It's nothing more than the art of The Lie. Just keep saying it until it becames ingrained in the cutural fabric and is accepted as fact. I've got some pretty intelligent co-workers here who have swallowed this shit hook, line and sinker and it doesn't matter what evidence you put infront of them- they refuse to think about it anymore.
Time to give up and start looking into securing the New England prayer-rug and hajib market...
Dean, don't forget “imminent peril”. I've seen otherwise sensible bloggers claiming that one Administration official or another said that Iraq constituted an imminent peril.
I heard the same speeches: they were very careful to avoid claiming imminent peril. But they did say that ultimately Iraq would be a danger to us and the region.
EDWARDS:...I mean, we have three different countries that, while they all present serious problems for the United States -- they're dictatorships, they're involved in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- you know, the most imminent, clear and present threat to our country is not the same from those three countries. I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country.
I'm getting very sick of the same old arguments. Occasionally I get sucked into one and it always goes the same, exact way. The Bush Lied one is typical. After bringing up the fact that every prominent Democrat had been saying the same things from 1997-2003, they almost invariably fall back on "Well, he misled us" (whatever that means) and so it goes. The next day the same person is still saying "Bush Lied."
The reason I am so angry at the MSM is because of the way they enable this. They're still talking about that plastic fricking turkey for heaven's sake.
Bastids.
That this is coming up now should be no surprise because of the Libby indictments. That the same memes, on both sides, continue to get thrown out, means that whatever the underlying story here, it has not been resolved.
The "imminent peril" notion was even more nuanced than Dave Schuler suggests. Joe Gandleman linked to a video of Thomas Friedman questioning Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld said more or less "I never said it was imminent", and Friedman read a quote which said more or less "there is no more imminent threat".
Those two statements *are* measurably and qualitatively different. They are also testable in their own right:
1. Did Iraq plan to attack the U.S. (versus some other country) within X days (X could be a big number)?
2. Does another country (Iran, North Korea) or a non-state actor (Al Qaeda) pose a *more* imminent threat.
I disagree with John Eddy's assessment that this is the big lie in an echo chamber. If anything, from my point of view the WMD revisionist critique is also a meme in it's own echo chamber.
It seems to me that the *only* way one could gather proof whether "the reason" we went to war in Iraq was WMD's is to run an experiment in which the influential speeches about WMD's by Colin Powell, Richard Cheney, Tony Blair, etc *didn't happen*. That is clearly impossible, although there may be something that could be done. Any assertion that the war was NOT about WMD's is no more provable than the assertion that it was. It seems clearly undecidable.
Dean's "Reasons" post does a very good job of explaining the sequence of actions, the vote counts etc, but it is no more an explanation of why people voted the way they did, than say a tally of the individual movie theater's results for a hit like "Revenge of the Sith" versus a dog like "Waterworld" explains *why* one was successful.
The down side of all of this is that there *is* actually meaningful analysis that *could* have been done on this. IIRC correctly consumer products marketing folks have a technique called "conjoint analysis" that teases out the impact of individual brand attributes on consumer preferences. Had anyone tried to do conjoint analysis on the 330 people who voted for the 12 reasons document we might know. There is also the work of Graeme Halford that examines how people make multi-factor decisions.
The second issue is the extent of previous biases on the question, documented by Drew Westen. In other words, when people voted on the 12 reasons document, what percentage of the variation in their votes is likely to have been explained by the 12 reasons document?
There are also issues of responsibility, the soundness of the decision itself and the decision making process and the long term consequences, which are completely separate issues which Dean and others have had very pertinent observation. For example, the authorization to use force, if I understand correctly, comes from Congress, and therefore they bear ultimately responsibility for the decision.
It is also the case that many people now people that the country lacks sufficient resolve to confront Iran or North Korea as forcefully as they should. While many people would blame the Democrats or media for that, I am not so sure. If the workforce of a large organization was demoralized and counterproductive and union activists were sowing dissent and despair, the CEO would still be held responsible for poor firm performance. As for the performance of the Bush administration in general, most people on both sides of the ideological fence are concerned, and have been concerned with the general state of retirement funding. That there has been no meaningful action on social security reform must surely rest at least partially with the administration itself. In their initial round of marketing they were, frankly, disingenuous to suggest that social security was in a funding crisis. (It may have a moral crisis, but that's another matter). Was there a similar "marketing" failure of the WMD issue.
