Sorry guys but this is leftist spin only. This link will explain it.
http://gncurtis.home.texas.net/blogger.html
Sunday, May 25, 2003
( 7:25 PM ) Gary Curtis
Where's the Beef? Timothy Noah's "Whopper of the Week" feature on Slate for Friday consists of the following two quotes:
"'I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.'
--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at a hearing of the Senate's appropriations subcommittee on defense, May 14
"'We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.'
--Vice President Dick Cheney on 'NBC's Meet the Press', March 16"
According to Noah's definition, a "whopper" is an unambiguously false statement taken together with its refutation. So, in this case, Rumsfeld's statement is the supposedly false statement refuted by Cheney's earlier statement. To refute Rumsfeld's statement, Cheney must have been saying that Iraq had nuclear weapons. However, Cheney's statement is rather obscure, especially because of the use of the word "reconstituted". What does he mean by claiming that "he"--Saddam Hussein--has "reconstituted" nuclear weapons? Here's the context of Cheney's strange remark, taken from the transcript of the interview:
TIM RUSSERT: "What do you think is the most important rationale for going to war with Iraq?
VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: "Well, I think I've just given it, Tim, in terms of the combination of his development and use of chemical weapons, his development of biological weapons, his pursuit of nuclear weapons.
RUSSERT: "And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program, we disagree?
CHENEY: "I disagree, yes. ... Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. ... In the late '70s, Saddam Hussein acquired nuclear reactors from the French. 1981, the Israelis took out the Osirak reactor and stopped his nuclear weapons development at the time. Throughout the '80s, he mounted a new effort. I was told when I was defense secretary before the Gulf War that he was eight to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon. And we found out after the Gulf War that he was within one or two years of having a nuclear weapon because he had a massive effort under way that involved four or five different technologies for enriching uranium to produce fissile material. We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
It's clear from the context that what Cheney was claiming was that Hussein had "reconstituted" his nuclear weapons program, not that he had in fact acquired such weapons. For one thing, it makes no sense to say that he "reconstituted" nuclear weapons. What could it mean? To "reconstitute" is to constitute again, that is, to create again, which would imply that Hussein had possessed nuclear weapons, lost them somehow, and then rebuilt them. However, it's clear from the short history that Cheney gives--as well as from statements that he makes elsewhere in the same interview--that he is denying that Hussein had previously acquired nuclear weapons.
The transcript of this interview says at the beginning that it is "a rush transcript" and that "accuracy is not guaranteed". I don't have access to a recording of this interview, but I suspect that the transcript was garbled at the sentence in question. Cheney either said, or meant to say, that Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, that is, rebuilt it since it was disrupted by the Gulf War and the subsequent UN inspections. (If any reader does have a recording of this interview, please let me know how accurate the transcript appears to be at this point in the interview.)
A further piece of evidence that Noah and Milbank have misleadingly quoted Cheney out of context is provided by the following comment at the end of Milbank's "Verbatim" item, the original source for the two quotes: "aides later said Cheney was referring to Saddam Hussein's nuclear programs, not weapons".
I assume that Noah never bothered to read the complete transcript that he links to, or he would be the one guilty of a "whopper".
Sources:
Timothy Noah, "Whopper of the Week: Donald Rumsfeld", Slate, 5/23/2003
"Transcript for March 16", NBC News' Meet the Press, 3/16/2003
Dana Milbank, "Verbatim", The Washington Post, 5/20/2003
Quoting Out of Context
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Thats just what it looks like to me, since in the paragraph above he was talking about Saddam's WMD programs. You may very well be right though.
