Politics & Power Quote by Tommy Franks

“I, for one, begin with intent” is a soldier’s way of planting a flag in the terrain that matters most before a war: motive. Tommy Franks isn’t arguing policy details; he’s establishing a prosecution narrative. “Intent” functions like a legal threshold and a moral permission slip at the same time. If you can persuade the public that an adversary means to harm you, the messy questions about capability, imminence, and evidence become secondary. Fear does the connective work.

The phrasing also tells on itself. “I, for one” sounds conversational, even modest, but it’s a rhetorical wedge: he’s separating the serious people who start from presumed hostile intent from the skeptics who want proof. It subtly casts doubt as naivete. Then comes the absolutist cadence - “There is no question” - a classic move in high-stakes messaging: announce certainty to manufacture it. The clause that follows (“Saddam Hussein had intent…”) doesn’t actually provide new information, just a fortified assertion. Notice the slippage from “Western alliance” to “the United States of America”: a coalition frame that quickly centers the American self, tightening the emotional focus.

Context sharpens the stakes. In the run-up to the Iraq War, intent was the bridge between ambiguous intelligence and irreversible action. Weapons could be debated; “intent” is harder to falsify, easier to imagine, and tailor-made for a post-9/11 audience primed to treat worst-case scenarios as responsible planning. Franks’ line isn’t evidence; it’s a strategy for making evidence feel optional.