Thirty years with the CIA 1964 to 1994.
I worked for the government for 35 years starting
with the Marine Corps from 1964 to 1968 with
service in Vietnam.
I was 25 years as a Professional Intelligence
Officer with CIA.
Almost 5 years in the Pentagon, and the last
almost 3 of that working in the Office of
Secretary Defense.
I spent almost 20 years with the State Department,
3 years in Athens as a political counselor
the chief of the political section.
I'm a retired colonel of the United States
Army, military intelligence special forces.
I was previously with the State Department
office of counter terrorism in 1989 to 1993,
part of that I worked with the Central Intelligence
Agency.
I'm a former Senior Estimates Officer with
the Central Intelligence Agency.
I started actually as a science fellow at
the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and
became the chief scientist of the Arms Control
Agency.
For 27 years I was an analyst first of Soviet
Affairs and then a wide of responsibilities.
I'm a congressman representing the 30th District
in Los Angeles.
I've just completed almost 3 decades of service
to the United States.
Most recently, I was an Assistant Secretary
of Defense in the Pentagon from 1994 to 2001.
I served for 23 years in the American Foreign
Services Diplomat.
I worked for the CIA for 28-and-a-half years.
I joined the agency in 1988, joining with
what was then known as the National Photographic
Interpretation Center.
I'm a Washington Editor of the Nation Magazine.
I've been doing that for about 16 years now.
I'm the Labor MP for our Constituency in Birmingham
for Birmingham Ladywood.
I've been the MP for 20 years.
For 30 years I was a Diplomat serving my country
abroad and my last position, however, was
as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf
War.
July of 1970, the president asked to me to
come over to the White House Counsel and I
served for roughly 1000 days until it all
fell apart.
Twenty-three years as a Commission Officer
of the United States Army.
I came back to public service in 2001 to be
the Secretary of the Army.
I spent 21 years in the CIA, of that time,
I spent 90% in Middle East.
I'm a former Weapons Inspector with the United
Nations in Iraq.
I served in that capacity from 1991 to 1998.
I worked for the CIA for 20 years from 1966
to 1986.
I've worked on assessing secret nuclear weapons
programs for almost 20 years.
Never expected that I'd leave the Navy and
become the chief spoke of our country, the
Director of Central Intelligence but that
happened.
Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq weapons of mass destruction.
A clear threat to the United States.
There's dozens of ballistic.
It is sponsored and sheltered terrorists.
Paying suicide bombers.
Chemical weapons are equally.
Biological weapons including anthrax and botulism
toxins.
Biological and chemical agents to kill millions
of people.
Chemical weapons including VX and Sarin, mustard
gas.
To a massive and sudden horror.
Massive death and destruction.
Death on a massive scale.
The danger to our country is grave.
The danger to our country is growing.
The Iraqi Regime possesses biological and
chemical weapons.
The Iraqi Regime is building the facilities
necessary to make more biological and chemical
weapons.
And according to the British Government, the
Iraqi Regime could launch a biological or
chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes
after the order were given.
The Regime has long-standing and continuing
ties to terrorist's organizations and their
Al-Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq.
The Regime is seeking a nuclear bomb and with
fissile material could build one within a
year.
The Bush Administration made its mind to go
to war on September the 11th, 2001.
That very first day on September 12, one day
after September 11, the meeting that was held
in the White House in the Situation Room led
to Rumsfeld asking the question, "Shouldn't
we use this as an opportunity to do something
about Iraq as well'?
We all said, "But no, no Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan
we need to bomb Afghanistan" and Rumsfeld
said, "There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan
and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."
From that time on, you were dealing with rationalization
and justification for the war.
You weren't dealing with real causes for the
war or real reasons for the war.
There was never clear present danger.
There was never an imminent threat.
With weapons of mass destruction.
Weapons of mass destruction.
Weapons of mass death.
Weapons of mass destruction was a convenient
way of tricking our congress into giving the
president authority to wage this war.
Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire
nuclear weapons.
Develop nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons.
It was clear that Iraq did not have a nuclear
weapons program but over and over again, President
Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld particularly
Vice-President Cheney but also National Security
Advisor Condi Rice drummed up the idea of
a reconstituted nuclear capability and particularly
the notion that I think has some residence
of wronging the American people of the "Mushroom
Cloud."
Leaders will use worse case assessments that
point to nuclear weapons to generate political
support because they know people fear nuclear
weapons so much.
The evidence was simply not there.
[Inaudible] would asked to explain, you know,
how good is the evidence?
Can you tell us more about it?
This is NATO mind you and he'd say, "Well,
it's like this it's like pornography.
Hard to describe but you recognize it when
you see it."
My God!
And we're going to war on that?
If someone is waiting for a so-called smoking
gun, it's certain that we will have waited
too long.
We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom
cloud.
We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking
gun.
It could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
So, a lot people who supported the war in
Iraq actually believed that Iraq had the capability
to fire missiles that could reach the United
States carrying payloads of nuclear or chemical
or biological weapons.
Iraq has never had the capability to do that.
They didn't have in the first Gulf War.
They didn't have it in this war in Iraq and
they don't have it, anyway of getting it in
the future.
What the Bush Administration did was try to
round up as many people as they could who
would make the case for them.
What the White House wanted was the CIA to
give it talking points to justify this war,
it already made up its mind.
Massive intervention by people particularly
from Vice-President Cheney's office and Vice-President
Cheney himself in the process.
And I think the intelligence analysts found
themselves really up against it when they
tried to argue that those connections weren't
as tight as people were saying.
Intelligence director of the Department of
Energy simply ordered his experts who has
raised questions about the evidence being
used on the nuclear end of it as the news
accounts say "to sit down and shut up" so
that the DOE would be onboard with the overall
estimate.
They were not given the opportunity to speak
because no one wanted to hear what they said.
And I was in chief of collecting information
on Iraq through the mid90s.
I know what we had and what we didn't have
and I'm here to tell you there was no information.
I understand that the director himself, George
Tenet is now accompanying the briefer in the
morning and this never happened in the past.
In the past we were trusted, there were senior
people, we knew what the score was and when
I hear that George Tenet is going down with
the senior briefer I wonder why.
And the very heavy leaning on the director
of Central Intelligence and his staff to produce
precisely the language which would allow them
to make the statements which they had been
making to support the decision to go into
Iraq.
Well, not only by their physical presence
but by the questions they asked, by the "well
don't you think?"
sort of things, "well couldn't it be possible
that?"
They call this data mining, going back over
old information and coming with new conclusions.
And the overwhelming opinion from the scientists
of this government at the Department or Energy
and even at the CIA and some of the State
Department were arguing against using weapons
of mass destruction as a case to go to war.
You're talking about the Vice-President of
the United States and you're talking about
a GS-13 or 14, a midlevel analyst in the Central
Intelligence Agency.
You're talking about a person who should have
career protection for telling it like it is
but who knows that his chief, the director
of the CIA is a member of the team, you know?
A lot of pressure on that.
