Posted on 10/22/2003 6:51:19 AM PDT by Republican Red
The president just implied 'imminent threat'
Opening my e- mail after last Sunday's column, the first message I came across was from Bruce P. Batista of Avon, who accused me of "at best journalistic malpractice and at worst an outright fraud."
This is typical Sunday fare for my critics, who are not shy about telling me how wrong I am and suggesting what I ought to do with my opinions. But Batista took his criticism a step further by challenging me and the editors at The Plain Dealer to a wager.
He offered to donate $500 to the charity of my choice if I could find a single quote from President George W. Bush made after Sept. 11, 2001, claiming that Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent threat" to the United States. And if I couldn't produce such a quote, then The Plain Dealer would donate $500 to the charity of its choice "and Mr. Brazaitis' next column will begin with a prominent correction and acknowledgement that President Bush never claimed that Saddam posed 'an imminent threat' to the United States."
Batista was not the only reader to question the claim that Bush had cited an "imminent threat" from Iraq to justify a pre-emptive strike, but he was the only one who told my editors and me to "put up or shut up."
Generous as they are, my editors are not about to put their money where my mouth is, especially since they, and presumably Mr. Batista, have access to the same on-line newspaper database that apparently does not contain any direct reference by the president to an "imminent threat" from Saddam among hundreds of references by others to an unspecified "imminent threat."
To the contrary, in Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, according to alert reader Pedro J. Diaz, the president went out of his way to say that the threat from Iraq was not imminent. These were Bush's words:
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, all recriminations would come too late."
So, Mr. Batista and others who rushed to their keyboards to correct my "journalistic malpractice" or "outright fraud" can claim the high ground, even if Bush employed every other scare tactic imaginable, including the prospect of a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion to scare the bejabbers out of the American people.
In a radio address last September, for instance, he warned that Iraq could wage "a chemical or biological attack in as little as 45 minutes," which might strike some people as imminent if you happened to be 46 minutes away from shelter.
Seventy percent of the American people are under the impression that Saddam Hussein played a principal role in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, although there is no credible evidence to support that. Bush has admitted that Hussein was not directly involved in the attacks.
So, what are we left with here?
Without Bush raising the specter of an "imminent threat" from Iraq and without the administration establishing a link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, we went to war.
Only now are we realizing that Saddam not only posed no "imminent threat" to us, he posed no threat at all.
In an interview on the CBS "60 Minutes II" program, Greg Thielmann, former director of the strategic, proliferation and military affairs office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said Bush and his aides employed "faith-based intelligence" to dramatize the threat from Hussein.
"They were cherry-picking the information that we provided to use whatever pieces of it that fit their overall interpretation," Thielmann said. "Worse than that, they were dropping qualifiers and distorting some of the information that we provided to make it seem more alarmist and dangerous."
My transgression in wrongly asserting that the president had warned of an "imminent threat" pales next to the administration's manipulation of intelligence reports so that they bore little resemblance to the actual facts but fit perfectly into the president's plan to complete the job his father started but did not finish a dozen years earlier. Let's be honest. The president took us to war because he wanted to and because he could.
Brazaitis, formerly a Plain Dealer senior editor, is a Washington columnist.
Contact Tom Brazaitis at:
tbrazaitis@starpower.net, 202-638-1366
I was surprised that this guy was admitting his "mistake" and publically correcting it. He did, and I do give him credit for that, but, the rest of the article is more of the same old Bush is a liar garbage.
I am amazed that this guy seemd to buy the assertion that the President said "imminent threat" as fact without any research. Only when challenged did he bother to check his facts.
It is truly a sad state journalism is in today.
..."Only now are we realizing that Saddam not only posed no "imminent threat" to us, he posed no threat at all."...
Okay, Jackass, how about we went to war because the UNITED NATIONS said so? (Multiple violations of UN Res. 1441) Or, isn't the world community good enough for you?
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
Another illustration of liberal racism. The author seems to care only about his own behind and not one bit about those of the Iraqi's whom we released from under Saddam's boot. Another hypocrite.
Prairie
Maybe it's because the media has lost credibility with a majority of Americans, and even the true stories are looked at with a skeptic's eye. As far as I'm concerned, this column is just an unapologetic non-retraction.
It never ceases to amaze me that when the media interviews an 'expert' in a given field, more attention isn't given to the fact that this person is a former employee, and that that indeed might have some bearing on the person's (always) negative opinion of what the 'current' administration is doing.
And, fer chrissakes, the guy is from the State Department.
Ha! They were busted because the public has access to the same information and was able to expose their lie. I bet they long for the days where they could print unfettered by accountability.
The answer to that question should open up a nice can of worms.
Only now are we realizing that Saddam not only posed no "imminent threat" to us, he posed no threat at all.
I wonder who it was that was manipulating the intelligence reports in 1999 when clinton bombed Iraq because Saddam kicked out the UN inspectors. Clinton had to bomb because Saddam had nuclear, bio and chemical weapons, at least that's what he told us.
In Feb. 2001 when Colin Powell argued that sanctions should not be lifted because Saddam was still a threat, why weren't we told that there was no threat from those countries (France being one)?
Blix was so sure there was something going on in Iraq that he wanted inspections to go on and on. He wouldn't have manipulated the intelligence just to keep his job, would he?
And why, oh why do none of these leftist pukes never address these questions?
It has been interesting to see how quickly the imminence front has retreated and regrouped. Almost like new talking points went out...
Quit creating tempests in teapots.
What's the big deal if Bush had said "immanent threat."
"Immanent threat" does not mean "immanent attack."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.