{"id":101,"date":"2004-03-17T23:14:45","date_gmt":"2004-03-17T23:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/101"},"modified":"2004-03-17T23:14:45","modified_gmt":"2004-03-17T23:14:45","slug":"caught-on-video-beats-caught-in-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/101","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Caught on Video&#8221; beats &#8220;Caught in Text&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oh dear. The whole &#8220;did the Bush administration use the word <em>imminent<\/em>&#8221; question has been debated for several months now, but seeing it come across in video is much more powerful. Compare and contrast this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/site\/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&#038;b=24970\">excerpt<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/\">Center for American Progress<\/a> and this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moveon.org\/censure\/caughtonvideo\/\">new ad<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/moveon.org\/\">MoveOn.org<\/a> that excerpts <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/htdocs\/pdf\/face_031404.pdf\">last Sunday&#8217;s Face The Nation<\/a>:<\/p>\n<table align=\"center\" bgcolor=\"#CCCCFF\" border=0 cellpadding=5>\n<tr>\n<th>Text Snippet from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/site\/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&#038;b=24970\">CAP<\/a><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The Bush Administration is now saying it never told the public that Iraq was an &#8220;imminent&#8221; threat, and therefore it should be absolved for overstating the case for war and misleading the American people about Iraq&#8217;s WMD. Just this week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan lashed out at critics saying &#8220;Some in the media have chosen to use the word &#8216;imminent&#8217;. Those were not words we used.&#8221; But a closer look at the record shows that McClellan himself and others did use the phrase &#8220;imminent threat&#8221; \u2014 while also using the synonymous phrases &#8220;mortal threat,&#8221; &#8220;urgent threat,&#8221; &#8220;immediate threat&#8221;, &#8220;serious and mounting threat&#8221;, &#8220;unique threat,&#8221; and claiming that Iraq was actively seeking to &#8220;strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction&#8221; \u2014 all just months after Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that Iraq was &#8220;contained&#8221; and &#8220;threatens not the United States.&#8221; While Iraq was certainly a dangerous country, the Administration&#8217;s efforts to claim it never hyped the threat in the lead-up to war is belied by its statements.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;<br \/> \u2014 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9\/19\/02<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>&#8220;Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent &#8211; 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.&#8221;<br \/> \u2014 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9\/18\/02<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>  <\/p>\n<table align=\"center\" bgcolor=\"#CCCCFF\" border=0 cellpadding=15>\n<tr>\n<th>Video from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moveon.org\/censure\/caughtonvideo\/\">MoveOn.org<\/a><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<td align=\"center\"> <OBJECT classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0\" WIDTH=\"440\" HEIGHT=\"470\" id=\"videoFramework\" align=\"\">  <PARAM NAME=movie VALUE=\"http:\/\/flash.moveon.org\/censure\/caughtonvideo\/videoFramework.swf?config=http:\/\/flash.moveon.org\/censure\/caughtonvideo\/video.xml\">  <PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=high>  <PARAM NAME=scale VALUE=noscale>  <PARAM NAME=bgcolor VALUE=#000000>  <EMBED src=\"http:\/\/flash.moveon.org\/censure\/caughtonvideo\/videoFramework.swf?config=http:\/\/flash.moveon.org\/censure\/caughtonvideo\/video.xml\" quality=high scale=noscale bgcolor=#000000  WIDTH=\"440\" HEIGHT=\"470\" NAME=\"videoFramework\" TYPE=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" PLUGINSPAGE=\"http:\/\/www.macromedia.com\/go\/getflashplayer\"><\/EMBED> <\/OBJECT> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>I should state for the record that I&#8217;m probably the only one in my social group (and perhaps the entire Bay Area) that actually supported going into Iraq. I&#8217;m still not convinced I was wrong, though I also thank my friends for not rubbing it in as my faith in intelligence reports and a few level-headed people in our current administration proved unfounded. But regardless of whether going into Iraq was a good idea and regardless of whether our executive branch screwed up on our planning and execution, the back-filling Rumsfeld is doing here is just embarrassing. After all, it&#8217;s not about the activity but about the lying about it, right?<\/p>\n<p class=\"references\">References<\/p>\n<ul class=\"references\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/site\/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&#038;b=24970\">In Their Own Words: Iraq&#8217;s &#8216;Imminent&#8217; Threat<\/a> (Center for American Progress, 29 January 2004)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.moveon.org\/censure\/caughtonvideo\/\">Caught on Video<\/a> (MoveOn.org, 17 March 2004)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/htdocs\/pdf\/face_031404.pdf\">CBS Face The Nation<\/a> (Donald Rumsfeld, Thomas Friedman and Bob Schieffer, CBS News, 14 March 2004)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/commdocs.house.gov\/committees\/security\/has261000.000\/has261000_0.HTM\">United States Policy Towards Iraq: Hearing before the Committee on Armed Services House of Representatives<\/a> (Donald Rumsfeld, 18 September 2002)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh dear. The whole &#8220;did the Bush administration use the word <em>imminent<\/em>&#8221; question has been debated for several months now, but seeing it come across in video is much more powerful. Compare and contrast this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/site\/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&#038;b=24970\">excerpt<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/\">Center for American Progress<\/a> and this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moveon.org\/censure\/caughtonvideo\/\">new ad<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/moveon.org\/\">MoveOn.org<\/a> that excerpts <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/htdocs\/pdf\/face_031404.pdf\">last Sunday&#8217;s Face The Nation<\/a>:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}