It shouldn't happen.
The whole purpose the CIA was to leave those
people out at Langley that's why they're not
in Washington, they're in Northern Virginia
away from the White House, away from congress,
leave them alone, ask them what they think
but don't tell them to rethink their positions
because then you come up with nonsense like
we saw.
The administration had decided very early
on that Saddam should go and that in itself
is not a bad goal, but of course, everything
depends on how you do it when, how, where,
with whom, etcetera.
Preemptive war by its very nature is something
that is entirely new to the United States
of America and to what we call the old western
alliance.
That's, you know, you go back through history
and at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 a group
of nations that had just killed most of each
other off decided that this isn't quite the
way to do it and they came up with a set of
laws that we've all lived with fairly well
since then which doesn't much allow for preemptive
war.
Delay in decision and in action could lead
to a massive and sudden horror.
It simply makes no sense to wait any longer.
Take action before it's too late.
We will not wait.
I believe it is essential that when we see
a threat we deal with those threats before
they become imminent.
It's too late if they become imminent.
As President Bush has said, "time is not on
our side."
It was a rushed and I believe it was done
I believe in 3 or 4 weeks which is really
fast for that.
It wasn't done earlier from what I understand
because the Bush Administration didn't want
such a document that had caveats.
That's why they never asked for a comprehensive
National Intelligence Estimate within the
intelligence community on this particular
problem because they knew the intelligence
community didn't agree on any of these issues.
The National Intelligence Estimate is really
about, I don't know 5 major players but 10
intelligence agencies in total weighing in
on the basic situation with weapons of mass
destruction.
It only happened because the head of the senate
intelligence committee, Graham called for
it and so I think the Bush Administration
resisted having an NIE and then once it was
out, selectively picked what was useful to
their argument.
Most of their qualifications were simply filtered
out.
The standardization of the original estimate
was not true to its real meaning.
All the modifiers were dropped off.
It was a prosecutor making a case using what
benefited his case ignoring evidence that
would undermine his case and there was no
defensive attorney to give us the other side.
And the end product used by policy makers
particularly in its discussion with the American
public were much more forceful than could
have possibly been when originally written
by CIA, DIA or State Departments Intelligence
and Research.
It was a bizarre warping of the intelligence
process and they thought they would be able
to get away with it because who's going to
see the classified version?
Well, later several months later, they released
parts of the classified version.
They thought no one would notice.
So, this was not a case where the National
Intelligence Estimate was driving the war.
This was to provide an excuse after the fact.
Going to war based on intelligence is yet
another example, I think, of intelligence
simply not being able by nature, by definition
to live up to that kind of requirement.
You may produce intelligence that could keep
you out of a war but I doubt that you'll ever
get 1, 2, 3 reports of intelligence that will
in any way allow you to go to war.
There are Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists.
Secretly, without fingerprints he could provide
one is hidden weapons to terrorists or help
them develop their own.
Well, the war really has absolutely nothing
to do with terrorism.
There was no connection whatsoever between
Iraq and the secular regime there and the
religious fanatics who perpetrated 9/11.
They wanted to believe that there was a connection
but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was
sitting there, I was sitting there saying
"we've looked this issue for years, for years
we have looked for a connection."
Well, there's just no connection.
Saddam was not a maniac or a fool.
He was a terrible villain, yes but he was
not going to sacrifice his own life and the
future of his country to stupid adventures
with terrorists who had completely antithetical
views to his.
It is just inconceivable to anybody who understands
Saddam Hussein and understands the nature
of highly centralized dictatorships.
Generally, that dictators would want to give
up control of their most potent weaponry because
once you've given up control, you have no
control so you can't say to Al-Qaeda you will
use this or you won't use it.
The decision of whether or not they're going
to use it depends on what Osama bin Laden
does.
Do you want to entrust your fate to Osama
bin Laden and his nihilistic ways?
I don't think so, Saddam Hussein is a psychopath
and sociopath, he was not an irrational being
in the sense he was going to ensure his own
demise by doing something like that.
Al-Qaeda has had total contempt for Saddam
Hussein himself.
He's been a socialist.
He's been very harsh.
He's treated Islamic leaders, Islamist leaders
extremely harshly.
Iraq and we have very good intelligence on
this.
It was not part of the picture of terrorism
before we invaded.
Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden where enemies.
Bin Laden considered and said that Saddam
Hussein was the socialist infidel.
These were very different kinds of individuals
competing for power in their own way and Saddam
Hussein made very sure that Al-Qaeda couldn't
function in Iraq, that terrorists couldn't
function except for the small northeastern
quadrant of the country where was and extremist
group but he had no control over that.
I was near the Iranian border.
There's no doubt that Ansar al-Islam is a
radicle Islamic terrorist group with ties
to Al-Qaeda but they operate in a part of
Iraq that is not controlled by Hussein.
The leaders say they seek to overthrow Hussein
and his government.
They are our enemy, really they are also our
enemy.
We believe that Saddam Hussein, him and his
group and his ministers, also they are outside
of Islamist zone.
And the ties with Al-Qaeda was just a scare
tactic to exploit the trauma, the very real
trauma that the American people have felt
ever since 9/11 and to associate that trauma
with Iraq.
As you know from the polls, most Americans
believe that Iraq had something to do with
9/11 and it was a very successful, very deliberate
and very unethical and immoral operation on
the part of the PR people in this administration.
We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts
to acquire nuclear weapons.
Among other sources we've gotten this from
firsthand testimony from defectors.
Access to immigrants and defectors with more
direct access to these programs.
From 3 Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq in
the late 1990s had several mobile biological
weapons.
It's only after defectors told us about it.
Their inspectors were in the country.
The most important information that inspectors
have ever gotten on what's going on in Iraq
have come from defectors.
We know about that capability from defectors
and other sources.
A recent defector stated that as recently
as August of 19/08 that's while inspections
were still going on, a formal order was issued
to proceed with a nuclear program at full
blast.
Our strategy is to bring to the world the
danger that Saddam poses in his current state.
Without doubt, he is developing weapons of
mass destruction.
Without doubt, he has chemical and biological
weapons and without doubt, for 30 years he
has been trying to acquire a nuclear weapon.
The usual scrutiny of these kind of guys was
just not done adequately, that there was this
attitude of let's find the smoking gun, let's
find the evidence rather than let's look at
what's out there and weigh the evidence.
They wanted to believe him.
It goes back to contacts that originated as
early as the 1990s with individuals like Dick
Cheney, like Paul Wolfowitz, like Richard
Perle dealing with Ahmad Chalabi.
They became enamored of this fellow who dressed
like a westerner, talked with a British accent
and appeared to be uppercrossed and therefore
was quite believable.
And everyone in Washington was believing them
and I thought people had really somehow checked
out of reality in order to go to war, that
is a war fever that had taken over.
These people wanted to get back into Bagdad.
