It is astonishing how quickly historical revision is taking place. The revisionists must think that the public is a pack of drooling idiots with no memory recall.

Well, they may be right.

The big lie is alive and well; and major media organs seem to be following the Al Jazeera model of journalism, having decided that regime change in 2004 is a priority over truthful reporting.

It's an ends-means thang.

This is all just more evidence of the liberal belief that if you repeat a lie often enough eventually it is considered truth.

This is all just more evidence of the liberal belief that if you repeat a lie often enough eventually it is considered truth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

also known as the "Big Lie" theory as promoted by Hitler in "Mein Kampf"

here is a link

Very good. Very, very good. It's quite alarming that this myth has become so widespread. Andrew Sullivan has done a good job of keeping this at the forefront, so too has the Shark, and those of us who are clued in should keep driving the point home until it dawns on everyone who's willing to listen. That should be everybody but The Nation and IndyMedia -- but we've still a ways to go.

I've posted a link to this on my blog -- everyone else with a blog who sees this should do the same.

The belief in "The Big Lie" tactic is most clearly seen in the Democrat aphorism "perception is reality" that I have heard them spout from time to time. It is an itegral part of their value system.

Well, to begin with, neither Al Gore nor House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi speak for the Bush adminsitration. Further, both those statements were from before October 7, 2002.

Read Bush's October 7, 2002 address to the nation. The headline on the web story from Radio Free Europe is "Iraq: Bush Tells Americans Saddam Is An Imminent Threat" (see
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2002/10/08102002135121.asp )

Bush says that "facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." He says "The danger is already significant" and "we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today."

So Ted Kennedy called Bush a liar in January. That doesn't get the Bush administration off the hook for it.

Ted Kennedy's credentials for establishing who's a liar are zero, and the Bush Administration was clear and candid about not waiting for an imminent threat. Bravo to the Shark for showing a clear chronology of the repetitious canards perpetrated by our "news" media - like Rudyard Kipling's self-reinforcing monkeys.

Even Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi have (or did have at one time) clearer vision than the LA Times and their mindless true believers.

More evidence that everything wrong in the world is the fault of the LA TIMES!

Imminent Threat? Who thought we were going to war because Iraq was an imminent threat? Everyone agreed Iraq posed no imminent threat. We clearly went to war because Bush didn't like Hussein and on 9/11/01 found an excuse to do something about it. Just about every other reason he's given has been found to be an overstatement if not an outright lie:

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons" but still no weapons have been found. "Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" but at best the evidence shows that the program was dormant. "Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon" but again the best evidence we have to day shows no weapons and only a static capability to produce non-nuclear weapons if even that.

The thing is, if the Bushies had said "let's go to war to free Iraq from their horrible dictator and bring democracy to the middle east," it would have sounded far too much like Hitler or the Russians or even the Brits of centuries past in conquering nations just because we don't like them. Every other country in the middle east (and most in Asia) would be worried that they were next. So Bush tried to make something palatable about why we were invading Iraq and therefore what the rest of the world could do to avoid invasion. Which would have been great, if the fig leaf were truthful enough that anyone believed it. Instead, it was seen as a sham and a lie and now every other country in the middle east (and most in Asia) are worried that they could be next.

Simon says "now every other country in the middle east (and most in Asia) are worried that they could be next."

That was the main reason for invading Iraq. That and having our military right in the heart of darkness. We are going to have our largest air force facility outside the US in Iraq for many years, probably decades, to come. Iraq, just like Germany and Japan, will run their own affairs. But militarily they will be part of the US imperium. Pax Americana is now firmly planted in the mideast. OUTSTANDING!!! The fruit of the invasion may not be apparent. Especially to the critics. But it has changed the military power balance in the world and greatly to our favor.

Outstanding work, Stefan. This is the kind of investigative research I love to read on a blog.

I'm linking this piece.

Christ... you people are grade-A morons.

It should be absolutely clear, to anyone with 3rd grade reading comprehension skills, that Bush and Wolfie were implying that Iraq was an imminent threat. When Wolfie said "we have to attack because we (or, more accurately, anti-war people) don't know when the threat is imminent" or when Bush said "no one (i.e., the people who are the source of this threat) will tell us when the threat is imminent"- they are saying that the threat is imminent, but people who keep asking for more evidence fail to see the imminence.

