On Language
`Imminent' threat can lead to war
have always been against George Bush's war in Iraq," Gen. Wesley K. Clark said the week before the New Hampshire primary. "Not because Saddam Hussein wasn't a threat. But because Saddam wasn't an imminent threat."
Next day, in a televised debate, Howard Dean, prefacing a statement with "My words are not always precise, but my meaning is very, very clear," stated, "Iraq was not an imminent threat to the United States."
That adjective has emerged as central to the charge being made by those critical of Bush's decision to invade Iraq that there was no urgent reason -- no triggering impetus in international law -- to justify our pre-emptive military action to overthrow Saddam's regime.
First, let's handle the easy part: the difference between immanent and imminent. The one with the "a" means "inherent," rooted in the Latin for "remaining within"; you can believe that God is immanent in humans. Imminent means something else entirely, rooted in the part of a mountain that projects overhead, threatening those below. "Overhanging" is its essence -- an immediate threat, a sinister event close at hand -- unlike impending, which is not so near in time.
Now to the political controversy surrounding the word. On Sept. 17, 2002, just after the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Bush White House issued a white paper spelling out the need for "preemption" in the national-security strategy of the United States. "For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack."
Two weeks after the white paper, in a radio address on Sept. 28, 2002, the president said of Saddam's regime, "The danger to our country is grave, and it is growing." He said that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes," but he did not use the legal trigger word imminent.
Evidently Bush had been briefed on the weight of that word. On Oct. 21 of that year, asked by Ron Fournier of the Associated Press whether North Korea was "an imminent threat to the U.S." in its nuclear buildup, the president replied carefully: "You know, that's an operative word. ... I believe we can do it peacefully."
A White House spokesman used the word in February 2003 in the context of NATO protecting Turkey from retaliation, but Bush used it in his 2003 State of the Union address in a way that disputed its necessity: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"
Senators supporting and opposing the president's girding for war showed their understanding of the operative word. "The threat posed by Saddam Hussein may not be imminent," Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader, said Oct. 10, 2002, "but it is real, it is growing, and it cannot be ignored." John Kerry, basing his judgment on the intelligence supplied him and on the Bush address, picked up Daschle's adjective Jan. 23, 2003: "So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real. ... "
So ... did Bush claim an imminent threat? Interrogated in detail on this by Tony Snow of Fox News, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, who said in 2002 that "I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat," replied about the Bush address in 2003: "If the word imminent threat wasn't used, that was the predicate, that was the feeling that was given to the American people and to Congress."
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