They couldn't defeat Saddam Hussein but they
knew that U.S. Military power could, so the
worst of these offenders who would be Ahmad
Chalabi who has been in exile for his own
country for 20 to 30 years and is clearly
not a hero under any definition of heroism
to his own people sold the Pentagon on the
idea that Saddam Hussein did have weapons
of mass destruction and he must be stopped.
But they were bringing forward individuals
who they claimed were either high-level military
or scientist with access.
They were looking for money first of all cause
Chalabi was paying money.
Supplying money shouldn't be a surprise.
That's how informants are dealt with in the
spy business.
But there was no effort to check their bonafides,
none.
Every checkable piece of that intelligence
that's come to public notice has proven to
be false or at least self-serving in the extreme.
You had the U.S. Congress approve and appropriate
money for the Iraqi National Congress with
no telling how much they were taking off the
top for themselves.
You get all kinds of people who want a reward
and have nothing to offer and many ended up
with Chalabi because they would believe anything
bad about Iraq.
It was phony evidence, it was based on intelligence
we had from Iraqi exiles who wanted this country
to attack Iraq so these people could then
take over in Bagdad and establish their own
regime.
We have to back and examine just the role
that the defectors played throughout the entire
inspection process.
The inspections work then you don't overthrow
Saddam Hussein.
How does somebody like that, I don't know
even how to describe him, get into a position
where he's determining U.S. policies?
Senior members of the Department of Defense
gave him their thumbs up.
His information was coming into the White
House to people like Dick Cheney through the
Office of Special Plans, so it was coming
in through an avenue that's not traditional
to the intelligence community and wasn't open
to being vetted or reviewed.
You had Chalabi himself admit that they didn't
mind providing false information cause it
helped them to achieve their goal of removing
Saddam.
Nobody in Iraq will defend that regime including
the military, both the regular army and the
Republican Guard.
Our liberation would not have been achieved
without the determination of President George
W. Bush and the commitment of the Coalition
at the forefront of which stand the people
of the United States of America and Great
Britain.
The Iraqis will never forget your courage
and sacrifice on our behalf.
We are here today to declare that the new
Iraq is born and Iraq with dignity, justice
and human rights are assured for all citizens.
There is no risk of a breakup of Iraq.
There is no risk of a civil war.
I stand before this assembly as a representative
of free Iraq.
To all those here who helped us in our struggle
for liberation we extend our gratitude.
The Iraqi opposition will ensure that the
continuation of it' institutions and to reestablish
democracy and the rule of law.
He said, "I got what I wanted.
I got my war.
I'm back in Iraq and if you people relied
on my information you're stupid."
Every year by law and by custom we meet here
to consider the State of the Union.
This year we gather in this chamber deeply
aware of decisive days that lie ahead.
Bush presented so many distorted beliefs,
estimates and guestimates that it appears
that he was misleading the public and the
congress.
Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce
as much as 500 tons of Sarin, mustard and
VX nerve agent.
Any Sarin that they were making in 1990-1991
had a known shelf life about 2 months.
I have confirmed this with inspectors and
analysts who were deeply involved in the 1990s
analyses.
Well, if you made it 12 years ago and it had
a shelf life of 2 months, it may not be safe
to drink but it isn't Sarin nerve gas any
longer and there is no way the agency could
not have known that.
U.S. Intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein
had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of
delivering chemical agents.
Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them despite
Iraq's recent declaration, denying their existence.
And then they tried to use the fact that inspectors
found 16 of these as evidence that thousands
more existed, and again, I mean as a methodology
it's a very weak way to predict anything and
I think it borders on propaganda to argue
that the small number that had been found
by inspectors implied that in this case, over
29,000 exists.
Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining
29,984 of these prohibited munitions.
Put it this way, Bush Administration officials
either routinely said or tried to give the
impression that if Iraq had not fully accounted
for all of a certain item related to chemical
or biological weapons, then it must be there
and that's not all what the inspectors said
or found.
He hadn't accounted for that material.
He's given no evidence that he has destroyed
it.
And the inspectors could go in and say, okay
we can prove yeah you destroyed that set in
this way or that set in that way but these
others we can't prove it and that doesn't
mean that they didn't destroy these warheads
or whatever the item was, it just means Iraq
hadn't been able to prove it.
If Saddam Hussein had admitted to the Iranians,
to the Syrians and his own people that he
had been so intimated by the U.N. inspection
and sanctions process that he had given up
all that, they probably would have torn him
limb from limb.
Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to
produce more than 38,000 liters of botulin
toxin, enough to subject millions of millions
of people to death by respiratory failure.
He hadn't accounted for that material.
Revealed his biological weapons program, particularly
it' ability to make botulin toxin and therefore
it was an open issue, but again, it doesn't
mean that what the inspectors found was evidence
that Iraq possessed that.
Our intelligence sources tell us that he has
attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum
tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.
I think there was very little doubt that the
centrifuge tubes, so-called were nothing but
rocket motor tubes to go into M-81 style artillery
rockets.
They certainly have all the specs for that.
Nuclear experts, for instance, from Lawrence
Livermore's laboratory's Z division, the experts
on centrifuge in Richmond came out and said,
"No you couldn't enrich uranium using these
tubes.
They're not compatible."
Well, I saw it as a deliberate attempt to
take information, selectively take information
and try to basically say Iraq poses and imminent
nuclear threat and therefore action is absolutely
necessary and I felt that was absolutely wrong.
International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed
in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced
Nuclear Weapons Development Program.
The administration showed photos of nuclear
or former nuclear weapon sites in Iraq pre-1991
nuclear weapons sites; claimed that new construction
showed they were ongoing nuclear weapons production
sites, complete nonsense.
The most troubling thing about the fact of
the distortions and the misleading statements
that Bush gave congress is that it is a federal
felony, it's a crime to mislead and distort
information and present it to the congress.
The British Government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa.
When Secretary Powell addressed the U.N. about
weapons of mass destruction he deliberately
left out any reference to attempts to buy
uranium from Africa.
I didn't use the uranium at that point because
I didn't think that was sufficiently strong
as evidence to present before the world.
CIA officials warn members of the President's
staff the intelligence was not good enough
to make the statement "Iraq tried to buy uranium
from Africa."
In October for the Cincinnati speech not for
the State of the Union, but the Cincinnati
speech, George Tenet asked that this be taken
out of the Cincinnati speech, the reference
to yellowcake.
It was taken out of the Cincinnati speech
because whenever the Director of Central Intelligence
wants something out, it's gone.
How did it get back in?
It's not a matter of getting back in, it's
a matter Tim that 3 plus months later people
didn't remember that George Tenet had asked
that it be taken out of the Cincinnati speech
and that is was cleared by the agency.
The British Government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa.
Just 16 words in the State of the Union Address,
words that we now know where misleading.
A retired career diplomat Joe Wilson tried
to warn the administration of just that nearly
a year before the speech.
I received a call from the CIA in February
of 2002 and I was invited out to talk to those
people within the broader intelligence community
who deal with 3 different subjects; Iraq,
uranium and Niger.
I briefed them on what I knew about the uranium
business.
