Cheney abandons "imminent threat" test for "track record" test?

[Tesibria]

Did we miss something here? Or am I reading too much into it?

In Tuesday night's debate ...

IFILL: ...Does that mean that if you had been president and vice president that Saddam Hussein would still be in power?
EDWARDS: **********
IFILL: Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds to respond.
CHENEY: The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there‘s a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there‘s clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.

And the point is that that‘s the place where you‘re most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years.
***
===========================
What does THAT mean? I thought that their "Bush Doctrine" permitted the US to attack in cases of imminent (or near imminent) threat. But here, Cheney defends it on the ground that Iraq had a "track record with terror."

Either The * Team is totally inconsistent and despite the rhetoric, doesn't mean to attack other countries with a "clear ... established ... track record with terror" OR we are in for a war across the world with a dozen or more countries in the next 4 years.

:shrug:

[notadmblnd]

1. oh sure there's a least a dozen more pre-emptive

wars planned. I read in chalmers Johnsons book The Sorrows of the Empire that this admin has a list of a least 60 countries they see as a threat.

[Supersedeas]

2. track record-intent-desire-programs of mass destruction-sad backtracking

[SCDem]

3. In that case doesn't the US have a track record with terror

If our CIA trained bin Laden and funded him in the 80's and supported Sadaam and funded him in the 80's.