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"I think some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent.' Those were not words we used."
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 1/27/04
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040127-6.html

"This is about an imminent threat."
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030210-7.html

"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02

"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. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02

On January 26, 2003, CNN television asked White House communications director Dan Bartlett “is he (Saddam) an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?”
“Well, of course he is,” Bartlett replied.

On May 7, 2003, a reporter asked then White House spokesman Ari Fleischer: “We went to war, didn’t we, to find these — because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn’t that true?”
“Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all,” the spokesman replied.