It was during the course of that briefing
that they said that they had received a report
that had peaked the interest of the office
of the Vic-President and that report was of
a purported memorandum of agreement authorizing
the sale of uranium yellowcake somewhat enriched
uranium from Niger to Iraq and it was a document
that was executed by the government of Niger.
They asked me if I would be willing to go
out and take another look at it and talk to
people I knew there.
I left there telling them that if they wanted
I would be able to free up my schedule, they
subsequently called me and said "please do."
I spent the 8 days drinking mint tea and talking
to everybody there was to talk to who knew
anything about the subject matter and [inaudible]
and I had come back persuaded that it could
not have happened, one from a business perspective
because of the way the consortium was structured,
you just couldn't do it without a lot of people
knowing and two, the way the government bureaucracy
was structured you could not make the decision
without a lot of people knowing and if you
made the decision, the decision would be reflected
in a series of signatures on the documents
and if the documents did not contain those
signatures they could not be authentic government
of these are your documents.
President quoted a British paper, we did not
know at the time, no one knew at the time
in our circles, maybe someone knew down in
the bowels of the agency but no one in our
circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions
that this might be a forgery.
Of course, it was information that was mistaken
but the, it was a relatively small part of
the case about nuclear weapons and nuclear
reconstitution.
It is also the case that the broad picture
about Iraq's programs was a picture that went
very far back in time.
Now, given what I knew about where the question
had originated and given what I knew about
the way the government works, I knew that
people in her circle did know.
Based on thorough analysis, [inaudible] has
conclude with the concurrence of outside expert
that these documents which form the basis
for the reports of recent uranium transaction
between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.
Numerous French words were misspelled in the
documents.
One of the letters was signed by a Niger official
who had left office 10 years ago.
Several dates in the documents did not match
the day of the week.
Several of the names and titles of officials
mentioned in the documents were incorrect.
We all know that the documentation on yellowcake
from Niger was a fake but why doesn't anybody
say who did it?
Who faked the document and why don't we take
another look at then at the same stream of
consciousness that was prevailing at that
moment on the aluminum tubes and the, even
the trailers the bioweapons trailers that
were so badly hid, at that point someone's
got to say, who is putting this intelligence
out there and why?
And I don't think that question has been answered
and maybe because the answer is known and
it's not a pleasant one.
Who was it that asked for this review of the
Niger nuclear material question?
It was the Vice-President.
Mr. Wilson, former Ambassador was sent to
Niger in response to the Vice-President's
questions about this issue, so assumedly the
Vice-President got a report back in response
to his question and that report contained
the Wilson memo, his assessment of the situation.
The question remains, who did the document?
Who forged the document and why?
You know, the list is possibly short, somebody
ought to be able to work on that.
Wilson says his family is the subject of a
smear campaign by Senior Administration Officials.
They deliberating leaked his wife's identity
as a covert CIA operative damaging her future
career and compromising past missions after
he criticized the administration on Meet the
Press and in the New York Times.
The White House hatchet then came out and
started writing articles in which they basically
said that Wilson, well the first one came
out and said that Wilson told the truth cause
he's a democrat; we'll set that up as an argument.
Democrats tell the truth, [inaudible] republicans
fill in the blank.
Then a couple of senior administration officials
leak to Bob Novak that my wife was a CIA operative
involved in the weapons of mass destruction
business at the CIA.
Senior administration officials is a key to
being very, typically the President, Vice-President,
cabinet officers and the top of the White
House had gone out of their way to get that
information out not only told Novak, told
Time magazine they wanted the information
out.
Now, that's against a statutory law what prohibits
the identification of CIA operatives.
What you're doing when you expose a CIA officer
of any name, you're basically taking their
entire career and flushing it down the toilet.
It also has the potential of placing that
person in jeopardy because of their operations
and their own operations and people they have
operated with in jeopardy, so it is a very
vengeful act against the ambassador to try
to hurt him by hurting his wife's career if
not wishing him physical damage.
I had never seen a dirty trick that could
be a hit.
A President of the United States and an administration
who has come to office on a platform of restoring
dignity and honor the White House what they
did was neither dignified nor was it terribly
honorable nor was it germane to be the issue
at hand.
First of all it should be noted that Colin
Powell's speech to the United Nations was
theater, a masterful theater, effective theater
at the time.
You know, here's a man who has tremendous
credibility who presents himself to the security
council, to the American people, to the international
public and stares the camera in the eye and
says "he knows Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."
Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons
of mass destruction for a few more months
or years is not an option.
My first visual impression here watching George
Tenet be head of the Central Intelligence
Agency back there as a prop almost like a
potted plant as if to say that the Central
Intelligence Agency stands behind, or in this
case sits behind everything that Colin Powell
says that was a terrific blow to the moral
of the Central Intelligence Agency analysts.
Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons.
Chemical weapons, although they can be very
deadly in a subway station or something like
this are not really strategic weapons.
They are weapons that can kill 50, 100, 200
people, but in fact, they won't devastate
you the way a nuclear weapon in New York City
or Chicago or someplace would be a deadly
blow.
Saddam Hussein has used these horrific weapons
on another country and on his own people.
He used weapons, Saddam Hussein did back in
the 1980s when the U.S, Administration, the
Reagan Administration was actually supporting
him and allowing him to import the, of the
chemical precursors for that.
Donald Rumsfeld would actually as a special
envoy for Ronald Reagan back in those years
helped, you know, open the door for better
relations between Washington and Bagdad.
Colin Powell spoke of thousands of leaders
of anthrax that were unaccounted for.
He said they're probably hiding it and then
held up a little vial of white powder and
he said, a couple teaspoonfuls of white powder
like this if launched against American cities
could kill thousands of Americans.
If he was truly to reflect the Iraqi capability,
he would held up a bottle of diet Coke and
said the Iraqis produce anthrax that looked
like this.
It has a shelf life of 3 years.
The last known production batch came out in
1991, so even if Iraq was hiding this brown
sludge liquid, it would be useless today.
Just a few weeks ago we intercepted communications
between 2 commanders in Iraq's second Republican
Guard Corps.
If you know anything about Iraq they have
very strict communications security procedures.
So, you would never have military personnel
speaking in the clear over a radio about sensitive
subjects.
On the left is a close up of 1 of the 4 chemical
bunkers.
There were never any chemical weapons in that
facility.
I'm intimately familiar with that facility.
I've inspected it a number of times.
Other inspectors have inspected it many more
times than I have.
To believe they were proof is to believe the
statement that Iraq would put its crown jewels
in the one building or one of the few buildings
that either the United States will bomb first
or the inspectors will go to first.
The truck you also see is signature item,
it's a decontamination vehicle.
The U.N. Weapon Inspectors knew that the truck
shown by Colin Powell in those photographs
were firetrucks not decontamination trucks.
I would have to comment here on Secretary
of State Colin Powell's debut as an imagery
analyst.
It was highly embarrassing for those of us
who know about something about the business.