But because no one in the administration said, "Listen....right....wing....chuckleheads....Iraq....is....an......imminent.....threat", slow enough for you to comprehend, and in that exact manner, why it's evidence of liberal Democratic Goebbels-type plot to take over America.

Never mind all the times we heard "we can't wait", "3 million may die if we don't do something", "dictators, terrorists, and WMD, all together, are the worst threat that can be imagined, and, of course, the "smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud" - all of which, in regular, non-wingnut English, would be perfectly good synonyms for "imminent threat".

Here's my advice: get a real job and, for the love of god, make sure you don't try to home-school your child.

FWIW, Andrew F. Tully of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (hardly the "liberal media") reported back in October 2002 that Pres. Bush was arguing that the threat from Iraq was imminent. See http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2002/10/08102002135121.asp

Yeah. What Manumission said.

Maybe you people will believe what Joseph Curl of the Washington Times had to say on October 2, 2002:

President Bush last night said Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is a “murderous tyrant” who could attack the United States “on any given day” using unmanned aerial vehicles loaded with chemical or biological weapons.

On...any...given...day.

What part of this do you people not understand?

Unfortunately for your argument, Ara, the article you cite appeared in the Washington Times on October 8, 2002, not the 2nd. So I suspect you read neither the actual article (now only in the Wash Times archive), nor the actual Presidential address of October 7 which it reported.

The transcript of the President's October 7 speech is here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/iraq/20021007-8.html

That specific quote from the Wash Times did not faithfully convey the President's remarks.

Sorry, Stefan. The battery on my watch died. I got the date wrong.

After I changed my battery, I went over to Whitehouse.gov and read this:

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints. [emphasis added]

The Times got it right. POTUS was talking imminence of threat.

The thing is, I think David Kay's preliminary report shows that the quote was a 100% accurate statement of the situation at the time of the speech. You say the Times got it right, I say Bush got it right with that statement, whether you call that a description of an 'imminent threat' or not.

"Could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorist.

Jesus. You've gone completely round the bend, Ara. That statement was 100% accurate. He could have. We've already found sufficient such weapons in quantities that could easily be given to a terrorist to spread mayhem, and we already have sufficient evidence of ties to terrorist groups.

The deception is you guys who are sitting there trying to suggest that the President ever suggested that Iraq was on the verge of attacking us.

Ah, never mind. You just want to get Bush, and you'll bend, shape, or distort history however it takes in order to do that.

You're truly rabid. There were people like you in the Third Reich, too, if you'd bother doing the research you'd see the parallels. It saddens me to know that you are in my country.

Neville Chamberlain said Peace in our time, only to find out that he was being used by the Nazis. If today we permit war in the name of world peace and security and we are in effect supporting the same plans as Adolf Hitler. Except this time it is an American President named George W. Bush. As george Washington said his country should stay out of foreign entanglements, that includes open and unqualified support for Israel.

This was formally debated by Sebastian Holsclaw and Jonathan Schwarz on Daniel Drezner's Blog. The post I'm linking to is the conclusion- the three posts from each arguer are linked within the main article. Enjoy. http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/000830.html

There can be no denying that President Bush made statements on various occassions to convey that Saddam Hussein was a "threat". He used terms that were meant to convey that the nature of the threat was "serious" and if ever brought to fruition would be devastating. However, when one offers a sentence the author alone really knows the intention of his/her words. For liberals to assume the license of infering a meaning and then hold Bush's feet to the fire as if he actually was trying to convey what he obviously took pains to avoid saying is interpretive mischief. If Bush was trying to say imminent threat, he would have just simply said, imminent threat. The fact that he used descriptive terms describing a serious and potentially devastating threat does not prove he intended to use a synonym for imminent. However, this is how liberals work. Build a strawman, put on it the mask of a monster, and then go out and rally the uninformed to help burn it down. It was the tool of Robespierre. It was the tool of Lenin and of Stalin and of Hitler. Oops, I guess someone may assume that I am calling liberals Robespierre, or Lenin, or Stalin. See how it works?

Ladies, Gentlemen.
The term "imminent threat" appears in a document titled "National Security Strategy of The United States" published in September of 2002. The link to the entire document is: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html.

"For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat-most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack."

