New footnotes for the May 19 season finale of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Kevin Spacey, are on-line
here. Here are some footnotes on those outtakes.
- "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This quote is from President George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address (on-line here). Months later, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV questioned the veracity of that statement with a July 6, 2003 op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he described his role in investigating - and discrediting - Niger's suspected link to Iraq's weapons program. Within days, CIA Director George Tenet issued a statement (on-line here) that the reference to British intelligence should not have been presented to Bush when the CIA had already concluded for itself that the allegations were dubious.
- "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended." This quote is from Bush's May 1, 2003 speech from the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln (on-line here). By the time of that speech, 109 U.S. military personnel had been killed in action or died of wounds from action. In the three years since that speech, more than 1,500 U.S. military personnel have been killed in action or died of wounds from action.
- "I don't believe anybody I'm aware of in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons." This quote by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seems to be from a May 14, 2003 Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing (Rumsfeld's prepared remarks are on-line here). Before the Iraq war, Vice President Dick Cheney said several times that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear weapons and could acquire nuclear weapons soon (see an August 26, 2002 speech on-line here). Cheney did say in a March 16, 2003 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press (transcript on-line here) that "we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons," though he referred at other points in this appearance to Iraq pursuing such weapons.
- "We will respond, John, to requests of our commanders on the ground. And I have yet to hear from our commanders on the ground that they need more troops." This Bush quote is from a November 4, 2004 press conference (transcript on-line here). Some administration officials have acknowledged that they did believe more troops were needed in 2003. Former Ambassador L. Paul Bremer said in 2004 that there were not enough U.S. troops in Iraq during his time in Iraq and that his requests for more troops were not met. According to a statement put out by DePauw University (on-line here), Bremer said in an appearance there that "[t]he single most important change – the one thing that would have improved the situation – would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout … Although I raised this issue a number of times with our government, I should have been even more insistent." More recently, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview broadcast on April 30 that he had advised President George W. Bush and his military advisors before the Iraq war to use more troops (article on-line here).
- "They're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." This quote by Vice President Dick Cheney is from a May 2005 interview with Larry King (on-line here). When asked if President George W. Bush agreed with Vice President Dick Cheney's comment that that the Iraqi insurgents were in their "last throes," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on June 23 (transcript on-line here) that Bush did agree that "there is significant progress being made by the Iraqi people on the political front. And that's what the Vice President was talking about in his remarks. He was talking about the significant progress that's being made, and he was talking about how the terrorists, the ruthless enemy that we're working to defeat, along with the Iraqi security forces, has not been able to stop that progress." In the year following Cheney's comment, more than 600 U.S. military personnel have been killed in action or died of wounds from action.
- "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order." This quote by Bush is from an April 20, 2004 appearance in which Bush urged the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act (on-line here), about a year and a half before the New York Times first reported in December 2005 that the Bush administration had authorized the National Security Agency to monitor communications involving U.S. persons within the United States without warrants.
- "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." This Bush quote is from a September 1, 2005 interview with Diane Sawyer. In the spring of 2006, news organizations reported on video and transcripts of an August 28, 2005 videoconference in which President George W. Bush received warnings of Hurricane Katrina before it made landfall (article on-line here). The White House issued a March 2 release responding to the video, saying that the video had been available to the public for months and that it showed Bush being involved and responsive (release on-line here).
For more footnotes, go
here.
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