The Threatening Record by David Sirota, Christy Harvey & Judd Legum TomPaine.com 10:58pm 6th Feb, 2004   The Threatening Record     (David Sirota, Christy Harvey and Judd Legum are with the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan research and educational institute).    In a major speech this morning addressing the failure to find WMD in Iraq, CIA Director George Tenet said the intelligence community never told the White House that Iraq was an imminent threat to America—a stunning blow to the White House, considering its repeated and unequivocal claims that war was necessary because Iraq was an "imminent," "immediate," "urgent" and "mortal" threat.    Tenet's speech follows an interview last night on "60 Minutes II" with the State Department's top intelligence officer, Greg Theilmann, who said, "The main problem [before the war] was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence. They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show...They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community and most of the blame to the senior administration officials."    Tenet's remarks are consistent with the intelligence community's repeated warnings to the White House that the president's WMD case for war was weak. Not only did the intelligence community not say Iraq was an imminent threat, but in many instances they acknowledged they had no hard evidence about Iraq's WMD at all. Consider this: In 1997, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified there were "no indications" that Iraq was able to produce nuclear weapons or had "clandestinely acquired such material." The Defense Intelligence Agency told the White House in September 2002, that there was "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons" and said, "a substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UN actions."    The State Department's intelligence agency warned the White House against the WMD claims in October 2002, saying, "The activities we have detected do not ... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons." And just this week, Newsweek exclusively reported, two separate government panels—including one chaired by Donald Rumsfeld—reported before the war that assertions about Iraq's WMD "were based on suspicions, not hard data." The panels "got access to CIA materials" and concluded that the "absence of hard evidence was so striking" that they specifically developed a "Wizard of Oz theory: that the whole Iraq WMD program was smoke-and-mirrors, and Saddam was just a little guy behind a curtain."    Here’s a list of the White House’s warnings:    * "There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."    White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03    * "We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."    President Bush, 7/17/03    * Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time."    White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03    * "Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now."    President Bush, 7/2/03    * "Absolutely."    White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03    * "We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended."    President Bush 4/24/03    * "The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."    Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03    * "It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."    Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03    * "The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."    President Bush, 3/19/03    * "The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."    President Bush, 3/16/03    * "This is about imminent threat."    White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03    * Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."    Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03    * Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world."    Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03    * Iraq "threatens the United States of America."    Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03    * "Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."    Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03    * "Well, of course he is."    White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, responding to the question "is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?" 1/26/03    * "Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction."    Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03    * "The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat."    President Bush, 1/3/03    * "The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands."    President Bush, 11/23/02    * "I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? 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?"    Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02    * "Saddam Hussein is a threat to America."    President Bush, 11/3/02    * "I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."    President Bush, 11/1/02    * "There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein."    President Bush, 10/28/02    * "The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace."    President Bush, 10/16/02    * "There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."    President Bush, 10/7/02    * "The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."    President Bush, 10/2/02    * "There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."    President Bush, 10/2/02    * "This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."    President Bush, 9/26/02    * "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."    Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02    * "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent—that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."    Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02    * "Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."    Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/04
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