Alas, a TPM contest.
Certain conservative mumbojumbocrats have been trying to rewrite history by claiming that the White House never argued that Iraq posed any sort of imminent threat to the United States.
For my money, one of the most revealing quotes is the passage in the National Security Strategy the White House released in 2002, which essentially argues that the concept of âimminent threatâ must be reinterpreted to apply to countries like Iraq.
But back to our contest. Because this debate wasnât hashed out in NSC documents, but in public statements on the hustings.
Our wingerly friends have made a lot of the rarity of occurences in which the phrase âimminent threatâ was used. But they rather ignore all the instances in which administration officials told the public we had to depose Saddam right now before he could use his nuclear weapons and smallpox on us. Any quotation which conveys the imminent threat message is acceptable even it doesn’t contain the phrase ‘imminent threat.’
(One example, though certainly not the best one, might be President Bushâs statement on March 7th of this year that he would no longer âleave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons.â)
So now itâs up to you. Send us your best Bush administration âimminent threatâ quote.
The Rules: Only one submission per reader. It has to be sent to contest@talkingpointsmemo.com. It must include a citation to some published account in which the quotation appeared. And it must be received by October 27th.
Entries will be judged on imminence, relevance, provenance, bouquet and other such qualities.
To the winner goes a brand-new TPM T-Shirt (fresh from the Paris runways) in addition the resultant fame, glory and honor.