Whether the decision making process was sound would really come from an analysis of how the decision was made - also back in the limelight with Friday's indictments. If one takes Mr. Wilson's *narrative* as true - he in effect said that he told the people that matter that the evidence of uranium from Niger was effectively not there, yet after doing so, he saw them continue to testify publicly that it was. That could mean that the information didn't flow through the appropriate channels, or that it was maliciously ignored, or that other evidence besides that of Mr. Wilson was used to make that assessment. It would be nice to see a reasoned, non-partisan, analysis of that but I don't expect to in my lifetime.
The decision itself can be seen as sound regardless of WMD's - a policy of regime change in Iraq predates both 9/11 and Mr. Bush, and arose independently of the so-called neocon cabal - Mr. Clinton certainly never belonged to them. Notice, however, the actual soundness of the decision is independent of the *reason* the decision was actually endorsed.
I would be curious to know what people who:
1. were opposed to the war, but who do not believe that WMD's were *the* reason
or:
2. supported *and still support* the war and who do believe that WMD's were the reason
think.
I'm sure at least some of DW's readers will be riled up at me, but I just don't see the data one way or another to accept or reject the WMD memes from either side.
Dean, I've been defending this (as I've said here before) and trying to keep the story stright, but it is hard to argue against conspiracy theorists. As I said at ColdFury, arguments refuting only make the theorist convinced of the depth of the conspiracy.
But I still fix bayonets and charge. Can't let the bastards get me down. Can't let the lyin' fascist sympathizers win.
What is *disingenuous* on Social Security reform is to suggest that anyone, including the Bush administration, said it was a "crisis." The big lie there was the rabid Bush-hating partisans who kept repeating ad nauseum that "there is no crisis." No god damn it, there isn't a crisis, and that's not what the administration f***ing said. They said, over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER that we should act before it becomes a crisis.
Just reading your comment makes me think that some people simply never listen to or closely read anything written by people they don't like.
Furthermore, all your other questions about the WMD issue devolve to, "what did people think they heard" vs. "what was actually said?"
The truth is that you can demonstrate definitively and without any doubt from the speeches given by all the principles that they did indeed give multiple reasons for going and did not say that Iraq was an "imminent threat." They didn't. There were one or two cases where someone slipped and said that, but as soon as they were questioned on it they immediately backpedaled and clarified.
You don't need any "objective non-partisan analysis." It's been provided, in spades. They didn't say it, period.
Furthermore, it's been thoroughly demonstrated, already, that Joe Wilson was counterfactual at best about several important things he claimed, and further that the administration has been repeatedly misquoted. George Bush said that *the British government* had found information indicating attempts by Saddam to buy yellowcake in *Africa*. Joe Wilson said there was no evidence *he* could find of efforts to buy it in *Nigeria*. That's not a "partisan analysis," it is a fact.
Truth cannot be found if you're not willing to acknowledge facts up front. If you have facts that run counter to anything I've have said here, provide them. Otherwise, just be honest and stipulate to these facts so we can move on to a more productive conversation.
Further, Dean, according to the Senate Intel Committee and the CIA, Wilson's own report said that Nigerian government sources told him that they thought the Iraqis had tried to buy yellowcake.
Wilson obviously didn't think that very credible, but it's still evidence (though of course by no means proof).
It does rather amaze me what people will try and say in order to support "Bush Lied!".
One wonders if they realise that the much more supportable "Bush was simply wrong about that", combined with "... and here's what we think should be done to make things better" would not only make people who don't already agree with them more inclined to listen, but might actually get some results.
"Bush Lied! Vote for a Democrat! Pretend Kerry wasn't for the war, it doesn't count! We're (the Democrats in Congress) gullible and clueless but Bush lied or something!" doesn't exactly inspire me to vote Democrat again (the last time being in 1992, though I didn't vote for a Republican for President until 2000). Heck, I'd have at least thought about it if they'd nominated Lieberman.
That whole "here's what we thikn should be done now to make things better" is the ultimate question. Few partisans are willing to do that, preferring to say, "well, all I know is that everything is screwd up because X, Y, and Z."
Either that or they make "suggestions" like "fire everybody important in the administration involved in the war planning" and "admit everything is hopelessly screwed up," few of which can be taken seriously.
