Is This Lying Son of a Bitch For Real

Bolton denies White House had cast Iraq threat as 'imminent'

David Edwards and Josh CatonePublished: Sunday March 25, 2007

Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton on CNN's Late Edition today made the case that, over four years into the Iraq war, removing Saddam Hussein was "unquestionably" the right thing to do, even though he did not turn out to have the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that formed the basis for the Bush administration's case for going to war.

"[Saddam Hussein] and his regime were the threat to international peace and security. The president never made the argument that he constituted an imminent threat," Bolton said.
However, on more than one occasion, administration officials used the term "imminent threat" to describe Iraq in the run up to the war.

"This is about imminent threat," said then-White House spokesman Scott McClellan on February 10, 2003.

"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?" was Donald Rumsfeld's message in November 2002, implying that Iraq would need to attack the US to become more of an immediate threat than it was.

Vice President Dick Cheney in August 2002 used the similar term "mortal threat" saying, "What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."

Denying that the White House used the specific nomenclature "imminent threat" is a common defense of Bush administration officials.

In 2004, then-Director of the CIA George Tenet defended his organization's prewar estimates of Saddam Hussein's military might by saying, "They never said there was an imminent threat."
A video clip of Bolton appearing on CNN's Late Edition follows:

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