The administration goes on to claim it is not possible, in this day and age, for the old definition of "imminent threat" to be valid; attack may come with little or no warning. Bush argued,in essence, any threat can be met with a legal pre-emptive strike. It is this comparison to the "imminent threat" standard that is the basis for the news media reporting.

Did the threat posed by Saddam raise to the "imminent threat" standard recognized by international law and domestic public opinion? The Bush administration clearly promoted the idea it had, (just look at Colin Powell's UN speach, complete with photos, statistics on stockpiled weapons, and evidence of 'programs' to develope even more weapons) and "imminent threat" entered the vocabulary of the Iraq war debate.

How the Bush administration made that case, and the evidence both for and against it can be discussed in other posts or venues. However, the phrase "imminent threat" was not made up by the left, or Democrats, or journalists; it has it roots in a document created, promoted, and cited by this administration.

'Imminent' Semantics

AP reports, "since he resigned as the top weapons hunter in Iraq, David Kay's public statements have sparked widespread questioning of the Bush administration's main justification for war: to remove an imminent threat posed by Saddam and his supposed weapons." However, instead of explaining why it ignored repeated warnings from the intelligence community that the White House's WMD case was weak, newswires report the Administration responded by "denying it ever warned that Saddam Hussein posed an 'imminent' threat to the United States." But a closer look at the record shows the Administration not only used exact phrase "imminent threat," but also buttressed it with claims that Iraq was a "mortal threat," "urgent threat," "immediate threat," "serious and mounting threat," "unique threat," and a threat that was actively seeking to "strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction" – all just months after Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that Iraq was "contained" and "threatens not the United States." See a long list of the Administration's "threat" rhetoric in this new American Progress backgrounder.

"IMMINENT THREAT," PART I: White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday lashed out at reporters yesterday saying "some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used." But almost exactly a year ago, it was McClellan who said the reason NATO should go along with the Administration's Iraq war plan was because "this is about imminent threat." Similarly, when White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether America went to war in Iraq because of an imminent threat, he replied "Absolutely."

"IMMINENT THREAT," PART II: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked whether Iraq was an imminent threat and replied affirmatively, citing 9/11 as justification: "Go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?" And despite the Administration's efforts to pass the blame for failure to find WMD onto the intelligence community, Rumsfeld essentially admitted that the intelligence community had, in fact warned the White House of the weakness of its WMD case – yet still raised the "imminent threat" specter. On 9/18/02, he said "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain."

"GATHERING" THREAT: McClellan told reporters that the White House only "used the phrase 'grave and gathering threat.' We made it very clear that it was a gathering threat." According to the Roget's Thesaurus, "gathering" is a direct synonym of "imminent". A synonym, we might recall, is defined as "a word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word" – meaning the White House's continued attempts to differentiate between the use of "imminent threat" and "gathering threat" are hollow and silly semantics. It was President Bush who said in October 2002 that Iraq was a "gathering threat" – and has continued to repeat this phrase for the next two years.

"IMMEDIATE" THREAT: Once again, Roget's Thesaurus defines "immediate" as a direct synonym of "imminent" – and the Administration also repeatedly used this phrase to describe Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Congress on 9/19/02 that "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."

"URGENT," "UNIQUE," "TERRIBLE, " "MOUNTING" THREAT: Other phrases of similar hue to "imminent" were also repeatedly invoked by the Administration to play on America's post-9/11 fears. The phrases "urgent" and "unique" threat were also repeatedly invoked. As President Bush said on 11/23/02, "The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq." He said on 10/2/02 that "the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." Vice President Dick Cheney said on 1/30/03 that Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on 1/29/03 that "Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country."

TomJ, you are obviously missing the point. Clearly, all you've proved is that Scott McClellan, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush himself are all part of the liberal conspiracy. You see how devious they are?

jeez, just watch the video.

Saddam not a immediate threat but gathering. Not wait until he is. Never mind some of the WMD arguements the Administraition used(which were proved wrong), Bush stated they were in a sense 'potential' threats.

These semantic arguments about whether the administration used the specific _word_ "imminent" or not are just silly. Even ignoring the obvious evidence that Bush, Cheney and many others in the administration did in fact use that word and many others meant to convey exactly the same meaning, the histrionic contortions Bush apologists are going through just reeks of the "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is" wordplay bullshit that y'all crucified Clinton for. How's it feel to be hoisted on your own petards?