We couldn't tell whether this was an honest
mistake by those who now do the imagery analysis,
who now report to the Secretary of Defense
unlike our day when they reported to the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Whether that was the case or whether perhaps
Colin Powell was being setup.
From our point of view, I mean we do all kinds
of analysis of satellite imagery.
You can't form any conclusions on what's going
on inside the building.
They could have been building tractors.
They could have been doing nothing inside
the facility.
Now look at the picture on the right.
You are now looking at 2 of those sanitized
bunkers.
The signature vehicles are gone.
It's been cleaned up and it was done on the
22nd of December as the U.N. inspection team
is arriving.
Contamination vehicles, they rotate from site
to site and so the absence of the vehicle
on the second photo which we know is the 22nd
of December, could just as easily be explained
by the normal rotation because you didn't
tell us the date of the first and it was several
weeks before.
We have noted that the 2 satellite images
of the sites were taken several weeks apart.
The report of movement of munitions at the
site could just as easily had been a routine
activity as a movement or prescribed munitions
in anticipation of imminent inspection.
We have firsthand description of biological
weapons factories on wheels and rails.
These mobile labs that have been shown to
be nothing more than hydrogen generation facilities.
Here you see both truck and railcar mounted
mobile factories.
When you take a look at the mobile labs that
Colin Powell discussed, he didn't put up photographs
of these facilities.
He put up artists renditions of these facilities.
Why?
Because we have no proof they exist.
This video of an Iraqi test flight obtained
by UNSCOM some years ago shows an Iraqi F-1
Mirage jet aircraft.
Note the spray coming from beneath the Mirage.
That is 2000 liters of simulated anthrax.
Iraqis continue to visit Bin Laden in his
new home in Afghanistan.
George Tenet's analysts has spent a year-and-a-half
of tortuous investigation, tortuous analysis
to see if there were ties between Al-Qaeda
and Iraq.
They found none.
Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today
has a stockpile between 100 and 500 tons of
chemical weapons agent.
So, the Secretary of State is telling us that
our conservative estimate is that Iraq possess
between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons
agent, enough to fill 16,000 warheads on the
battle field.
Where are they?
What happened to them?
My suspicion is that this is not our conservative
estimate that this sounds very much to me
like our nail conservative estimate.
Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take
their place alongside the other Iraqi denials
of weapons of mass destruction.
It is all a web of lies.
It was a masterful performance but none of
it was true.
Where are all these weapons?
Where is all this VX?
Where is all the anthrax?
Probably one of the low points in his long
distinguished service to the nation.
The old weapons inspection process was a little
more than a game.
They concealed, denied, deceived.
Return of inspectors would provide no assurance
whatsoever.
To eliminate by inspection is quite frankly
a fool's errand.
On the contrary, there's a great danger that
it would provide false comfort that Saddam
was somehow back in his box.
Reality is that between the original UNSCOM
inspections and the UNMOVIC inspections you
destroyed with those inspections 90 to probably
95% of the Iraqi arsenal.
The first Gulf War destroyed almost nothing
and, you know, postwar U.S. battle damage
assessments confirmed that.
The weapons inspectors were effective.
They forced Saddam to get rid of his stuff.
They had the country under control.
By 1998 at the latest, those inspectors had
discovered most of the weapons of mass destruction
and the Iraqi programs at that point were
essentially at an end.
Before the war in Iraq, the United Nations
Inspectors told us that Saddam Hussein did
not have nuclear weapons capability.
Ironically the major effect of the invasion
of Iraq in terms of weapons of mass destruction
has been to show that the inspectors were
right along.
The inspection regime worked.
It was the most intrusive inspection regime
in history and it worked and at the end of
the day that's another reason why we went
to war for nothing.
These maniacs who are encouraging out enemies,
weakening our troops resolve and confusing
the American people.
Well, you shouldn't listen to these protests
because they're obviously helping Saddam Hussein.
Who would have guessed that you could build
a massive international peace movement on
the protection of Saddam Hussein?
The media is culpable for the misleading of
the American public.
They bought into the Bush Administration's
rederick.
They don't understand that there is moral
violence and immoral violence.
We use moral violence, God bless this president.
He is truly a great man.
Reducing troop morale, confusing the American
people and emboldening our enemies.
They are absolutely committing sedition and
treason as far as I'm concerned.
There's huge difference between personal opinion
and an opinion which degrades on the basis
on military in a time of war.
It's a disgrace.
I don't believe that mainstream media acted
responsibly in regards to Iraq.
You know, I was belittle, I was called a trader.
I was called crazy, Paula Zahn of CNN accused
me of drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool Aid for
making accurate statements in response to
aluminum tubes.
People out there are accusing you of drinking
Saddam Hussein's Kool Aid.
If an idea log, then I'm a republican idea
log, I'm actually a fairly conservative person
who voted for George W. Bush but I don't allow
my ideology to get in the way of the facts
and the reality in my duties and responsibilities
as an American citizen.
There's a tendency if you want to kill the
message to go after the messenger.
If you can discredit the messenger then you
can discredit the message or if you can make
the story about the messenger then people
forget about the message.
And I think it's so unfair to try to silence
debate and criticism by attacking those who
say something of which you disagree.
The media is supposed to be the force of state
but they decided to completely climb in bed
with the administration on this.
In a way, the administration constructed a
box where, and that was, that box had all
the information that the administration wanted
the media and the public and congress to have.
What they would do is you'd have the Iraqi
National Congress taking bogus defector's
information from them, giving them to the
Pentagon and then the Iraqi National Congress,
then giving them to the journalists and they
said if you don't believe us, the Iraqi National
Congress call up the Pentagon.
So, you had this circular reporting and you've
had the New York Times admitting that it was
using one source for all of its information
on weapons of mass destruction and it was,
you know, self-affirming by going to the Pentagon
which put this stuff on paper.
It was a lot of exaggerations, partial information
sometimes the whole information but on balance,
a very one-sided view of Iraq's WMD Program.
And a lot of these stories the journalists
didn't want to look into because the editors
told them to run with it, we're going to be
supportive with the administration it's the
patriotic thing to do.
I think that was, on the part of the media,
too much of in a sense getting into the upcoming
war and not enough look at do we really need
to go?
There some journalists out there raising the
alarm bells.
The Seymour Hershes, the Walter Pincuses of
the world but unfortunately those great investigative
reporters they're usually exiled when the
heat is on and it's only after the fact that
they end up being praised and given the pats
on the back.
The excitement was to make the case to go
to war, you know, to show that, you know,
and that was the controversy to the media
[inaudible] is, you know, it was the titillation
of a WMD hitting us not the titillation of,
or the conflict of tacky administration.
Both Washington Post and New York Times, they
have very conservative editors that supported
the White House on this.
I didn't foresee all of this.
I'd like to say oh I was very prescient.
I knew that the others in the Intelligence
Community were saying I didn't and I'm one
of the ones who also I drank the Kool Aid,
but early on I felt that there was some real
dangers going into the war and I tried to
get an op-ed into various major newspapers
and the word kept coming back, nobody wants
to hear this cause we're going to war.
