A trip down memory lane

[Laura PourMeADrink]

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/08/iraq.debate/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Top officials in the Bush administration took to the Sunday television talk shows to argue the president's case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a global threat and must go.

With a former U.N. weapons inspector in Baghdad saying the U.S. position on Iraq is overstated, the vice president, two Cabinet secretaries, the national security adviser and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pressed the point that a military intervention could be the only way to topple Saddam's regime.

"There simply isn't a case that this is a peace-loving man who wants to be left alone," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney accused Saddam of moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months to add to his stockpile of chemical and biological arms.

"Increasingly, we believe that the United States may well become the target of those activities," Cheney said.

"And what we've seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest ... is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium -- specifically, aluminum tubes," Cheney said, referring to one of the elements for making nuclear weapons.

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