White House spokesman Scott McClellan lashed out at critics saying "Some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used." But a closer look at the record shows that McClellan himself and others did use the phrase "imminent threat" – while also using the synonymous phrases "mortal threat," "urgent threat," "immediate threat", "serious and mounting threat", "unique threat," and claiming that Iraq was actively seeking to "strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction" – all just months after Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that Iraq was "contained" and "threatens not the United States." While Iraq was certainly a dangerous country, the Administration's efforts to claim it never hyped the threat in the lead-up to war is belied by its statements.

"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."
• White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03

"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
• President Bush, 7/17/03

Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time."
• White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03

"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."
• President Bush, 7/2/03

"Absolutely."
• White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03

"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended."
• President Bush 4/24/03

"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03

"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."
• Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03

"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."
• President Bush, 3/19/03

"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."
• President Bush, 3/16/03

"This is about imminent threat."
• White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03

Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03

Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03

Iraq "threatens the United States of America."
• Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03

"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03

"Well, of course he is.”
• White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question “is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?”, 1/26/03

"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03

"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat."
• President Bush, 1/3/03

"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands."
• President Bush, 11/23/02

"I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?"
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02

"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America."
• President Bush, 11/3/02

"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."
• President Bush, 11/1/02

"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein."
• President Bush, 10/28/02

"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace."
• President Bush, 10/16/02

"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
• President Bush, 10/7/02

"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
• President Bush, 10/2/02

"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."
• President Bush, 10/2/02

"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
• President Bush, 9/26/02

"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."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02

"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02

"Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/02

I was hoping someone could verify a specific bit of info that either bush or someone in his administration claimed back when he was insisting that iraq was an "imminent threat". Wasn't there once a claim that Saddam had the capability of delivering weapons of mass destruction to his neighbors within 48 hours, or something to that effect. I mentioned this in a discussion with someone who insisted nothing ever that serious was ever claimed. I've been looking online trying to find the specific speack it was said in, but can't. Anyone know?

Maybe the point is being missed completely by everyone. The reason bush and his administration were tiptoeing around the term "imminent threat" is there was no way to be absolutely positive of the true nature of the threat.

The reason for that is Saddam's unwillingness to abide by the terms that kept us from invading for the previous 12 years. How long should we have waited? 13 years? 14?

This is not the Bush administrations fault, it is Saddam's.

It's time people step back and realize this.

Maybe the point is being missed completely by everyone. The reason bush and his administration were tiptoeing around the term "imminent threat" is there was no way to be absolutely positive of the true nature of the threat.

The reason for that is Saddam's unwillingness to abide by the terms that kept us from invading for the previous 12 years. How long should we have waited? 13 years? 14?

This is not the Bush administrations fault, it is Saddam's.

It's time people step back and realize this.

Aesop wrote fables like "The Hare and the Tortoise" and parent's told it to their children. The Brothers Grimm wrote Fairy Tales and they too were told to children by parents. There is of course Hans Christian Anderson who wrote "The Ugly Ducking," which parents narrated to their child.

Most children know fairy tales and fables told to them by their parents. But today we have a politician and a president of a country that tells fairy tales to all and sundry. His most famous FAIRY TALE is titled "Imminent Threat" and is based on Iraqi WMDs. Mind you this was a sitting President of the United States of America named George W. Bush. But this time the Fairy Tale was not for the children but their parents, and most of them believed it. Now there's a man who can really spin a tale for you. I'll bet that his aid Dick Cheney could also write Fairy Tales like his master. But being CEO of Halliburton, you can bet your bottom dollar there has to be some OIL in it.

Aesop wrote fables like "The Hare and the Tortoise" and parent's told it to their children. The Brothers Grimm wrote Fairy Tales and they too were told to children by parents. There is of course Hans Christian Anderson who wrote "The Ugly Ducking," which parents narrated to their child.

Most children know fairy tales and fables told to them by their parents. But today we have a politician and a president of a country that tells fairy tales to all and sundry. His most famous FAIRY TALE is titled "Imminent Threat" and is based on Iraqi WMDs. Mind you this was a sitting President of the United States of America named George W. Bush. But this time the Fairy Tale was not for the children but their parents, and most of them believed it. Now there's a man who can really spin a tale for you. I'll bet that his aid Dick Cheney could also write Fairy Tales like his master. But being CEO of Halliburton, you can bet your bottom dollar there has to be some OIL in it.