Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Is it just me? Couldn't the CAP tell us what speeches or documents the quotes came from? It's impossible to verify their claims, and I really want to believe they're telling the truth.

I think they meant that there was an 'imminent threat' that Iraq would sell their oil through Russian and French oil companies in Euros.

Now we can be sure they will sell their oil through anglo-american companies in $. Mission accomplished.

non economist:

If only the issue was access to oil. The issue was ownership. Self-reliance is a cornerstone of democracy. Oil is Iraq's most valuable property. Saddam used oil revenues to buy weapons, build the army and security services and build his palaces - but also to provide free education and free health care. So oil is taken from Iraq so its people can learn to rely on themselves rather than on their goverment. This is called democracy is action.

I posted much the same comment at dKos. Who died and made the word 'imminent' Queen? Who asserted the Bush Administration did make the claim "imminent threat" and why would it matter? Doesn't "grave and growing" count or "first evidence being a mushroom cloud" count. This whole "we never used the I word" just makes my head spin.

Bush lied, GI's died and we are jousting about a verbalism.

The specific phrase "imminent threat" is important because it holds considerable international weight. Synonymous phrasings do not hold the same weight and meanings. (Think justifiable homicide; in order to defend your case for a preemptive strike in international circles you would specifically argue your enemy represented an "imminent threat"). Half the fun of reading the referenced quotes is seeing how members of this administration twisted themselves into pretzels to avoid using the phrase. They knew its importance.

I believe jack o'donnell is correct.

In international law the term "imminent threat"
has a specific meaning that can be used to justify
a war. Because of this the admin did twist themselves into pretzels to avoid using the term.

But they used other words that seemed to mean the same thing and the "public" or "press" did not understand why.

I think this is a tar baby game. Really, slip-sliding about "imminence" is a distraction; the bigger deceit is that there was no THREAT whatsoever, no matter what adjective was used to describe that threat.

joe ( the succinct)
absolutely. This is a press conference. Not a tribunal. Not an international court of law. IMHO, it's like the "high-powered rifle" which never fails to be decribed in any other way. For laughs try " postponed threat" or "half-hearted threat" or ...any other variation cries for further explanation.

According to my 1979-vintage Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, "imminent" means "ready to take place, esp. hanging threateningly over one's head". A few thoughts:

1) Whatever choice of words the Bushies used, in late 2002 and early 2003, they were unquestionably saying the threat represented by Saddam and his hypothetical WMDs was hanging threateningly over our heads.

2) They were saying then, in effect, that the last moment we can reliably parry this threat is fast approaching, and we won't know the exact moment when it arrives, so we need to act now; we don't even know that we can afford to wait until next year. That's close enough to 'imminent' for government work.

3) In such a context, their arguing over "imminent" is the Bush equivalent of arguing over what 'is' is. Only with much more on the line than a blowjob.

OK, back to basics. Bush wanted to invade Iraq, he just needed to manufacture an excuse to justify doing so. Taking a page from the book of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels - "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it people will come to believe it" - the Bush administration marched down a path that had been established well in advance.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/011204B.shtml

From the above link:

And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill.

Do none of you care about the facts or the context?

Colin Powell at the U.N., January 20, 2003: "Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists or states that support terrorists would represent a mortal danger to us all. So we must make the United Nations even more effective. And we must build even closer international cooperation to keep these weapons out of the hands of terrorists."

Colin Powell at the U.N., February 14, 2003: "I commend the inspectors. I thank them for what they are doing. But at the same time, I have to keep coming back to the point that the inspectors have repeatedly made, and they've made it again here this morning. They've been making it for the last eleven plus years: What we need is not more inspections, what we need is not more immediate access; what we need is immediate, active, unconditional, full cooperation on the part of Iraq.

" What we need is for Iraq to disarm. Resolution 1441 was not about inspections. Let me say that again. Resolution 1441 was not about inspections. Resolution 1441 was about the disarmament of Iraq."

"[The 1441] resolution began with the clear statement that Iraq was in material breach of its obligations for the past eleven years and remains to that day, the day the resolution was passed, in material breach."

"And the resolution said Iraq must now come into compliance. It must disarm. The resolution went on to say that we want to see a declaration from Iraq within 30 days of all of its activities. Put it all on the table. Let's see what you have been doing. Give us a declaration that we can believe in that is full, complete and accurate. That's what we said to Iraq on the 8th of November. And some 29 days later we got 12,000 pages. Nobody in this Council can say that that was a full, complete or accurate declaration."

"And now it is several months after that declaration was submitted, and I have heard nothing to suggest that they have filled in the gaps that were in that declaration or they have added new evidence that should give us any comfort that we have a full, complete and accurate declaration."

"And to this day, we have not seen the level of cooperation that was expected, anticipated, hoped for -- I hoped for. No one worked harder than the United States, and I submit to you no one worked harder, if I might humbly say, I did to try to put forward a resolution that would show the determination of the international community to the leadership in Iraq so that they would now meet their obligations and come clean and comply. And they did not.

Notwithstanding all of the discussion we've heard so far this morning about giving inspections more time, let's have more airplanes flying over, let's have more inspectors added to the inspection process, Dr. Blix noted earlier this week that it's not more inspectors that are needed; what's needed is what both Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei have said what's been needed since 1991: immediate, active, unconditional compliance and cooperation."
...

"But the questions, notwithstanding all of the lovely rhetoric, the questions remain, and some of my colleagues have talked about it. We haven't accounted for the anthrax. We haven't accounted for the botulinum, the VX, bulk biological agents, growth media, 30,000 chemical and biological munitions. These are not trivial matters one can just ignore and walk away from and say, well, maybe the inspectors will find them, maybe they won't. We have not had a complete, accurate declaration."

" We have seen the reconstitution of casting chambers for missiles. Why? Because they are still trying to develop these weapons."

" We have not seen the kind of cooperation that was anticipated, expected and demanded of this body. And we must continue to demand it. We must continue to put pressure on Iraq, put force upon Iraq, to make sure that the threat of force is not removed, because 1441 was all about compliance, not inspections. The inspections were put in as a way, of course, to assist Iraq in coming forward and complying, in order to verify, in order to monitor, as the Chief Inspector noted. But we've still got an incomplete answer from Iraq. We are facing a difficult situation."

sbw:

We do. Your quotes show a consistent pattern of shameful behavior from the man (Powell) some of us tended to respect in the past. Was that your point?

Gentlemen;
Our points are not mutually exclusive.
Cases can be argued in courthouses and/or in the court of public opinion. In the courthouse your lawyer argues specific points of law. In the court of public opinion your public relations people spin the hell out of the facts.
This administration, as demonstrated by the referenced quotes, unleashed a PR campaign in an attempt to convince the American public a war with Hussein was necessary (a failed one by the way – before the invasion only 30-something percent of Americans believed we needed to commit troops. It only jumped to 70+% after the troops were put in harms way)

The administration stayed away from the “courthouse” (United Nations) because they lacked something need to argue the specific points of international law. Evidence.....proof.....facts.

If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brains…………………