The post-war debate about the pre-war rhetoric — the final chapter!!

Holsclaw and Schwartz offer their final rebuttals to the other person’s positions (click here, here, here, and here for the backstory). I’ll render my decision on Monday. I’m putting Holsclaw’s reply first because it’s shorter — to go straight to Schwarz, click here. Now to Holsclaw: As the debate comes to a close, I realize that I have said most everything I wanted to say. Schwarz came up with his best quotes, and I showed that in context they were not arguments for an imminent threat. Barring quotes that I haven’t been able to respond to, the case that Bush was arguing for an imminent threat is amazingly sparse considering that the Bush administration was making its case for more than a year. So, for a change, I’ll try to make a brief summary. The question is did the Bush administration argue that Iraq was an imminent threat. They clearly participated in arguments where people like Kennedy and Byrd thought that the question of imminent threat was important. They did not however present imminent threat as their own argument for the war. From the very beginning, questions of imminent threat were used by opponents of the war, because everyone understood that an imminent threat threshold was too high to justify a war against Iraq. Again and again the Bush administration argued that Saddam was a serious threat because of his past behaviour. Constantly the Bush administration argued that Saddam was a growing threat because of the impossibility of indefinitely sustaining an inspection regime. Bush always argued that Saddam was an important threat, a threat that would get worse with time, and a threat which ought not be left to fester. ‘Imminent threat’ however was a term with a very specific meaning in the debate. Bush understood that his administration couldn’t meet the burden of ‘imminent threat’. That is the reason why he resisted Byrd’s attempt to add ‘imminent threat’ to the Senate’s authorizing language. Link A complete fabrication does not have to be wrong in every single particular. If I said about Howard Dean: “He is a man with no real experience in government, who wants to surrender to our enemies and destroy the engine of our economy,” this would be a complete fabrication even though certain parts are totally true. He is a man. His formal position is not exactly the same as stated, though Roget’s thesaurus says that ‘surrender’ is synonymous with abandon. He has no experience in federal government. Parts of the statement have some association with the truth, but the statement as a whole is a complete fabrication. Bush did not argue that Iraq was an imminent threat. Even with the cherry picked quotes which Schwarz uses it is apparent that the administration was arguing for a serious threat but not an imminent one. This is even more true if you analyze the debate as a whole. Bush in fact, during the most public possible speech on the subject, specifically argued that the imminent threat standard was an inappropriate standard for choosing whether or not to wage war against Iraq. It is a fabrication to characterize this as Bush’s administration arguing that Iraq was an imminent threat. And now to Schwarz: (Thanks to Slyblog and Anonymous Blogger.) 1. I’ll begin my final post with an excerpt from the official National Security Strategy of the United States, signed by George Bush on September 17, 2002:

For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat — most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack. We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries. Rogue states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction — weapons that can be easily concealed, delivered covertly, and used without warning.

Given this, there are only two possible interpretations of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq: (A) The Bush administration was arguing that, by its own definition, Iraq fell under the concept of an imminent threat; (B) The Bush administration was arguing that an invasion of Iraq would fall outside America’s official National Security Strategy By this point I wouldn’t be surprised if some people would endorse the second possibility, as preposterous as it is. But in any case, this clearly invalidates Sebastian’s claims about how imminent should be defined for this bet. For much, much, much more, see below. 2. To be honest, I wish I hadn’t felt I had to cite a thesaurus. The reason I did is because debate about this issue seems to have an Alice in Wonderland quality, in which words have no agreed-upon meaning. “Moptop” really embraces this beautiful Humpty Dumpty spirit in his comment, “Gathering does not mean Imminent no matter what the thesaurus says.” Weirdly, in Sebastian’s remarks about thesauruses he takes us further down the rabbit hole — since he contends that synonyms are merely a “range of somewhat similar meaning words.” I’m sorry, this is just not so. I hate to have to do this, but here are four definitions of “synonym”: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition “A word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in a language.” Cambridge International Dictionary of English “A word or phrase which has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or phrase in the same language.” Infoplease.com “A word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another in the language, as joyful, elated, glad.” Wordsmyth “A word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word of the same language.” If we are going by the dictionary meaning of synonymous, it cannot be argued that the Bush administration did not use words having the same or nearly the same meaning as “imminent threat.” Therefore, if we are going by thesauruses and dictionaries, it is not a complete fabrication that the Bush administration argued Iraq was an imminent threat. 3. To be fair, of course, this is not the main sense of Sebastian’s argument. Rather, he is explicitly arguing that in the context of the debate regarding Iraq, everyone agreed that “imminent” was being used with a non-standard, particularly narrow definition. He writes, “phrases have different meanings in different contexts.” In a direct email to me, he fleshed out this point:

