On CBS's "Face the Nation" on March 14, 2004, United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that he hadn't used the phrase "immediate threat" to describe the situation in Iraq and that President Bush hadn't either.
Thomas Friedman of CBS then presented Rumsfeld with quotes from September 2002 where he did describe the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq as an "immediate threat." Rumsfeld's response was that we may still find that they really were an immediate threat after all.
MoveOn.org has a video available which cuts off before Rumsfeld finishes his response.You can also read the full transcript from CBS (PDF), or there is a partial transcript below.
Sec. Rumsfeld: Well, you're the--you and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase `"immediate threat." I didn't. The president didn't. And, uh, it's become kind of folklore that that's--that's what's happened. The president went...
Schieffer: You're saying that nobody in the administration said that.
Sec. Rumsfeld: I--I can't speak for nobody--everybody in the administration and say nobody said that.
Schieffer: Vice president didn't say that? The...
Sec. Rumsfeld: Not--if--if you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em.
Friedman: We have one here. It says "some have argued that the nu"--this is you speaking--"that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain."
Sec. Rumsfeld: And--and...
Friedman: It was close to imminent.
Sec. Rumsfeld: Well, I've--I've tried to be precise, and I've tried to be accurate. I'm s--suppose I've...
Friedman: "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
Sec. Rumsfeld: Mm-hmm. It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know. David Kay said we're about 85 percent there. I don't know if that's the right percentage. But the Iraqi Survey Group--we've got 1,200 people out there looking. It's a country the size of California. He could have hidden his--enough chemical or biol--enough biological weapons in that hole that--that we found Saddam Hussein in to kill tens of thousands of people. So--so it's not as though we have certainty today.
Votes: 206