Neither example you have shown stated who he was an imminent threat to. Ask the Kurds about imminent threats, ask Kuwait about imminent threats. Unfortunately, you can't ask the 200,000 people found in mass graves about imminent threats.
"Neither example you have shown stated who he was an imminent threat to. Ask the Kurds about imminent threats, ask Kuwait about imminent threats. Unfortunately, you can't ask the 200,000 people found in mass graves about imminent threats."
Actually, in the Dan Bartlett and Ari Fleisher examples, it's pretty clear the imminent threat is to the U.S. In the Scott McClellan example, Scott makes it ambiguous. And of course, that's sort of the point. He wanted to give the impression that Saddam was an imminent threat to the U.S. but knew there would be fallout if he were too explicit about it. Like I said in previous posts, to intentionally give a skewed or false impression, even while telling a technical truth, is to tell a lie for all moral purposes. And of course, the administration very often used terms like "urgent" threat, which is essentially synonymous, and designed to give regular viewers the same impression.
My whole point from the beginning of this line of argument was that we should not dilute the standard of a lie just because it happens to be politically convenient for us at the moment. I never, ever, ever want to be so blinded by politics that I start splitting hairs in the way that's necessary to say the administration has been totally honest about the war.
What I'd rather say is that this is an imperfect world, where people often lie to achieve their objectives, Republican administrations included. For the moment, we can't make that go away. What matters most to us as citizens is that the general principle was right, and the moral course of action was to support the invasion, regardless of the little lies told along the way.