What the other Senator from Massachusetts said today

[TayTay]

Sen. Kennedy had an excellent kick-ass speech on the floor today. (It's a good day to be from Massachusetts.)

http://kennedy.senate.gov/index_high.html

In his march to war, President Bush exaggerated the threat to the American people. It was not subtle. It was not nuanced. It was pure, unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a devious strategy to convince the American people that Saddam's ability to provide nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda justified immediate war.

Administration officials suggested the threat from Iraq was imminent, and went to great lengths to convince the American people that it was.

At a roundtable discussion with European journalists last month, Secretary Rumsfeld deviously insisted: "I never said imminent threat."

In fact, Secretary Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee on September 18, 2002, "…Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent -- that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain."

In May 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether we went to war "because we said WMD were a direct and imminent threat to the United States." Fleischer responded, "Absolutely."

What else could National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have been suggesting, other than an imminent threat -- an extremely imminent threat -- when she said on September 8, 2002, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Ah, it's good to be a Mass-person sometimes. We have good Sens. Both hitting so hardly and soundly in the same day, ah, heaven.

[fedupinBushcountry]

1. Watch it here

http://www.canofun.com/blog/videos/kennedyiraqwarnov1005.wmv