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01/28/2004 Archived Entry: "There used to be a term for this type of thing...."
There used to be a term for this type of thing....
Back in the Clinton years, there was a widely-used word for stuff like this.... hmm, it's right on the tip of my tongue.... read this while I give it a little thought.....
Smarting from the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the White House denied it had ever warned that Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent" threat to the United States.At the same time, US President George W. Bush declined to repeat his prediction that US-led forces scouring Iraq will discover the prohibited weapons he cited as the chief reason for the March 2003 invasion.
[...]
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who also refused to say he thought Kay's successor would succeed, mounted a defense of the administration's pre-war warnings about the threat posed by Saddam.
"I think some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent.' Those were not words we used. We used 'grave and gathering' threat," he insisted.
But if Bush never called Saddam's Iraq an "imminent threat" in so many words, he said it was "urgent," Vice President Dick Cheney called it "mortal" and it was "immediate" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
In an October 7, 2002 televised speech to the nation, Bush likened the standoff with Iraq to the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when Soviet missiles were revealed to be based just 90 miles (145 kilometers) off US shores.
In that same speech, he warned that Saddam "could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists" like the al-Qaeda network behind the September 11, 2001 attacks.
[...]
Other senior Bush aides shied away from using the word "imminent" but agreed with that characterization in exchanges with reporters.
On January 26, 2003, CNN television asked White House communications director Dan Bartlett "is he (Saddam) an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?"
"Well, of course he is," Bartlett replied.
On May 7, 2003, a reporter asked then White House spokesman Ari Fleischer: "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?"
"Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all," the spokesman replied.
"Another way to look at this is if Saddam Hussein holds a gun to your head even while he denies that he actually owns a gun, how safe should you feel?" Fleischer told reporters on October 9, 2002.
.....Ah, now I remember! They used to call it parsing when Clinton did it.
Howzabout one of you conservatives gimme the definition of 'is?' And let's hear you defend this administration's weasel words while you're at it. Thanks.
Replies: 5 people speak up
As it was stated during the whole "Nazi-comparison" brouhaha:
"But...but...but...that's DIFFERENT!"
Posted by The Tater @ 01/28/2004 12:25 PM NY
"The smaller the mind the greater the conceit."--Aesop
Pretty much sums up the entire Bush Administration. I can't wait to see the neo-cons try to defend THIS lie!
Posted by Tina @ 01/28/2004 12:34 PM NY
They won't need to defend it...the media will ignore it in favor of a new development in the JonBenet Ramsey case or some such crap.
Posted by The Tater @ 01/28/2004 12:36 PM NY
Didn't George Sr refer to that as "waffling"?
Posted by Demeur @ 01/29/2004 12:16 AM NY
Here's what it was: a LIE.
See how quickly each LIAR changes the subject by saying that, well, the world is better off without Saddam in power.
Posted by skywalker77 @ 01/29/2004 05:05 PM NY
