefore it should be absolved for overstating the case for war and misleading the American people about Iraq's WMD. Just this week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan lashed out at critics saying "Some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used." But a closer look at the record shows that McClellan himself and others did use the phrase "imminent threat" – while also using the synonymous phrases "mortal threat," "urgent threat," "immediate threat", "serious and mounting threat", "unique threat," and claiming that Iraq was actively seeking to "strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction" – all just months after Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that Iraq was "contained" and "threatens not the United States." While Iraq was certainly a dangerous country, the Administration's efforts to claim it never hyped the threat in the lead-up to war is belied by its statements.



"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."
• White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03

"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
• President Bush, 7/17/03

Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time."
• White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03

"Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now."
• President Bush, 7/2/03

"Absolutely."
• White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03

"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended."
• President Bush 4/24/03

"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03

"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."
• Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03

"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
• President Bush, 3/19/03

"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."
• President Bush, 3/16/03

"This is about imminent threat."
• White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03

Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03

Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03

Iraq "threatens the United States of America."
• Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03

"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03

"Well, of course he is.”
• White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question “is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?”, 1/26/03

"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03

"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat."
• President Bush, 1/3/03

"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands."
• President Bush, 11/23/02

"I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?"
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02

"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America."
• President Bush, 11/3/02

"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."
• President Bush, 11/1/02

"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein."
• President Bush, 10/28/02

"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace."
• President Bush, 10/16/02

"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
• President Bush, 10/7/02

"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
• President Bush, 10/2/02

"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."
• President Bush, 10/2/02

"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
• President Bush, 9/26/02

"No 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."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02

"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02

"Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/02

Besides Dan Bartlett and Scott McClennan in the highlighted quotations stating Iraq is an imminent threat, I will let others decide from the quoted material whether others in the administration including the CIC suggested Iraq was an imminent threat.



Unfortunately, for supporters of this administration, facts can be most inconvenient.

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The inconvenient fact for you is that there is one quote in all of those that sounds like "imminent threat", and Id like to see the full text of that one.

Of all of these : "mortal threat," "urgent threat," "immediate threat", "serious and mounting threat", "unique threat,"

the only one that comes anywhere near "imminent" is "immediate", I dont see that used in any of the quotes, and if I missed it, show me the full text.

Your cut and paste as has many red herrings as a 9/11 conspiracy thread.

[andyfox]

By saying that some say we should wait for the threat to be imminent, he is saying that it is not. I agree with you that there were other statments by the administration that either flat out said or suggested that the threat was imminent. I remember the SOTU statement because the L.A. Times got it flat out wrong the next morning, headlining that Bush said the threat from Iraq was imminent.

[Knockwurst]

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The inconvenient fact for you is that there is one quote in all of those that sounds like "imminent threat", and Id like to see the full text of that one.

Of all of these : "mortal threat," "urgent threat," "immediate threat", "serious and mounting threat", "unique threat,"

the only one that comes anywhere near "imminent" is "immediate", I dont see that used in any of the quotes, and if I missed it, show me the full text.

Your cut and paste as has many red herrings as a 9/11 conspiracy thread.

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Suffice it to say that two Whitehouse spokesmen and the communications director, if that's Bartlett's current title, called it an imminent threat.

But you decry Ari and Dan only said the word "yes" in response to the question: Is Saddam an imminent threat? They never said the words imminent threat.

If that's the what your hanging your hat on, it doesn't pass the laugh test.

As for the rest of the quotations, they speak for themselves.

[nicky g]

Even British intelligence did not unambiguously believe that Saddam still had a significant WMD programme. The report at www.impeachblair.org makes this clear; prior to the sudden insistence that Saddam posed a serious WMD threat:

Whilst the JIC was suggesting that Iraq "may have hidden small quantities of [chemical] agents and weapons", the Prime Minister was stating that "we know that he has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons". (p. 18)

It also makes clear that the UK intelliegence community believed that if Saddam did have any WMD, it was only in battlefield weapon form and only likely to be used in defence against invasion.

The idea that British intelligence was painting a picture of a serious WMD threat from Saddam is completely wrong.

[..........]

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Your cut and paste as has many red herrings as a 9/11 conspiracy thread.

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Well if you'd just stay out of them....

[Chris Alger]

The same applied to Israel, where Sharon had to create his own version of Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans to spew the same kind of phoney baloney "intelligence," Mossad professionals knowing it was BS.