We Never Said Iraq Was Imminent Threat - CIA Chief

The Scotsman ^ | Thursday, 5th February 2004

[NordP]

And the truth shall set us all free.

End of story.

Great post - thanks for finding that.

Excellent President - re-elect him.

Tomorrow - we'll have one.

[Jeff Chandler]

Laura Ingram predicted that the "no imminent threat" line would be the headline for the leftist news media, completely ignoring the rest of the speach: Analysts "painted an objective assessment for our policy makers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests, " he said in a speech at Georgetown University.

"No one told us what to say or how to say it," Tenet said.

[alnick]

Wouldn't invading Iraq and going to war sort of imply an imminent threat

Not when the president explicitly said that if we wait for the threat to become imminent, it would be too late.

[demlosers]

The media and the Rats

[azhenfud]

"Tenet needs to be fired."

Tenet is telling the truth; Democrats and critics only remember the "imminent threat" as they thought they heard it, but not in the context it was used....

[Michael81Dus]

Didn´t Blair say that Iraq could launch WMD missiles within 45 minutes???

[camas]

do not agree. it is time to stop playing politics with the CIA that started with the peanut farmer, carter.

maybe tenet is not the best, but to change him just for the sake of the change is a bad idea. i listened to him and he seemed to make a little sense.

[Atlantic Friend]

What, during the Iran-Iraq war ? No way, unless we would have wanted a triumphant Iranian Revolution toppling the whole Middle-East.

Remember those years, when Iran drove Iraqi forces past their frontier, mined the Ormuz Strait and fired missiles and rockets at oil tankers ? Iran was on the move, not Iraq, and it wanted a big Islamic Republic run by ayatollahs from Meshed to Riyadh.

I'd say the best moment to topple Saddam was in 1991, when his army had been broken to pieces and when the regional context was more favorable.

[alnick]

Now we're parsing the word "imminent." 'Well, sure - Iraq was a threat, they weren't an imminent threat.' Just what is Tenet trying to claim ?? Tenet needs to be fired.

Before the war, democrats were all over the talk shows yelling that the threat wasn't imminent. How could we consider going into Iraq since it wasn't yet an imminent threat? The Republicans explained that it would be irresponsible to wait until Saddam ready to use them against us. The president stressed this in his SOTU address, that the threat was a grave and gathering danger and that it would be foolish to do what the democrats had been suggesting, that is, wait until the threat is imminent before we do anything to stop it.

Almost immediately after we invaded Iraq, the democrats, in unison, changed their tune from "why is the president wanting to go into Iraq before the threat is imminent" to "the president claimed the threat was imminent."

The claim that the president declared Iraq an imminent threat to justify the war is an obvious lie.

[demlosers]

Didn´t Blair say that Iraq could launch WMD missiles within 45 minutes???

You got a link for this quote???

[demlosers]

A good post.

[stuartcr]

OK, sure.

[alnick]

Thank you. I'll bookmark that one.

[Michael81Dus]

But he did not back Prime Minister Tony Blair's notorious claim that they could be fired in 45 minutes.

Just did a google-search. It´s well known that Blair stated that.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040121/325/ejzrb.html

[stuartcr]

I said OK.

[jayef]

You're making the same mistake the media makes. You're focusing on one word and ignoring the context. Tenet is being pretty stand-up in his statement. Nobody ever said anything about imminent. A "gathering danger" is the phrase that The President used in the 2002 SOTU.

[jayef]

Uh, no. You don't think a little thing like the truth would stop the BBC from pursuing their agenda, do you?