To be fair, there are a few genuine suggestions out there, most of which amount to either "send in more troops" or "withdraw all troops." The "more troops" argument deserves at least some consideration, although I personally think it's probably not a good idea.
Robert B., that's easy. I was opposed to the invasion of Iraq and I didn't believe that WMD's were the reason advanced by the Bush Administration. I also think that a very large number of those opposed to the war reflexively oppose everything the Administration proposes. They're still gnashing they're teeth over 2000.
As I read it about 10-20% of the American people are yellow dog Democrats who believe that Republicans are evil and don't believe that any sensible, well-intentioned person could disagree with them.
I've written about my position on the war a number of times on my own blog. It's somewhat distinctive in that I thought a case for going to war could be made but that the Administration didn't make it—probably for fear of galvanizing opposition. I also believed that the Administration had not mustered sufficient domestic support to actually win the war conclusively. I'd been there once before and I don't wanna go there no more.
Dean and I may differ on whether we should have invaded but I think we're in agreement on the current situation: we're now morally, legally, and strategically obligated to see a stable more-or-less democratic state established in Iraq.
Dean: let's be clear. I see no conspiracy theory, nor do I approve of the AARP's ads, nor do I favor "housecleaning" or any other such simple-minded remedy. I have seen no evidence that Bush lied.
"Furthermore, all your other questions about the WMD issue devolve to, "what did people think they heard" vs. "what was actually said?" "
Actually no - they come down to what constitutes a meaningful explanation for what actually happened.
I assume you the read the discussion in Freakonomics about the increase in C-sections in areas with low birth rates. If you look at the equivalent of the "reasons" document for each of those C-sections you will find a medical report that says a C-section is indicated.
If you read in the Wall Street Journal that stock X has gone up Y percent because of an earnings announcement, you might think that's a *fact*. However, the vast majority of stock movements are correlated with equity indices. Luckily in this case you can do event studies to tease out cross-sectional market events from idiosyncratic events. Ditto for the strong cross-sectional predictions of the Democratic Peace Theory.
Now do you see why I take exception to the "reasons" notion.
There's a train rolling down a steep grade, with the brakes out. Somewhere near the bottom of the hill, a schoolbus full of kids is stalled on the tracks. When that train reaches the bottom of the hill, it will smash the bus, killing all the kids. Everyone can agree that that is a crisis.
But is it a crisis now? The bus might get fixed, and get off the tracks. The kids might all get off the bus? The train brakes might unfreeze. The train may get switched to a different track. So by a strict definition, it's not a crisis right now.
But a flaw of representative democracy (which despite its flaws is still the best system around) is that few representatives are ready to take unpopular actions to solve problems unless there's a crisis now. Perhaps there are other issues that are a crisis now, and voters are demanding attention to those. Perhaps the voters have popular non-crisis desires, and the representatives are currying their favor. Perhaps representatives are just keeping their heads low so as not to draw undue attention and bad press. As long as there's no crisis, no action happpens in the common case.
So in that sort of system, the only way to avoid a crisis (as opposed to clean up after one) is to project current status and trends forward and say, "If nothing changes, that train is going to kill those kids. That's a crisis now, even though no kids have died yet, We have to find the right change, and make it happen."
This can lead to trouble: if the projections aren't accurate, you can foresee a crisis that will never really happen, and you can take costly steps to prevent it. So you have to be sure you can trust the projections.
As far as I understand the Social Security mess, there's room to disagree on when the crisis will happen; but as it stands now, it's not a matter of if that train is going to hit that bus, but only when. That's a crisis, just of a different sort.
Robert, maybe you should have quoted what you meant.
You know, we wait and wait and wait, and then the crisis is upon us and everybody demands a solution. The problem with that when it comes to a modernization of Social Security is, is that the longer we wait, the more expensive the solution becomes. And so one of my jobs, one of my charges is to explain to Congress as clearly as I can, the crisis is now.
What he's saying is the longer we wait the more expensive it becomes, so the crisis is now.
The bus analogy is actually fairly accurate. Sure, it's not a crisis right now, but if we wait it will be a really big crisis with a much harder fix.
That's the nuance that everybody claims Bush doesn't understand.