The people of the United States and our friends
and allies will not live at the mercy of an
outlaw regime that threatens the peace with
weapons of mass murder.
His regime has an active program to acquire
and develop nuclear weapons and let there
be no doubt about it.
We know for a fact that there are weapons
there.
There were a group of people who for many
years had advocated going after Saddam Hussein
and they pushed this hard and, of course,
raw intelligence data can be interpreted in
a lot of different ways, as I'm sure experts
will talk to about and so there were a group
of people I think that were adamant that this
was the right course to pursue.
We found the weapons of mass destruction,
you know, we found biological laboratories.
Everybody knows that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction.
I have reason, every reason to believe that
the intelligence that we operating off was
correct.
No question, we have said that Saddam Hussein
possess biological and chemical weapons.
We know where they are, there in the area
around Tikrit and Bagdad and east, west, south
and north somewhat.
This would be nuclear and, of course, the
operation for whatever duration it takes.
Are you confident that you'll find weapons
of mass destruction?
I believe we will find evidence of the programs
of chemical and biological weapons, yes.
How about the actual weapons?
Well, I just don't know.
Let's wait and see what the team that's over
there.
Sanctions continue with our new exploitation
teams that have been brought in.
And that we will in fact find weapons or evidence
of weapon programs that are conclusive.
It is somewhat puzzling I think that you can
have a 100% certainty about the weapons of
mass destructions existence and zero certainty
about where they are.
Do you agree and does it matter whether or
not you have these weapons?
We might ask the Prime Minister that.
We won't be proven wrong.
This is a process that takes some time and
it will ebb and flow.
One thing we know is that he had a Weapons
Programs.
I don't know anybody that I can think of who
has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear
weapons.
We believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear
weapons.
But on the specific issue of weapons of mass
destruction it's going to take time and we're
going to be patient.
With time, the truth will come out.
Now, it's going to take time to find anything
because they've had, they've.
People will find that we presented a solid
case, as case that is there and it was there
and will remain there.
It's going to take a period of time to find
the people.
I don't think we'll discover anything myself.
Still thought that 3-and-a-half months for
new inspections was a rather short time before
calling it a day and especially when we now
see that they say the U.S.
Government is saying that look you have to
a bit of patience, you know, these things
take time.
I believe that we will find the truth and
the truth is he was developing a program for
weapons of mass destruction.
I think what will happen is we'll discover
people who will tell us where to go to find
it.
You're not going find it simply in a house
you're going to search, you're going to find
it when people start to talk to you.
It is not like a treasure hunt where you just
run around looking everywhere hoping you find
something.
I just don't think that's going to happen.
The inspectors didn't find anything and I
doubt that we will.
The people going to find out the truth and
the truth will say that this intelligence
is good intelligence there's doubt in my mind.
What will do is find the people who will tell
us.
There a lot of people who lie and get away
with it and that's just a fact.
He had not developed any significant capability
with respect to weapons of mass destruction.
He is unable to project conventional power
against his neighbors.
We are able to keep arms from him.
His military forces have not been rebuilt.
Is U.S. credibility on the line of weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq?
I'm not exactly sure what that means.
Depends on the assumptions, it depends on
how long the war lasts, it depends on where
the weapons of mass destruction are used.
What we have done is we have taken estimates
looking at different variables and said if
this were the case on this variable and lynched
on this variable but there's so many variables
that the numbers of possible point answers
create a range that simply isn't useful.
I'm just not going to get into any speculation
about numbers.
We're dealing with a country that can really
finance its own reconstruction and relatively
simply.
So, the money is going to come from Iraqi
oil revenue as everyone has said.
The think it's going to be something like
2 billion dollars this year.
They think it might be something like 15-12
next year.
They think it might be something like 18 to
20 plus the next 19.
Nineteen.
The next year.
I will soon submit to congress a request for
87 billion dollars.
Why did the administration so dramatically
underestimate the cost of this war?
We did not have perfect foresight into what
we we're going to find in Iraq.
With the cost of the war rising and the search
for weapons of mass destruction going nowhere,
the administration turns to David Kay.
This work is being carried out under the direction
of Dr. David Kay a respected scientist and
former U.N. Inspector who is leading the weapon
search in Iraq.
We are determined to take this apart.
We have a tremendous group of dedicated American
men and women involved in this with the best
assets of the Intelligence Community and provide.
Dr. Kay and his team are making progress.
We have had found a large body of continuing
activities and a equipment.
We are surprised by new advances that we're
making.
Network with laboratories and safe houses
controlled by Iraqi Intelligence and security
services.
And unlike prewar intelligence, we don't require
someone just to say something, we actually
need the physical evidence.
Equipment suitable for continuing chemical
and biological weapons research.
David Kay is not going to be done with this
for quite some time.
David Kay wants more time.
And he says it can take another 6 to 9 months
to makes a definitive finding.
Administration is asking congress for hundreds
of millions more.
Six hundred million dollars to fund the continuing
search.
We have not yet found shiny, pointy things
that I would call a weapon.
Before we can draw firm conclusions we need
to let the Iraq survey group complete it's
work.
We were all wrong probably in my judgment
and that is most disturbing.
It's inevitable that there will be an outside
commission appointed on an issue of this gravity.
We'll have public hearings and we will get
to the bottom of this and we will let the
chips fall where they may.
Democracy you have an obligation.
Your obligation is to speak truthfully to
the public.
That's the basis of civility and our belief
in our system of government.
It is going to require outside effort probably
through an outside commission to deal with
some of these very serious problems.
Cause I think explanations are important in
a democracy.
This whole episode has caught the White House
completely by surprise.
They've become so fearful of admitting error
that they stand up and defend things that,
on their face, a face are untruthful.
President Bush is being pounded with calls
for an independent investigation into how
U.S. Intelligence so badly misjudged Iraq's
capabilities before the war.
Having your president holding all the cards,
appointing all the people, having everybody
accountable to him is a very bad idea.
If you say you're going to war because he
has weapons of mass destruction and you don't
find those weapons, it is not persuasive to
jump to a second argument, well that didn't
work but here I've got a second explanation,
I was asked if I would care to try to operationalize
some of the comments I made about what was
going wrong in Iraq and so I said if you,
among other things, that if you're going to
do this you had to treat it like an intelligence
problem and that is not go looking for hidden
weapons but going and looking for the people
who would be associated with hidden weapons.
Well, what I did is I formed teams for each
of the areas and we formally had hypotheses.
Half the teams took a hypothesis that it was
there, the other half said it wasn't there
and both followed exactly the same method.
If you believe it's there, what is the proof
that we'll in fact conform that, prove that
hypothesis or what evidence clashes with it.
The same thing is true with the teams that
took the hypothesis it wasn't there, is you
know, collecting evidence, so yeah you start
with a viewpoint a hypothesis an academic
would say and you collect the evidence that
will support or challenge.
