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Bush Campaign Ads . . . Brought to You by Special Interests
As President Bush's $10.5 million campaign ad blitz begins, Public Citizen released a report outlining who helped pay for the campaign ads and what favors they have received during his presidency.
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No Child Left Behind? The Funding Gap in ESEA and Other Federal Education Programs
The current reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), raises high expectations for achievement and imposes stringent measures of accountability on students, teachers, and schools.
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January 28, 2004
Bush Claims to Never Say Iraq Was "Imminent Threat"
Facing mounting pressure over charges that the White House deliberately misled the American people about Iraq's WMD, President Bush is now claiming that U.N. weapons inspectors were not allowed into Iraq before the war. Yesterday, the president said, Iraq "chose defiance. It was [Saddam's] choice to make, and he did not let us in."1
But U.N. weapons inspections led by Hans Blix began on November 27th, 2002, as noted by the State Department at the time.2 Over the course of the next five months, those inspections found "little more than 'debris'" from a WMD program that had long since been destroyed.3 The weapons inspectors were forced to leave when Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq.4 President Bush then "refused to permit the U.N. inspectors to return to Iraq."5
When asked about the issue yesterday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan claimed the entire WMD issue was unimportant because the Bush Administration had never said Iraq was a threat. He said, "the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'" to describe the Iraqi "threat" - not the Bush Administration.6
But the record shows the Administration repeatedly said Iraq was an "imminent threat." On May 7th, less than a week after the president announced the end of major combat operations, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked, "Didn't we go to war because we said WMD were a direct and imminent threat to the U.S.?" He replied, "Absolutely."7 Similarly, in November 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, "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?" Most notably, Vice President Cheney said two days after President Bush's 2003 State of the Union that Saddam Hussein "threatens the United States of America."8
Sources:
- President Bush Welcomes President Kwasniewski to White House , 01/27/2004.
- "Weapons Inspections to Begin in Iraq November 27", US State Department, 11/25/2002.
- "Blix Downgrades Prewar Assessment of Iraqi Weapons", Washington Post, 11/22/2003.
- "Weapons Inspectors Leave Iraq", CBS News, 03/18/2003.
- "Bush bars UN weapons teams from Iraq", SMH, 04/24/2003.
- Press Briefing, 01/27/2004.
- Press Briefing, 05/07/2003.
- "Confronting Iraq Crucial To War Against Terror", Truth News, 01/30/2003.
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