Martin: Exactly. You have identified a high risk, low probability, remote horizon decison problem, and several very good reasons why it is very hard for rational actors operating in a representative democracy to handle such a problem. You have also identified the central role of uncertainty in objective reality in making such difficult decisions.
The problem is that, in addition, people aren't necessarily rational, especially when it comes to 11.1.2005 11:19am
Martin, Mike: a railroad analogy is a poor choice. The mental image conveys a certainty that is frankly not present in the social security case - trains do not jump from their tracks.
Regarding "disingenuous": Mr. Bush said the longer we wait, the more expensive the solution becomes ... the crisis is now. I.e. there is flexibility, at a price, in the time horizon of the decision problem - however there is no flexibility in the time horizon. Even saying "the time to act is now" would be fine. However, the speech makes repeated use of the loaded term "crisis" as opposed to say "shortfall".
Regarding the WMD reasons meme: NEVER MIND. I'll go back to reading "The Tipping Point" and wondering.
Time to give up and start looking into securing the New England prayer-rug and hajib market...
I heard the same speeches: they were very careful to avoid claiming imminent peril. But they did say that ultimately Iraq would be a danger to us and the region.
EDWARDS:...I mean, we have three different countries that, while they all present serious problems for the United States -- they're dictatorships, they're involved in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- you know, the most imminent, clear and present threat to our country is not the same from those three countries. I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country.
I'm getting very sick of the same old arguments. Occasionally I get sucked into one and it always goes the same, exact way. The Bush Lied one is typical. After bringing up the fact that every prominent Democrat had been saying the same things from 1997-2003, they almost invariably fall back on "Well, he misled us" (whatever that means) and so it goes. The next day the same person is still saying "Bush Lied."
The reason I am so angry at the MSM is because of the way they enable this. They're still talking about that plastic fricking turkey for heaven's sake.
Bastids.
The "imminent peril" notion was even more nuanced than Dave Schuler suggests. Joe Gandleman linked to a video of Thomas Friedman questioning Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld said more or less "I never said it was imminent", and Friedman read a quote which said more or less "there is no more imminent threat".
Those two statements *are* measurably and qualitatively different. They are also testable in their own right:
1. Did Iraq plan to attack the U.S. (versus some other country) within X days (X could be a big number)?
2. Does another country (Iran, North Korea) or a non-state actor (Al Qaeda) pose a *more* imminent threat.
I disagree with John Eddy's assessment that this is the big lie in an echo chamber. If anything, from my point of view the WMD revisionist critique is also a meme in it's own echo chamber.
It seems to me that the *only* way one could gather proof whether "the reason" we went to war in Iraq was WMD's is to run an experiment in which the influential speeches about WMD's by Colin Powell, Richard Cheney, Tony Blair, etc *didn't happen*. That is clearly impossible, although there may be something that could be done. Any assertion that the war was NOT about WMD's is no more provable than the assertion that it was. It seems clearly undecidable.
Dean's "Reasons" post does a very good job of explaining the sequence of actions, the vote counts etc, but it is no more an explanation of why people voted the way they did, than say a tally of the individual movie theater's results for a hit like "Revenge of the Sith" versus a dog like "Waterworld" explains *why* one was successful.
The down side of all of this is that there *is* actually meaningful analysis that *could* have been done on this. IIRC correctly consumer products marketing folks have a technique called "conjoint analysis" that teases out the impact of individual brand attributes on consumer preferences. Had anyone tried to do conjoint analysis on the 330 people who voted for the 12 reasons document we might know. There is also the work of Graeme Halford that examines how people make multi-factor decisions.
The second issue is the extent of previous biases on the question, documented by Drew Westen. In other words, when people voted on the 12 reasons document, what percentage of the variation in their votes is likely to have been explained by the 12 reasons document?
There are also issues of responsibility, the soundness of the decision itself and the decision making process and the long term consequences, which are completely separate issues which Dean and others have had very pertinent observation. For example, the authorization to use force, if I understand correctly, comes from Congress, and therefore they bear ultimately responsibility for the decision.