You tell them, you know, go form and discuss
with your team a hypothesis and get a strategy
for doing it and I just, you know, I was unsure
whether they would come back pro or con and
I really didn't care and that was intentional
because I didn't want to be seen as stacking
the deck and we met every Saturday afternoon
and each team went through a very, almost
it was rigorous but almost predictable.
You started with here's our hypothesis, here's
what we've done this week, here's how the
evidence stacks, here's what we propose to
do the next week and there would be a discussion
between the groups and myself over, on each
of them of what they were doing a lot of cross-fertilization.
There is a gradual buildup of evidence that
forces you challenge your preexisting belief
and it keeps generating either more questions
or generates questions about the hypothesis.
For example, I'll give you a real case.
One of the first things that worried me was
we had a big army running through Iraq in
March and April, WMD was not used against
them nor was it found.
That's sort of remarkable if they had large
stockpiles.
I really believe in the jungle telegraph,
put the word out on the street.
Let people know what your about and what you
have to offer and usually you'll get people
coming to you and I had a lot of money, reward
money and I had green cards or passports to
virtually any attractive place in the world.
You come to us with weapons of mass destruction,
evidence about the weapons and we'll take
care of you.
All I had coming to me were fabricators, people
who said it but didn't have anything, had
absolutely no evidence.
Iraq was a horrible place in June, July, August,
September, October, November, insecurity,
the economy wasn't working, there was violence,
there's still violence there.
It was remarkable to me and disturbing that
in a place this bad who wouldn't want to golden
life boat to get out?
All they had to do was come with information.
I would protect their identity.
It was clear to everyone I would take their
whole family.
It wasn't a case you have to leave your family
behind, you'll be taken care of but you'll
have to find a new family in California, well
some of them might have liked to, but no one
bought and so that worried me.
Around a weapons program if a weapons program
exists, you're going to find people, people
engaged in the production, the technology,
engineering, design; people involved in protecting
the weapons, people involved in moving them
and people involved in preparing to use the
weapons.
We found none of that.
We were running into fewer and fewer leads
that looked profitable and a lot of evidence
that stacked up to explain something other
than large stockpiles of weapons.
I had the habit of writing a personal report
back every weekend which was quite separate
than the official reports back saying, you
know, this is what it looks, smells like to
me.
Here are the issues of the week.
Here's how I'm proposing just to, I've always
found that's a good way to keep people informed
of what you're doing.
I don't think there was a surprise about the
conclusions I was drawing because those were
fully, and I think completely and adequately
reported.
I think the surprise would be that you would
speak out and say that.
I had the privilege, although I didn't always
think it was a privilege, of watching a lot
of very senior government officials come to
agonizing terms about Vietnam and decide not
to speak out because they knew they'd never
be asked to lunch again.
They wouldn't be part of the process and I
just, I think like a lot of people of my age
and my generation who were in the government
by no means unique to me just decided that
if ever the occasion came, I simply wasn't
going to live like that.
There wasn't a lunch or part of process that
was important enough.
This committee has a special responsibility
to the men and women of our Armed Forces to
look at the prewar intelligence because planning
for military operations is based on intelligence.
Policy makers take data, they interpret threat,
they assess risk.
You talk about a mushroom cloud, how much
more imminent threat could there be?
Why was there skepticism left out of the public
white paper of the CIA?
Many of us feel that the evidence so far leads
only to one conclusion, that what has happened
was more than a failure of intelligence.
It was the result of manipulation of the intelligence
to justify the decision to go to war.
Secret societies have their own rules and
secret societies generally don't feel an obligation
to openly and democratically communicate.
Prime Minister Blair has setup a similar commission
in Great Britain.
Yeah.
His is going to report back in July.
Right.
Ours are not going to be until March of 2005,
5 months after the presidential election.
Yeah.
Shouldn't the American people have the benefit
of the commission before the election?
Well, the reason why we gave it time is cause
we didn't want it to be hurried.
This is a strategic look, kind of a big picture
look about the intelligence gathering capacities
of the United States of America.
I think every president should have kept on
their desk the statement, the carved statement
that Harry Truman had, "The Buck Stops Here."
>> If there are no weapons of mass destruction,
which there aren't, if there are no ties with
Al-Qaeda, which there weren't and which there
aren't or maybe now there are, then why did
we go war?
Well, all you need to do is go on the web
and download Project for a New American Century,
there you find the ideological and the strategic
underpinnings for this policy which was rejected
by George Bush the first which was ridiculed
out of town in those days but became the devout
policy of this government and was implemented
starting with the war.
I felt in my last year in the Pentagon that
I felt there was a great deal of contempt
for the constraints on government that our
constitution lays out and I also felt that
there was a contempt for the constitution
and I only absorbed this sense of contempt
by association with some of these senior appointed
civilians.
Who were all neoconservative, who all believe
in dominance, who believe in preemption, who
believe in the military option as the first
resort rather than the last resort.
They have had a very fixed indeed almost obsessive
idea that in fact Iraq is a major actor in
the world and a probable threat, possibly
a deadly threat to the United States.
This is group of people who have essentially
believed that might makes right, that the
United States at this stage of history has
unchallengeable power and therefore our responsibility
to use it to make the world over in the manner
that we or they how they think it ought to
be made over.
I think behind the basic neoconservative philosophy
is a considerable arrogance that American
interest are the primary goal of all of American
foreign policy.
And they seem to have a really serious habit
of not being interested in listening to what
other people say about this subject.
Now of course American interest should matter
but there are enlightened and unenlightened
elements of self-interest and I think in this
case we have determined and defined our interest
globally in almost total disregard of what
others states want, what their concerns are,
how they might or might not be able to contribute.
It's we're on a roll, you're either with us
or get out of the way; I find remarkably little
interest in the character of other countries,
the nature of their problems and difficulties.
This is boring I think to neoconservatives
who really see this as quite irrelevant what
other people, what the political culture of
other societies are, what they want, what
their people might want, what some their concerns
might be.
It's really quite irrelevant because we know
what we're going to do and get out of the
way if you don't agree.
They said, look the neocons, we brought down
the evil empire of the Soviet Union and now
we're going to bring down Arab nationalism
as personified by Saddam Hussein and Bashar
al-Assad and once that happens you're going
to have democracy.
You know, the problem is those people have
not set foot, if they've been to the Middle
East it's been to Tel Aviv only.
No, I don't think it's an accident at all
that so much of the justification turned out
to be fallacious, misleading deliberately
so.
They thought they had a place in history.
They we're going to bring down obviously a
very dysfunctional Arab peninsula, as well
as, Iran and they we're going to change history.
They believed they won the Cold War and they
said, alright we won the Cold War because
we were tough with the Soviet Union, we get
tough with these people and they're going
to become like us.
It is fair to say that the Iraq War was a
diversion from the war on terrorism.
It certainly meant the people weren't paying
as much attention to Afghanistan as they should
have and the resources that might have gone
to Afghanistan ended up being focused more
in Iraq.
