One interesting thing to note in the New York Times’ editorial yesterday on WMDs in Iraq. They didn’t re-use the “imminent threat” meme. It’s gone. Instead, they described the threat described by the White House as “extraordinary.” That’s a stretch too. But at least it isn’t a complete fabrication. Tony Snow also helped by grilling Jay Rockefeller yesterday and got him to concede that Bush specifically disavowed the notion that the threat from Saddam was “imminent.” A reader’s comb-through of the entire White House archives for speeches, press releases and so on doesn’t come up with a single administration use of the term “imminent”. That’s not proof that the White House never used the term, but it’s pretty good evidence that it wasn’t the administration boilerplate that the press is now trying to imply. I have found one use of the term “imminent” from Richard Perle. But he’s not a formal administrtaion official; and he has been a hothead at times.
THE REAL ISSUE: Am I being ridiculously semantic here? I don’t think so. Here’s why: If the administration had genuinely described the threat as “imminent”, then there wouldn’t have even been much of a debate. Of course we are entitled to defend ourselves against imminent attack. The debate rather was over what kind of threat could justify a war. The White House argued that it was a grave and growing threat, that it was unknowable, that we’d under-estimated Saddam before and that after 9/11, the balance of judgment had to shift to greater vigilance. Technically speaking, none of this was necessary because of Saddam’s flagrant violation of U.N. Resolution 1441 (which, by the way, also did not describe Saddam’s threat as “imminent”). The point was less that we knew the threat was imminent, but that we couldn’t know for sure that it wasn’t. I’d argue that this complex argument is completely upheld by what the Kay report has found so far: a clear, underground system for a biological and chemical weapons capacity, with the possibility of actual weapons yet to be discovered. It may be that the threat turns out to be less than feared. The question then becomes: given that we could not have known for sure at the time, should the president have risked waiting or tolerating Saddam? Would another delay have removed the doubt? Hindsight is easy. But real decisions have to be made without it. If the Democratic candidates want to argue that they would have taken the risk and allowed Saddam to stay in power, then they need to say so clearly. Howard Dean already has. He would have left Saddam in place and hoped that the nightmare of terrorists with Saddam-provided WMDS wouldn’t take place. After 9/11, I consider that an act of gross irresponsibility. But some do not. Let’s debate that, shall we? It’s still the critical question in the coming campaign: whom do you to trust to protect us?
The Dish 