Hate to dig this old thread up, but just came across the most amazing accusation that the "imminent threat" quotes in this video were out of context and misleading.

There's no direct link to the specific article, but it's called "Russert, Kennedy, Ignatieff misleading with 'imminent threat' evidence" and it's about half way down the page.

SpinSanity

"However, as we have previously observed, much of the Bush administration rhetoric in the buildup to the Iraq war argued that Saddam Hussein's regime was not yet an imminent threat - a phrase that has a very specific meaning of an enemy poised to attack - though the White House did describe Iraq as an 'urgent' and 'grave' threat. Indeed, during his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush specifically stated that the US could not wait until Iraq became an imminent threat. The only time a member of the Bush administration used the word 'imminent' in any direct sense actually came in September 2002, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, '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.' Also, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and communications director Dan Bartlett both answered affirmatively to questions asserting that Bush believed Iraq was an imminent threat. This is hardly evidence that the "imminent" threat argument was at the heart of the Bush White House's case for war."

This argument has always struck me as odd, since if I had heard the Administration declare Iraq an imminent threat, I would have at least chuckled to myself. It was clear that Iraq couldn't have delivered a firecracker to attack the US prior to the war, though they might have been able to provide a third party with something more dangerous if they had had anything. They were still a threat to their neighboring countries, of course, and that was an indirect threat to the US. I've just been accepting the accusation, assuming I didn't hear everything the Administration had to say.