... DK following the lead of the liberal media has been on a quest to put the words "imminent threat" in Bush's mouth (and more recently by proxy through Powell). That charge goes with the drumbeat that begins with the SOTU (where what he said about Niger has also been misrepresented in the press). So my response was to ignore the superflous et.al. and respond with Bush/Powell/Rice (those named specifically) never said that.
Now, you have a valid point that there are those who speak on the President's behalf. But of that whole laundry list of "smoking gun" quotations, you can only produce a couple of blurbs probably taken out of context in a routine briefing. The rest are just smoke and mirrors and often milder than comments made by those shouting "liar" the loudest. Can you distinguish which of these comments are misleading or misrepresenting the threat?
"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time."
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them."
"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."
"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended."
"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."
"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."
"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."
"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."
Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."
"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."
"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
"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."
Hard to tell who is saying these huh? Have to go back and check? McClellan clearly needs a little polishing on getting tricked into using certain phrases by the press.
I would have thought you could see past all the garbage on this one Josh. You'll find more references to the threat of Iraq in that one Jan '03 Kerry speech I linked elsewhere than you will in Bush's entire SOTU. Maybe he was trying to fool us to get us to subjugate our sovereignty to the impotent UN, France and his neocommie internationalism
I prefer to believe that all of our leaders believed the intelligence and acted to remove a threat. That the intelligence may have been wrong doesn't change the integrity of their actions at the time ... either side of the aisle. That Kerry and just about every Democrat to a one that voted for the resolution would now have you believe is that a President they view as a dim bulb apparently succeeded in duping their superior intellects. I'm not buyin' it.
Evie ![]()

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