Imminent Threat Quotes & Sayings

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. — Barack Obama

Iraq does not pose an imminent threat to the United States of any of its neighboring nations. — Dennis Kucinich

I think there are some mass destruction capabilities that are still inside Iraq. I think there's some weapons that have been shipped over the border to Syria. But I don't think we're going to find that their capabilities provided the imminent threat that many feared in this country. So I think it's going to be a tough search, but I think there's stuff there. — Wesley Clark

On August 1, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel granted the CIA's request to begin water-boarding Abu Zubaydah. The technique, tantamount to torture, was designed to elicit confessions through the threat of imminent death by drowning. That same day John Yoo, now a deputy to Attorney General Ashcroft, advised the White House that the laws against torture did not apply to American interrogators. The president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, and the director of Central Intelligence approved. The — Tim Weiner

In a sense, yes, but I have another concern that is a more imminent threat that is occupying the vast majority of my prefrontal cortex."
"I'm guessing that's part of the brain."
"In rudimentary terms it's the area of the brain where we make decisions."
Brandon scrunched up his face and pressed his finger into his cheek. "What does rudimentary mean?"
"It means
"
"I'm kidding, Professor." Brandon laughed and punched Marcus playfully in the arm. "I did go to school for a few years, you know. — James L. Rubart

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? — George W. Bush

Mutual lack of understanding carries the threat of imminent and violent destruction. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Global warming is not a threat. It's not a real threat. It's not a credible threat. It's not an imminent threat. ISIS is. — Eric Bolling

I suddenly understood that even love and caring weren't always enough. They were the concrete bricks of our relationship, but unstable without the mortar of time spent together, time without the threat of imminent separation hanging over us. — Nicholas Sparks

Now comes the threat of climate crisis - a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion? — Al Gore

There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud. — Edward Kennedy

The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless; it must be important enough to be worth the trouble; it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival. — Noam Chomsky

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been. — John Malkovich

The elementary self system in the brain stem and limbic system is massively activated when people are faced with the threat of annihilation, which results in an overwhelming sense of fear and terror accompanied by intense physiological arousal. To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

I don't reject the concept of preemptive war. I'm a mother of five. I have five grandchildren. And I always say: Think of a lioness. Think of a mother bear. You come anywhere near our cubs, you're dead. And so, in terms of any threat to our country, people have to know we'll be there to preemptively strike. But what the president [Bush] did was, on the basis of no real intelligence for an imminent threat to our country, chose to go into a war for reasons that are still unknown to us. — Nancy Pelosi

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release. — Germaine Greer

I've never argued against any technology being used when you have an imminent threat, an active crime going on. If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash, I don't care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him. — Rand Paul

Then came a bigger fear. Not the threat of imminent injury, but the fear that if I didn't go back up, I would be a chickenshit forever. — John Sherman

The first drone strike outside of a declared war zone was conducted in 2002, yet it was not until May 2013 that the White House released a set of standards and procedures for conducting such strikes.3 Those guidelines offered little specificity, asserting that the United States would conduct a lethal strike outside an "area of active hostilities" only if a target represents a "continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons," without providing any sense of the internal process used to determine whether a suspect should be killed without being indicted or tried.4 The implicit message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been Trust, but don't verify.5 — Jeremy Scahill

Growing up during the Cold War, I remember the seemingly imminent threat of nuclear war. In primary school we were taught to 'duck-and-cover' for protection. But even as children hiding under wooden desks, we recognized the inadequacies of this strategy. — Mike Quigley

A few ... critics are the only people I ever heard use the phrase 'imminent threat.' I didn't, the president didn't. — Donald Rumsfeld

It's what [Barak] Obama was complaining about. All this is now up to the voters - who, of course, the Democrats do not trust. People who would have benefited from the programs face no imminent threat of deportation because Congress has provided money to deal with only a small percentage of people who live in the country illegally. — Rush Limbaugh

Would not the sight of a single enemy airplane be enough to induce a formidable panic? Normal life would be unable to continue under the constant threat of death and imminent destruction. — Giulio Douhet

We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It's a delusion to think it's gone away. — Kevin Costner

We always monitor the flow of information, intelligence, threat streams to see whether we have any indication there's some imminent. We work hard to identify potential cells and disrupt them. This is one of the reasons we put so much emphasis on intelligence gathering. — Michael Chertoff

The developed world should neither shelter nor militarily destabilize authoritarian regimes unless those regimes represent an imminent threat to the national security of other states. Developed states should instead work to create the conditions most favorable for a closed regime's safe passage through the least stable segment of the J curve however and whenever the slide toward instability comes. And developed states should minimize the risk these states pose the rest of the world as their transition toward modernity begins. — Ian Bremmer

Something wonderful happens at night, though. There are no more distractions, at least there is no more threat of imminent distraction. Since everyone is asleep you can be fairly certain nobody is going to give you a call, nobody will ask you a random question, nothing interesting is going to happen on the internet. For at least ten hours nothing will be expected of you. Nothing. That's a lot of freedom right there. — Anonymous

And yet he felt forebodings. Some nameless threat lurked just around the corner of the world for the sun to rise again. The feeling had been gnawing at him, as annoying as a swarm of hungry insects that buzzed about one's face in the desert sun. There was the sense of the imminent, the remorseless, the mindless; it coiled like a heat-maddened rattler, ready to strike at rolling tumbleweed. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

The actions that we take on the counterterrorism front, again, are to take actions against individuals where we believe that the intelligence base is so strong and the nature of the threat is so grave and serious, as well as imminent, that we have no recourse except to take this action that may involve a lethal strike. — John O. Brennan

Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions - those institutions we proudly called the American way of life. — Douglas MacArthur

George W. Bush and Tony Blair had to convince the world that Saddam Hussein represented an imminent threat. Tony Blair lied when he claimed that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes. — Bianca Jagger

With Albright at the helm of the State Department, Osama bin Laden ran wild throughout the Middle East, the North Koreans began feverishly building nukes under her nose, and we staged a pre-emptive attack solely for purposes of regime change based on false information presented to the American people by Albright about a world leader who was not an imminent threat to the United States. Slobodan Milosevic wasn't even a latent, long-term, hypothetical threat. — Ann Coulter

The framers understood that the president, as the head of our armed forces, must defend the nation from imminent threat. But when the mission shifts from defense to offense, congressional approval is essential. — Tim Kaine