The Republican assault on "political hate speech" (11/13)

By Brendan Nyhan

Over the last two months, the Republican Party has begun a systematic effort to label attacks on President Bush by Democratic presidential candidates as "political hate speech," a new piece of political jargon intended to delegitimize criticism of Bush. It appears this strategy will expanded in the coming months -- a recent memo from Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie urged party officials to adopt the term in their rhetoric. (Read the whole column.)

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11/13/2003 07:43:35 AM EST |

More on "imminent threat" (11/13)

By Ben Fritz

Many readers have responded to our column last week about whether the Bush administration argued that Iraq posed an "imminent threat." In particular, they have noted an additional instance of a Bush aide using the phrase, questioned the connection of administration arguments that Iraq could pose an imminent threat to Turkey, and, most frequently, argued that the Bush administration scared the public into thinking Iraq was an imminent threat. None of these cases, however, alter the argument we have made.

Several readers, echoing Josh Marshall, have pointed to a quote from White House Communication Director Dan Bartlett that should have been included in the piece. Appearing on CNN's Late Edition on January 26, Bartlett was asked by host Wolf Blitzer, "Is [Saddam Hussein] an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?" Bartlett responded:

Well, of course he is. He has made it very clear his hatred for the United States of America. He's made it very clear through the past years and since he's been in power his desire to dominate the region.

And as he acquires these weapons, particularly if he were to get a nuclear weapon, it would change the game in the entire world if Saddam Hussein, based on his past, based on his history of aggression, to acquire the type of weapons and then potentially to marry up with terrorists so he wouldn't have the finger prints, is a scenario that we can't afford to take.

Like the two quotes from Fleischer is response to similar questions, Bartlett's statement is important and should have been cited in our original piece, but it still does not outweigh the many quotes from Bush himself arguing for war on grounds other than imminence. Summarizing an argument, after all, means one must fairly balance all of the different points made, not just latch onto the few that are most convenient for one's point of view. Furthermore, it's notable that the evidence Bartlett points to, such as the possibility that Saddam could obtain nuclear weapons and then pass them onto terrorists, does not indicate an imminent threat, but one that could develop in the future.

Some have also noted a comment by Scott McClellan last February, when he was deputy White House press secretary. Asked about whether NATO should support Turkey in the event of war in Iraq, McClellan responded, "And I think it's important to note that the request from a country under Article IV that faces an imminent threat goes to the very core of the NATO alliance and its purpose." Asked a similar question again, he said, "This is about an imminent threat."

McClellan was arguing that in the case of a war with Iraq, Turkey would face an imminent threat from its neighbor. He was not saying that Iraq posed an imminent threat to Turkey at the time, let alone that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the US.

Finally, many continue to argue that the administration attempted to scare the American people about the threat Iraq posed, making people think it was an imminent threat. Some have said the Bush administration did this through strategic ambiguity, a tactic we have criticized when used by Bush to imply a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein as well as between Saddam and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

One of the most cited pieces of evidence was the phrase "mushroom cloud," which both President Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice uttered. In context, however, it's clear that while they were conjuring images of disaster that appear hyperbolic in retrospect, neither used it to imply an imminent threat. Addressing the nation on October 7 of last year, for instance, Bush said, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Rice, meanwhile, said in an appearance on CNN on September 8, 2002, that, "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Both are essentially saying that if we wait for proof of an imminent threat, it may come in the form of a nuclear attack. These statements and other, similar ones may have exaggerated or distorted evidence to create fear amongst the public. But as we have shown, the Bush administration generally made a case for war that described Iraq as a "grave" threat but not one that was necessarily imminent; the accuracy of its descriptions of the nature and extent of that threat are a separate issue.

Language such as the "mushroom cloud" image and the several acknowledgments of an "imminent threat" can certainly be reasonably challenged by critics. But they can't be used to demonstrate that Bush's case for war was primarily about Iraq being an imminent threat.

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Related links:
-Sorting out the "imminent threat" debate (Ben Fritz, 11/3/03)
-Spinsanity on the Iraq war

11/12/2003 10:37:27 PM EST |

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