“Imminent Threat” as used in the Iraq debate is a specific term used especially by Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Byrd to describe a threat which is right on the verge of coming to fruition. In his formulation it is akin to the Catholic Church’s “Just War” doctrine… The threat would never be “imminent” enough for Kennedy and Byrd, or more precisely the window between imminent threat and too late was ridiculously narrow… Bush didn’t argue that this “imminent” threat level was the appropriate threat level to trigger the war. He argued that a completely different level of threat was needed. Hence my statement: “it is a complete fabrication that Bush argued there was an imminent threat.” He argued for a different standard… He said in a quote which we have already discussed and which was part of the State of the Union address, that “imminent” was too late. He is using the term “imminent” just as his opponents were in the whole debate.

This could, in theory, be a good argument — if everyone discussing Iraq had in fact agreed that we were all using a “specific,” “ridiculously narrow” definition of imminent. Obviously, this is not the case at all. First of all, Sebastian provides no evidence of any kind that opponents of the war were using a special, ridiculously narrow definition. Here are the relevant quotes from the sources he cites: Kennedy:

There is clearly a threat from Iraq, and there is clearly a danger, but the Administration has not made a convincing case that we face such an imminent threat to our national security that a unilateral, pre-emptive American strike and an immediate war are necessary… We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction. Our intelligence community is also deeply concerned about the acquisition of such weapons by Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria and other nations. But information from the intelligence community over the past six months does not point to Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States or a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.

Byrd:

“Does Saddam Hussein pose an imminent threat to the United States?” Byrd asked. “Should Congress grant the President authority to launch a preemptive attack on Iraq?”

Kerry:

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said he regretted that “some in the Congress rushed so quickly to support” the Lieberman-McCain-Warner resolution. But he then said he plans to vote for that resolution… “But approving this resolution does not mean military action is imminent or unavoidable. The vote I will give to the president is for one reason and one reason only. I will not support a unilateral war against Iraq unless the threat is imminent.“

Even more significantly, of course, none of the available evidence about what the Bush administration meant by imminent indicates they were using an unusually narrow definition. In fact, exactly the opposite: it indicates they were using an unusually broad definition of imminent. As I initially cited, Bush’s official National Security Strategy states: “We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries.” Next, here is Condoleezza Rice, speaking about Iraq and the new National Security Strategy on October 1, 2002: “new technology requires new thinking about when a threat actually becomes ‘imminent.’” Here is Donald Rumsfeld being interviewed on November 14, 2002. Note that Rumsfeld himself here uses “immediate threat” as a synonym for “imminent threat”:

Kroft: Mr. Secretary, we’ve also, in addition to phone calls, we’ve gotten emails, and I want to read one to you. I’m the parent of an Army Reserve soldier who has already gone through his training and is on the next call up list to be deployed to the Persian Gulf area within the next few weeks, for a period of six months to two years. I’m not yet convinced that Iraq is such an imminent threat to the United States that it justifies having my son placed in harms way. If I were there in person, speaking to you, what would you say to convince me? Rumsfeld: Well, first, we’re grateful that your son is serving, and wants to serve. And I can’t help but recognize the feelings that a parent has. What would I say to you? Well, I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11th and ask yourself this question, was the attack that took place on September 11th an imminent threat the month before, or two months before, or three months before, or six months before? When did the attack on September 11th become an imminent threat? When was it sufficiently dangerous to our country that had we known about it that we could have stepped up and stopped it and saved 3,000 lives? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years, or a week, or a month, and if Saddam Hussein were to take his weapons of mass destruction and transfer them, either use them himself, or transfer them to the al Qaeda, and somehow the al Qaeda were to engage in an attack on the United States, or an attack on U.S. forces overseas, with a weapon of mass destruction you’re not talking about 300, or 3,000 people potentially being killed, but 30,000, or 100,000 of human beings. So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something, is a tough question. But if you think about it, it’s the nexus, the connection, the relationship between terrorist states and weapons of mass destruction with terrorist networks that has changed our lives, and changed the security environment in the world.

Here is Paul Wolfowitz speaking on November 15th of last year:

Another question that I’m often asked, is “why act now, why not wait until the threat is imminent?”… The notion that we can wait until the threat is imminent assumes that we will know when it is imminent… Just stop and think for a moment. Just when were the attacks of September 11th imminent? Presumably they were imminent on September 10th. Were they imminent in August of 2001? As a matter of fact, if we had taken military action against Afghanistan in August of 2001 it would have had no affect on the September 11th plotters—they were all here in the United States, they were all ready to go. One might even argue it was already imminent in the spring of 2001 when all of the hijackers had arrived here. Was it imminent in early 2000 when all of the pilots had arrived in the United States? Perhaps it was imminent a few months before when Muhammad Atta and his friends in Hamburg had laid their plans.