It is also the case that many people now people that the country lacks sufficient resolve to confront Iran or North Korea as forcefully as they should. While many people would blame the Democrats or media for that, I am not so sure. If the workforce of a large organization was demoralized and counterproductive and union activists were sowing dissent and despair, the CEO would still be held responsible for poor firm performance. As for the performance of the Bush administration in general, most people on both sides of the ideological fence are concerned, and have been concerned with the general state of retirement funding. That there has been no meaningful action on social security reform must surely rest at least partially with the administration itself. In their initial round of marketing they were, frankly, disingenuous to suggest that social security was in a funding crisis. (It may have a moral crisis, but that's another matter). Was there a similar "marketing" failure of the WMD issue.
Whether the decision making process was sound would really come from an analysis of how the decision was made - also back in the limelight with Friday's indictments. If one takes Mr. Wilson's *narrative* as true - he in effect said that he told the people that matter that the evidence of uranium from Niger was effectively not there, yet after doing so, he saw them continue to testify publicly that it was. That could mean that the information didn't flow through the appropriate channels, or that it was maliciously ignored, or that other evidence besides that of Mr. Wilson was used to make that assessment. It would be nice to see a reasoned, non-partisan, analysis of that but I don't expect to in my lifetime.
The decision itself can be seen as sound regardless of WMD's - a policy of regime change in Iraq predates both 9/11 and Mr. Bush, and arose independently of the so-called neocon cabal - Mr. Clinton certainly never belonged to them. Notice, however, the actual soundness of the decision is independent of the *reason* the decision was actually endorsed.
I would be curious to know what people who:
1. were opposed to the war, but who do not believe that WMD's were *the* reason
or:
2. supported *and still support* the war and who do believe that WMD's were the reason
think.
I'm sure at least some of DW's readers will be riled up at me, but I just don't see the data one way or another to accept or reject the WMD memes from either side.
But I still fix bayonets and charge. Can't let the bastards get me down. Can't let the lyin' fascist sympathizers win.
What is *disingenuous* on Social Security reform is to suggest that anyone, including the Bush administration, said it was a "crisis." The big lie there was the rabid Bush-hating partisans who kept repeating ad nauseum that "there is no crisis." No god damn it, there isn't a crisis, and that's not what the administration f***ing said. They said, over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER that we should act before it becomes a crisis.
Just reading your comment makes me think that some people simply never listen to or closely read anything written by people they don't like.
Furthermore, all your other questions about the WMD issue devolve to, "what did people think they heard" vs. "what was actually said?"
The truth is that you can demonstrate definitively and without any doubt from the speeches given by all the principles that they did indeed give multiple reasons for going and did not say that Iraq was an "imminent threat." They didn't. There were one or two cases where someone slipped and said that, but as soon as they were questioned on it they immediately backpedaled and clarified.
You don't need any "objective non-partisan analysis." It's been provided, in spades. They didn't say it, period.
Furthermore, it's been thoroughly demonstrated, already, that Joe Wilson was counterfactual at best about several important things he claimed, and further that the administration has been repeatedly misquoted. George Bush said that *the British government* had found information indicating attempts by Saddam to buy yellowcake in *Africa*. Joe Wilson said there was no evidence *he* could find of efforts to buy it in *Nigeria*. That's not a "partisan analysis," it is a fact.
Truth cannot be found if you're not willing to acknowledge facts up front. If you have facts that run counter to anything I've have said here, provide them. Otherwise, just be honest and stipulate to these facts so we can move on to a more productive conversation.
Wilson obviously didn't think that very credible, but it's still evidence (though of course by no means proof).
It does rather amaze me what people will try and say in order to support "Bush Lied!".
One wonders if they realise that the much more supportable "Bush was simply wrong about that", combined with "... and here's what we think should be done to make things better" would not only make people who don't already agree with them more inclined to listen, but might actually get some results.
"Bush Lied! Vote for a Democrat! Pretend Kerry wasn't for the war, it doesn't count! We're (the Democrats in Congress) gullible and clueless but Bush lied or something!" doesn't exactly inspire me to vote Democrat again (the last time being in 1992, though I didn't vote for a Republican for President until 2000). Heck, I'd have at least thought about it if they'd nominated Lieberman.
Either that or they make "suggestions" like "fire everybody important in the administration involved in the war planning" and "admit everything is hopelessly screwed up," few of which can be taken seriously.
To be fair, there are a few genuine suggestions out there, most of which amount to either "send in more troops" or "withdraw all troops." The "more troops" argument deserves at least some consideration, although I personally think it's probably not a good idea.
