If you listened closely to the Bush press conference yesterday, you may have noticed a new word that Bush seems to have latched onto.
In explaining the importance of the war, Bush said, “The first step was to remove Saddam Hussein because he was a threat, a gathering threat, as I think I put it.”
A few minutes later, he returned to his new favorite word.
“The American people know that Saddam Hussein was a gathering danger, as I said,” Bush said. “And he was a gathering danger, and the world is safer as a result for us removing him from power.”
In fact, Bush appears to have grown quite fond of this little phrase.
A few weeks ago, on Oct. 8, Bush spoke at the Republican National Committee Presidential Gala in DC. He said, “One of the important lessons of September the 11th, 2001 is that our country must deal with gathering threats before they materialize, before they come back to haunt us. And that’s what we did in Iraq.”
The very next day, at a campaign event in Kentucky, Bush referred to Saddam Hussein as “a gathering threat.”
In fact, Dick Cheney has gotten in on the act. Two days after Bush’s Kentucky speech, the vice president gave a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, in which he twice described Hussein as “a gathering threat.”
So, what’s with the new buzzword? I think it has something to do with weapons of mass destruction, or in this case, the lack thereof.
When one cuts through the rhetoric, the White House based the Iraqi invasion on an immediate threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. We couldn’t wait, the White House said, for the U.N. Security Council to approve our efforts, nor could we wait for U.N. weapons inspectors, the summer, our traditional allies in Europe and North America, or even definitive proof of our claims. We had to act immediately because the threat posed by Iraq, Bush said, was so serious.
In fact, a year ago, Bush said the “danger to our country is grave and it is growing” because Iraq could “launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given.”
Of course, we now know that the “45-minute” claim is completely bogus, like nearly all of Bush’s claims about Iraq.
But the point is, before the war began, Bush did his best to convince the world that the incredible danger Hussein posed demanded immediate action. The argument wasn’t that Iraq could pose a problem at some point down the road, it was that Iraq had to be dealt with right away or a catastrophe could happen.
There were other dictatorships and other countries where the population was treated horrifically, but Iraq was different, the White House insisted, because it was on the brink of using a vast arsenal of deadly weapons, which necessitated a prompt invasion to defend against terrorism. Hussein, we were told, posed a clear and present danger to his neighbors, the U.S., and the world.
Now that we know with some certainty that this was not the case, Bush, though hesitant to admit it, is in a bit of a bind. His administration insisted that the Iraqi threat was immediate and now it’s clear it wasn’t.
What to do? Alter the rhetoric! Iraq may not have been an immediate threat after all, but it was, Bush has taken to arguing, a “gathering” threat.
Those wacky White House communications folks sure are clever. By labeling Iraq a “gathering” threat, the administration is, once again, moving the goal posts.
Sure, Hussein couldn’t seriously attack us or any of our allies, but he was on his way to becoming a threat. Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, but since Hussein was a “gathering” threat, Iraq might have been working its way towards having WMD someday.
Bush can repeat his new favorite phrase every day for the rest of his (hopefully limited) time in the White House, but it won’t change the fact that he misled the world.