Here is Donald Rumsfeld answering a reporter’s question on this issue — the day after the State of the Union address:

Q: Do you believe Iraq represents an imminent threat to the United States? Rumsfeld: You know, that is a question that is coming up quite a bit, and it’s an important question… Now, at what moment was the threat to — for September 11th imminent? Was it imminent a week before, a month before, a year before, an hour before? Was it imminent befor you could — while you could still stop it, or was it imminent only after it started and you couldn’t stop it, or you could stop one of the three planes instead of two or all three? These are very tough questions… How do we, how do you, how do all of us, how do the people in the world decide the imminence of something? And I would submit that the hurdle, the bar that one must go over, changes depending on the potential lethality of the act.

Since we’re talking about context, let’s closely examine the context of this. George Bush had said in the one of the most high profile speeches on earth that Iraq might “bring us a day of horror like none we have ever known.” The very next day, Rumsfeld explained that the meaning of imminence “changes depending on the potential lethality of the act.” Finally, since Sebastian brought up Just War theory, it’s worth noting that the Bush administration invited Michael Novak to come to the Vatican and present an address arguing that an invasion of Iraq was in accordance with Just War doctrine. So, to repeat: Sebastian argues that when discussing Iraq everyone had agreed upon a non-standard, very narrow definition of “imminent threat.” Yet not only does he provide no evidence that this was the case, the Bush administration explicitly argued for a broad definition of imminent. This leaves us with the State of the Union address. I think it would be justified to ignore Sebastian’s remarks about it, since the context in which Bush was using the term “imminent” was nothing at all like the one Sebastian claims. Nonetheless, I think it’s worth examining, because Sebastian’s parsing of its meaning is such pure gobbledygook. First, he agrees it’s “correct that Bush states that we cannot know whether the threat is imminent.” Then he writes that Bush was equating a threat that has fully emerged with a threat that is imminent: “[Bush says] that if we permit the threat to fully emerge, if we allow the threat to become imminent, we have waited too long.” In other words, by Sebastian’s logic, Bush meant that even at the point when a threat has “fully and suddenly emerged” and “all actions, all words, and all recriminations” are too late — which can only mean the point when the terrorists and tyrants have struck and an attack has actually occurred — we may be unable to perceive it. Somehow we may not notice “a day of horror like none we have ever known.” I suggest it is this rhetoric of Sebastian’s which is tortured, not mine. Let me therefore repeat and elaborate on my straightforward, commonsense interpretation of Bush’s statement: Bush was not using an extremely narrow definition of imminent. He wasn’t equating an “imminent threat” to a threat that had fully and suddenly emerged and about which it is too late to do anything. Rather, he was saying that Iraq could be an imminent threat for a period of time without our perceiving it as imminent — as we were unaware in August, 2001 that Al-Qaida would soon destroy the World Trade Center. Then the threat from Iraq might fully and suddenly emerge, just like the Al-Qaida attacks fully and suddenly emerged on September 11th. So Bush wasn’t saying that imminence was not the correct standard to use — ie, that we should still invade Iraq even if we knew it wasn’t an imminent threat. To sum up: Sebastian has provided no basis in reality for his claim that we should be employing a “specific,” “ridiculously narrow” definition for imminent threat. Indeed, reality points in precisely the opposite direction. So, we can use the meanings found in thesauruses and dictionaries. Or we can use the more expansive definition of imminent suggested by the Bush administration. Either way, the idea that the Bush administration argued that Iraq was an imminent threat is absolutely not a complete fabrication. 4. I hate to go into any more detail, but I feel like I have to. Sebastian’s treatment of the Fleischer quotes exacerbates my feeling we’re in a situation in which words can mean anything at all. For instance, Sebastian states that in both quotes, the “imminent threat” portion of the reporters’ questions was a “mere preface to the substance of the question.” This is just not true. In the first Fleischer quote, the “imminent threat” portion is not a mere preface, but an absolutely critical part of the question the reporter is asking. Without it the reporter’s question makes no sense whatsoever. And Fleischer answers in the affirmative:

Q Ari, the President has been saying that the threat from Iraq is imminent, that we have to act now to disarm the country of its weapons of mass destruction, and that it has to allow the U.N. inspectors in, unfettered, no conditions, so forth. MR. FLEISCHER: Yes. Q The chief U.N. inspector, however, is saying that, even under those conditions, it would be as much as a year before he could actually make a definitive report to the U.N. that Iraq is complying with the resolutions and allowing the inspections to take place. Isn’t there a kind of a dichotomy? Can we wait a year, if it’s so imminent we have to act now? MR. FLEISCHER: Well, that’s why the President has gone to the United Nations to make certain that the conditions by which the inspectors would go back would be very different from the current terms that inspectors have been traveling around Iraq in as they’ve been thwarted in their attempt to find out what weapons Saddam Hussein has. But it’s also important to hold Saddam Hussein accountable to make certain he no longer violates the will of the United Nations.

