Wampum

Shut Up, He Explained

Taking a break from working on the Koufax Awards, I decided to read the transript of today’s Presidential Press conference.

Matt Yeglesias points us to one part of the press conference in which the answer did not relate to the question.

Mr. Bush was also asked about Iraqi possession of WMD. His answer was as follows:

Here's what I took away from September the 11th, 2001 -- that any time a President sees a gathering threat to the United States, we must deal with it. We can't pick or choose like we used to, could in the past. In the old days, oceans protected us from harm's way, and a President could stand back and say, well, maybe this gathering threat is an issue, maybe it's not. After September the 11th, that complacency, I guess may be the right word, no longer is relevant. And, therefore, I began to assess threats.

And the threat of Saddam Hussein was a unique threat in this sense: the world recognized he was a threat for 12 years, and 17 resolutions, I think it is -- I believe it was 17 resolutions -- for the resolution counter, give me a hand here -- 17? Seventeen resolutions. And he ignored them. He just treated the U.N. as an empty debating society, as if their resolutions meant nothing. This is a person who has used chemical weapons before, which indicated to me he was a threat. He invaded his neighbors before. This is a person who was defiant, he's a deceiver, and he was a murderer in his own country. He was a threat.

And so I went to the United Nations, as you recall, September the 12th, 2002, and said to the United Nations, let's work together to disarm this man; you recognized he had arms, we recognize he's got arms, let's disarm him. And 1441 came about, it's when the world spoke through the United Nations Security Council with one voice, and in a unanimous voice said, disarm, or there will be serious consequences. In other words, they agreed that Saddam was a threat.

And so we moved to disarm him. In other words, there were serious consequences because he was defiant.

Since then, David Kay has reported back that he had weapons programs that would have put him in material breach of 1441. What that means, of course, is that had David Kay been the lead inspector, and had done the work that he did prior to our removal of Saddam, he would have reported back to the U.N. Security Council that Saddam was, in fact, in breach of the Council resolutions that were passed.

A shorter translation is “Shut up, he explained.”

Posted by Dwight Meredith at December 15, 2003 03:48 PM | TrackBack