If you attack another country with no justification,
people are going to say wait a minute this
isn't a war on terrorism, this is a war on
imperialism, this is colonialism, you know,
and this is why it's a distraction because
you need the help of these people.
You get this view that the CIA and FBI are
lurking around the [inaudible] in the Middle
East and handcuffing people or assassinating,
it just doesn't [inaudible] work.
You got to have the help of the locals to
identify these people and either put them
in jail or remove them from positions where
they can do harm.
In January of 2002, as I was sitting in the
bunker of the U.S. Embassy in Cobble, Afghanistan
and I and several colleagues were sitting
around one little working TV and low and behold
here came the infamous statement of the access
of evil, Iraq, Iran and North Korea and we
all looked at ourselves and went, oh my God,
you know, here we are kind of in ground zero
of Afghanistan and Washington's talking about
and talking in very belligerent terms about
these other 3 countries and we don't have
Afghanistan anywhere close to being settled.
The only person Saddam was a threat to at
this point as we saw when the army collapsed,
was to Iraq.
He didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
He wasn't scaring anybody.
He certainly wasn't scaring the Iranians or
the Turks or the Saudis or anybody else.
It was a state that was on the verge of failure,
now it is a failed state.
Failed states cause terrorism, you know, you
can name them Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia.
Anytime you create a vacuum it's where people
flock to discontented to fight wars.
Osama bin Laden had been saying for years,
America wants to invade an Arab country and
occupy it, an oil rich Arab country; he had
been saying this, this was part of his propaganda.
So, what we do after 9/11?
We invade an oil rich and occupy an oil rich
Arab country which was doing nothing to threaten
us.
The only real connection is that having invaded
Iraq we are very likely to make it a focus
of terrorism.
We are likely to produce what the president
has said Iraq represents, namely the central
battle field in the war on terrorism.
Why?
Because we sent a lot of Americans into a
place where they're sitting ducks for people
who think the only good American is a dead
one.
Iraq cannot be govern by Americans, I don't
care what the intention is.
I don't care if we truly wanted to build a
democracy.
It cannot be ruled by foreign power.
We as the one indispensable nation of the
world as we characterize ourselves for so
long in the last administration cannot contemplate
that possibly someone else might not like
everything we call the American way of life
and that they would in fact welcome us into
their countries.
This may not be the case.
The only tool in the toolbox, the Bush Administration
is military force.
Military force is a very blunt instrument,
it just doesn't work.
We've created more terrorists in Iraq and
we haven't even solved the problem in Afghanistan.
One of the more ironic effects of the attack
on Iraq was to buttress other countries in
the conviction of the infamous remark by an
Indian General after the first Gulf War when
he said.
"The lesson was war, is that if you have to
fight the United States you better have nuclear
weapons."
In some respects, it's as Vietnam didn't even
happen.
It's as if a lot of our leaders have suffered
some kind of historical and political lobotomy
and that's frightening and every American
should be concerned about that because the
United States ultimately is supposed to an
exemplar for the rest of the world.
We are supposed to be in Ronald Reagan's words
"That shine city on a hill" well that shining
city is looking kind of slummy right now in
terms of our image abroad and I think with
good reason.
We violated I think fundamental principles
that have guided this country's foreign policy
so successfully since 1947.
You don't want your president to be seen as
a hotdog and when your president gets into
a jumpsuit and gets in the back of a jet and
lands on an aircraft carrier and then waddles
out with his little straps between his legs
and that's not, I mean you want a sign of
kind of maturity and not testosterone blasting
through when you're talking about things so
fundamentally important as sending a nation
to war and sending young men and women to
their deaths.
There is a sense in Washington now that you
can't raise objections to this because you're
not supporting the troops in the field.
I would rapidly point out that unlike almost
anybody I know that hold office in this country,
I've had 2 sons in uniform both of whom have
been in combat and so I don't have to take
any nonsense from anybody nor will I.
Mark Twain's definition of patriotism he says,
"Patriotism is supporting your country all
the time and your government when it deserves
it."
Well, I don't think it's patriotic to standby
and remain silent while your country stumbles
into disaster.
A patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels
and I think these are scoundrels.
They have no argument now.
They have no defense for what they did.
The country is in a terrible international
security situation that I think is perilous,
so they're attacking the patriotism of others.
Having been an insider, I know that the insiders
don't have it all right.
They make mistakes, indeed [inaudible] and
there's more likely to be misjudgment if there
is no criticism.
It was Jefferson who said that our kind of
government is not based on trust, it's based
in fact suspicion.
Supporting the constitution, understanding
what's in the constitution, carrying about
the constitution that's why we don't have
a king cause we have a piece of paper, so
I think, I think that is a patriotism.
It's not just those of us who have been privileged
to serve actually in the government who are
the patriots, it's every citizen who respects
and honors the fact that we have such a wonderful
country.
To suggest that if you have a different viewpoint
than any given administration and/or if you're
not supporting the president in policies that
may be highly erroneous.
I don't see that as patriotism at all, in
fact, I would argue that any patriot with
integrity is going to speak out if he or she
feels that we're on the wrong course.
It's not unpatriotic to demand that congress
upholds the constitutional responsibilities
regarding the declaration of war, it's not
unpatriotic to be very upset, vocally upset
when congress abrogates this constitutional
responsibility be transferring war powers
of 40 to the President of the United States
as they did in October of 2002.
Listen, when you guys were working NASDAQ.coms
I was out in Iraq trying to get of Saddam
and almost got killed for it and besides almost
going to jail, so it doesn't take a whole
lot of courage for me to come out against
the war and I did at the beginning but I was
studiously ignored.
When we did the first Gulf War when I came
of Bagdad in 1991, I met with the President
of the United States, I met with the senior
leadership of both parties and the one thing
that sticks with me to this day is the extent
to which each one of them explained to me
in very emotional terms the extent to which
they had to plum their consciences to come
to a decision on how to vote on the use of
force authorization.
It had been a moral decision on their part.
It had been one that had kept them up at night
as they thought their way through this.
We owe our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen
and our marines nothing less before we send
them to battle.
Sometimes the true patriot takes the unpopular
course but helps their country avoid mistakes
and even if they can't persuade at least they
tried.
For me, America is this amazing land of opportunity,
beauty of idealism, of hope.
It is a beacon to the world.
It's a place of fantastic people and what
infuriates me more than anything else is that
this administration has systematically slandered,
labeled, blackened the image of America to
our friends and allies round the world.
Having the authority and the ability to go
and wage war is a very, very solemn thing
and it needs to be done with care and with
deliberation and with genuine forethought
and I think that none of that was present
in the lead up this entire debacle that we
now call enduring freedom.
When the emperor has no clothes you have to
have the presence of mind and the courage
to stand up and say, "The emperor has no clothes."
The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb.
He has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons
production.
Material sufficient to produce more than 38,000
liters of botulin toxin.
Saddam Hussein had an advanced Nuclear Weapons
Development program.
The British Government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa.
Already, the Kay report identified dozens
of weapons of mass destruction related program
activities.