The meaning of Fleischer’s statement is not a mystery. The only plausible interpretation is that he means: Yes, the president has been saying the threat is so imminent that we have to act now. The president is acting now to make sure there are inspections that aren’t thwarted. If there are inspections that aren’t thwarted then the threat may diminish. Without inspections, or with inspections that are thwarted, the threat will remain imminent. In the second Fleischer quote, the “imminent threat” portion again is not a “preface to the substance of the question.” Indeed, again, it is the substance of the question:

Q: Well, we went to war, didn’t we, to find these — because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn’t that true? MR. FLEISCHER: Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all. We said what we said because we meant it.

It’s beyond me how Sebastian can claim that Fleischer is not here agreeing that the U.S. said “these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States.” To understand how ridiculous this is, let’s imagine a parallel question and response:

Q: Well, we went to war, didn’t we, to find these — because we said that these beanie babies were really cute and we wanted them? Isn’t that true? MR. FLEISCHER: Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their possession of beanie babies. And nothing has changed on that front at all. We said what we said because we meant it.

Sebastian would then argue that it was a complete fabrication that Fleischer confirmed that “we said that these beanie babies were really cute and we wanted them.” Lastly, I note again the contradiction between Fleischer’s behavior and Sebastian’s claim that the Bush administration “strenuously avoided labeling” Iraq as an imminent threat. Here’s another example in which exactly the opposite happened:

Q: There is no imminent threat. MR. FLEISCHER: This is where — Helen, if you were President you might view things differently. But you have your judgment and the President has others.

Yup. Fleischer told a reporter: “You have your judgment [that there is no imminent threat from Iraq] and the president has others.” Contrast this to what happens when White House press secretaries truly are strenuously avoiding labeling a country an imminent threat. On those occasions there’s no question what they mean:

Q Scott, two questions. First, on Iran. Can you clarify, does the President believe that Iran represents an imminent threat to the United States? MR. McCLELLAN: We’ve never said that. We’ve said that we have serious concerns about their nuclear activities, that there is no reason other than that they would be pursuing nuclear weapons, for them to have those — to have nuclear energy. Q But the threat is not imminent to the United States. MR. McCLELLAN: We’ve never said that.

5. Regarding Radio Free Europe, Sebastian is incorrect when he says we are not talking about third party characterizations. It’s true they don’t have a bearing on what the Bush administration argued, but they do on the issue of “complete fabrication.” A quick Nexis search shows there were dozens if not hundreds of articles before the war saying the Bush administration was claiming Iraq was an imminent threat. Yet, Sebastian claims (1) everyone had agreed upon and was using a specific, narrow definition of imminent, and (2) this was a definition of imminent that Bush had not invoked. So to win this bet, Sebastian must argue that all of these news outlets, including one funded by the U.S. government itself, quite consciously engaged in a complete fabrication. 6. Regarding Rumsfeld’s “immediate threat” statement, I’d first like to note that Sebastian writes that “we suspected Saddam had biological and chemical weapons at the very time of Rumsfield’s report.” I think a better way of putting this would be that “we stated over and over and over there was no doubt whatsoever that Saddam had biological and chemical weapons.” In any case, as I noted above, Rumsfeld himself when talking on another occasion about the danger posed by Iraq used “immediate threat” as a synonym for “imminent threat.” So Sebastian is arguing that it is not only a complete fabrication to go by the standards of dictionaries and thesauruses, it is a complete fabrication to go by Rumsfeld’s own usage. 7. Regarding Bush’s Cincinnati speech, Sebastian does not address the fact that Bush said Iraq was “a threat whose outlines are far more clearly defined” than Al-Qaida’s were on September 10, 2001. I think he’s wise to avoid this — because unless Al-Qaida wasn’t an imminent threat on September 10, the only meaning of Bush’s words is that Iraq was an imminent threat. Sebastian of course acknowledges Bush said Iraq could choose “any given day” to help terrorists attack the U.S. But, says Sebastian, Bush would only have meant this was an imminent threat if he’d stated “we have intelligence reports showing that Saddam is about to give some of his longstanding stocks of chemical weapons to terrorists.” This is an interesting standard to require. Because in that very same speech, Bush said, “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.” 8. Finally, regarding the Bush website… well, I’m glad Sebastian acknowledges that Bush’s people believe that making wild claims about imminent threats “is just good politics.” At last, something on which he and I can agree.