I haven't yet seen Bush's Meet the Press interview with Tim Russert. But Dana Milbank is reporting in an article partly based on it that gets back to the ever-changing version of the past which Bush offers us: President Revises Rationale for War Washington Post 02/08/04:
Bush's new version: "Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and I'm not just going to leave him in power and trust a madman. He's a dangerous man. He had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum."
A separate article by Walter Pincus and Dana Priest in the Post observes: "[W]hen Bush on Sept. 24, 2002, repeated the British claim that Iraq's chemical weapons could be activated within 45 minutes, he ignored the fact that U.S. intelligence mistrusted the source and that the claim never appeared in the October 2002 U.S. estimate."
Milbank quotes Bush in March 2003: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." That's no doubt, the President said.
Cheney's new rationale (Milbank piece): "We know that Saddam Hussein had the intent to arm his regime with weapons of mass destruction. And Saddam Hussein had something else -- he had a record of using weapons of mass destruction against his enemies and against his own people."
This, of course, didn't stop the Reagan and Bush I Administrations from cozying up to Saddam's Iraq at the time he was doing both. But more to the point of the claims of just a year ago (from the Pincus/Priest article):
On Aug. 26, 2002, Cheney said: "Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." The estimate, several weeks later, would say it would take as many as five years, unless Baghdad immediately obtained weapons-grade materials.
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