Reply #1: Condi and "imminent" [View All]

From MTP on the same subject, Condi didn't squirm, but the truth seems...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4515556/

MR. RUSSERT: But, Dr. Rice, leading up to the war, the rhetoric of the administration was much different than Saddam could be a threat or he has weapons programs. The president said he was, "a unique and urgent threat." It was, "a unique urgency," "a grave threat." You and the president both talked about the mushroom cloud. Scott McClelland, deputy press secretary, said it's "an imminent threat." Ari Fleischer, the press secretary, said, "absolutely," it was an imminent threat. In hindsight, looking back, it was not an imminent or urgent threat.

DR. RICE: I think what the president said in his State of the Union, Tim, is that we cannot wait until it becomes imminent. It is a gathering and grave threat. We all believed that it is an urgent threat and I believe to this day that it was an urgent threat. After 12 years of refusing to account for his weapons, of refusing to account for his activities, after 12 years of defying the international community, shooting at our pilots in no-fly zones, threatening his neighbors, sitting in the world's most dangerous region, it was an urgent threat. This could not go on. And we are safer as a result because today Iraq is no longer going to be a state of weapons of mass destruction concern. It's simply rewriting history to suggest that people did not think that Iraq was a serious weapons of mass destruction state of concern. After all, President Clinton in 1998 had committed military action to deal with Saddam. In 1998, the United States Congress had adopted a regime change strategy because we couldn't live with the threat of Saddam Hussein.

MR. RUSSERT: But the head of the CIA, George Tenet, testified this week he never said it was an imminent threat and he said it three times he had to correct the vice president or president on comments they had made about intelligence.

DR. RICE: Well, first of all, I think that what George Tenet said is that he never said it was an imminent threat. The president said in his State of the Union, "We cannot wait until it is an imminent threat." The question was how long were you going to wait with the grave and gathering danger of a regime like Saddam Hussein with capability and intent and money, refusing to answer the legitimate questions of the international system, continuing to fire at our pilots in the no-fly zone, continuing to threaten his neighbors--how long were you going to wait? And the president decided that it was time to deal with this problem, particularly in light of September 11, when we learned that we don't ever know when a threat is really imminent. Did we know on September 10 that September 11 was imminent? No, we did not. And so the president was dealing with this in a very different set of circumstances after September 11.