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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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 Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 6:19 pm Post subject: John Bolton: Bush never said Saddam was 'imminent threat' |
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John Bolton: Bush never said Saddam was 'imminent threat' David Edwards and Josh Catone
Published: Sunday March 25, 2007
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Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton on CNN's Late Edition today made the case that, over four years into the Iraq war, removing Saddam Hussein was "unquestionably" the right thing to do, even though he did not turn out to have the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that formed the basis for the Bush administration's case for going to war.
"[Saddam Hussein] and his regime were the threat to international peace and security. The president never made the argument that he constituted an imminent threat," Bolton said.
However, on more than one occasion, administration officials used the term "imminent threat" to describe Iraq in the run up to the war.
"This is about imminent threat," said then-White House spokesman Scott McClellan on February 10, 2003.
"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?" was Donald Rumsfeld's message in November 2002, implying that Iraq would need to attack the US to become more of an immediate threat than it was.
Vice President Dick Cheney in August 2002 used the similar term "mortal threat" saying, "What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."
Denying that the White House used the specific nomenclature "imminent threat" is a common defense of Bush administration officials.
In 2004, then-Director of the CIA George Tenet defended his organization's prewar estimates of Saddam Hussein's military might by saying, "They never said there was an imminent threat."
A video clip of Bolton appearing on CNN's Late Edition follows:
[See interview]
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/John_Bolton_Bush_never_said_Saddam_0325.html |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| "[Saddam Hussein] and his regime were the threat to international peace and security. The president never made the argument that he constituted an imminent threat," Bolton said. |
Isn't that arguement in and of itself laughable? Especially coming from grown men?
I don't care if the term imminent was or wasn't used. But the logic like that above, used as a premise of invasion of whatever country, is just absurd.
So governments when they wish can just state that a country "will be" a threat to international peace and security (not now but will be at some undetermined time in the future) and so feel like they have justification for invasion, aggression, attack, war, regime change or whatever?
The logic is absurd. Why aren't they more honest and just say, "we will damn well go after whoever we chose not to like"? This is what it amounts to. The whole arguement of pre-emptive strikes and invasion is built on the premise of "don't ask for proof, we know and trust us....". Balderdash. Freedom in our lands is based on elected officials being accountable for their actions and also acting "in the general good" of all people. This flies in the face of that.
And these men lead governments. Absurd.
DD |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 10:31 pm Post subject: |
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Yes ddeubel , Saddam could have been trusted to be nice 
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The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.'s) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it's the wrong issue now.
Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.
The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there ?a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.
The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government ?and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen ?got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about. |
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/04/nyt.friedman/ |
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