How Soon Is Now?David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).Is it a sign of desperation that Bush's pro-war colleagues have taken to defending the president's push for war by relying on a 12-word sentence from his State of the Union address? Just as war opponents pointed to a 16-word passage from that speech (in which Bush suggested without good cause that Iraq was shopping for uranium in Africa) to challenge Bush's assertion that Saddam Hussein posed a WMD-related threat, Bush's advocates are using another sentence in that address to claim that Bush never said he was taking this country to war because Hussein was an imminent threat.
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In a high-profile speech in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, Bush said, "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." On the campaign trail, he depicted Hussein as a direct threat to Americans, and he noted, "We must do everything we can to disarm this man before he hurts a single American." (Note he did not say, before he is
able to hurt a single American.) After a terrorist blast killed 180 people in Bali, Indonesia, Bush announced that Hussein wanted to deploy Al Qaeda as his own "forward army" against the West. At a November 7 press conference, Bush said, "If we don't do something he might attack us, and he might attack us with a more serious weapon. The man is a threat.... He's a threat because he is dealing with Al Qaeda." (At the time, CIA analysts had concluded that Hussein was not likely to attack the United States unless he was struck first.)
Even if Bush did not use the I-word he sure made it seem as if the threat from Iraq was a clear and present—right now. A surprise attack. A WMD handoff "on any given day." Deploying Al Qaeda as his own private army. It all added up to a gunning-for-us-now threat. And when the war was nearly at hand, Bush held a press conference on March 6, 2003, and said, "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people." A reporter asked Bush why other nations did not believe the threat from was "so real, so imminent." Bush did not take issue with this characterization. He replied, "I think the threat is real."
Bush depicted the threat from a WMD-loaded, Al Qaeda-aiding Hussein as immediate. If what Bush said had been true—that Hussein was sitting on a gigantic arsenal of ready-to-go WMD and was in an operational alliance with Al Qaeda—there would have been a good case for swift action. But the intelligence did not support these key assertions. And if the threat was not imminent, why did Bush refuse to consider investing another five weeks or five months in more intrusive and aggressive inspections? He could have argued that the inspections process would not work. But if Hussein was no imminent threat there was time to try. Bush's statements and his approach sent a strong signal: there was not a moment to waste. He pushed the nation to war by pushing the threat from Hussein. The available evidence does not back up his prewar assertions, and 12 words from one speech do not change that.
read the full article:http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9143
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