As I read it about 10-20% of the American people are yellow dog Democrats who believe that Republicans are evil and don't believe that any sensible, well-intentioned person could disagree with them.
I've written about my position on the war a number of times on my own blog. It's somewhat distinctive in that I thought a case for going to war could be made but that the Administration didn't make it—probably for fear of galvanizing opposition. I also believed that the Administration had not mustered sufficient domestic support to actually win the war conclusively. I'd been there once before and I don't wanna go there no more.
Dean and I may differ on whether we should have invaded but I think we're in agreement on the current situation: we're now morally, legally, and strategically obligated to see a stable more-or-less democratic state established in Iraq.
"Furthermore, all your other questions about the WMD issue devolve to, "what did people think they heard" vs. "what was actually said?" "
Actually no - they come down to what constitutes a meaningful explanation for what actually happened.
I assume you the read the discussion in Freakonomics about the increase in C-sections in areas with low birth rates. If you look at the equivalent of the "reasons" document for each of those C-sections you will find a medical report that says a C-section is indicated.
If you read in the Wall Street Journal that stock X has gone up Y percent because of an earnings announcement, you might think that's a *fact*. However, the vast majority of stock movements are correlated with equity indices. Luckily in this case you can do event studies to tease out cross-sectional market events from idiosyncratic events. Ditto for the strong cross-sectional predictions of the Democratic Peace Theory.
Now do you see why I take exception to the "reasons" notion.
Maybe one really does have to listen carefully to understand that "crisis is now" doesn't actually mean crisis is now ...
There's a train rolling down a steep grade, with the brakes out. Somewhere near the bottom of the hill, a schoolbus full of kids is stalled on the tracks. When that train reaches the bottom of the hill, it will smash the bus, killing all the kids. Everyone can agree that that is a crisis.
But is it a crisis now? The bus might get fixed, and get off the tracks. The kids might all get off the bus? The train brakes might unfreeze. The train may get switched to a different track. So by a strict definition, it's not a crisis right now.
But a flaw of representative democracy (which despite its flaws is still the best system around) is that few representatives are ready to take unpopular actions to solve problems unless there's a crisis now. Perhaps there are other issues that are a crisis now, and voters are demanding attention to those. Perhaps the voters have popular non-crisis desires, and the representatives are currying their favor. Perhaps representatives are just keeping their heads low so as not to draw undue attention and bad press. As long as there's no crisis, no action happpens in the common case.
So in that sort of system, the only way to avoid a crisis (as opposed to clean up after one) is to project current status and trends forward and say, "If nothing changes, that train is going to kill those kids. That's a crisis now, even though no kids have died yet, We have to find the right change, and make it happen."
This can lead to trouble: if the projections aren't accurate, you can foresee a crisis that will never really happen, and you can take costly steps to prevent it. So you have to be sure you can trust the projections.
As far as I understand the Social Security mess, there's room to disagree on when the crisis will happen; but as it stands now, it's not a matter of if that train is going to hit that bus, but only when. That's a crisis, just of a different sort.
You know, we wait and wait and wait, and then the crisis is upon us and everybody demands a solution. The problem with that when it comes to a modernization of Social Security is, is that the longer we wait, the more expensive the solution becomes. And so one of my jobs, one of my charges is to explain to Congress as clearly as I can, the crisis is now.
What he's saying is the longer we wait the more expensive it becomes, so the crisis is now.
The bus analogy is actually fairly accurate. Sure, it's not a crisis right now, but if we wait it will be a really big crisis with a much harder fix.
That's the nuance that everybody claims Bush doesn't understand.
The problem is that, in addition, people aren't necessarily rational, especially when it comes to 11.1.2005 11:19am
Martin, Mike: a railroad analogy is a poor choice. The mental image conveys a certainty that is frankly not present in the social security case - trains do not jump from their tracks.
Regarding "disingenuous": Mr. Bush said the longer we wait, the more expensive the solution becomes ... the crisis is now. I.e. there is flexibility, at a price, in the time horizon of the decision problem - however there is no flexibility in the time horizon. Even saying "the time to act is now" would be fine. However, the speech makes repeated use of the loaded term "crisis" as opposed to say "shortfall".
Regarding the WMD reasons meme: NEVER MIND. I'll go back to reading "The Tipping Point" and wondering.