Re: UNCOVERED: THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR
Posted:
Thu Jun 25, 2015 8:31 pm
by admin
UNCOVERED: THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR
Reporter: "Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction ..."
President Bush: "Iraq, weapons of mass destruction ..."
Reporter: "A clear threat to the United States ..."
Reporter: "Missed dozens of ballistic missiles ..."
President Bush: "It has sponsored and sheltered terrorists ..."
Reporter: "Paying suicide bombers ..."
Reporter: "Chemical weapons are equally ..."
Reporter: "Biological weapons, including anthrax and botulism toxin ..."
President Bush: "Biological and chemical agent to kill millions of people .."
Reporter: "Chemical weapons including VX and sarin, mustard gas ..."
President Bush: "To a massive and sudden horror ..."
Colin Powell: "Massive death and destruction ..."
Reporter: "Death on a massive scale ..."
President Bush: "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 longstanding continuing ties to terrorist organizations. And there are Al-Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb and with fissile material could build one within a year."
Mel Goodman, 20 year Senior CIA Analyst: The Bush administration made up its mind to go to war on September 11th, 2001. 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 a clear and present danger. There was never an imminent threat."
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice: "Weapons of mass destruction ..."
Vice-President Dick Cheney: "Weapons of mass destruction ..."
President Bush: "Weapons of math [sic] death ..."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: "Weapons of mass destruction was a convenient way of tricking our Congress into giving the President authority to wage this war ..."
Vice-President Dick Cheney: "Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "Developed nuclear weapons ..."
President Bush: "Nuclear weapons ..."
Mel Goodman, 20 year Senior CIA Analyst: "Here, the intelligence community did a pretty good job. I think for the most part they made it clear that the evidence was not there to show that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear capability, let alone whether or not it had a nuclear capability, which it didn't."
David Albright, physicist and former Weapons Inspector: "Leaders will use worse case assessments that point to nuclear weapons to generate political support because they know people fear nuclear weapons so much."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "The intelligence that we were operating off was correct ..."
Vice-President Dick Cheney: "The quality of our intelligence operation, I think we're better than anybody else ..."
President George Bush: "We gathered a lot of intelligence ..."
Milt Bearden, Former CIA station chief in Pakistan - 20 years service: "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 one, two, three reports of intelligence that will in any way allow you to go to war."
President George Bush: "That intelligence was good, sound intelligence ..."
David Corn, Washington Editor of the Nation Magazine: "After the war, we have an internal review, within the CIA, conducted by a guy named Richard Kerr, who used to be the deputy director of the CIA, a CIA royalist, enthusiast. And he at this point was telling reporters who bothered to ask, that his initial findings were that the intelligence produced by the CIA was based on circumstantial, inferential evidence. They hadn't come up with any hard evidence since 1998 when the inspectors left, and that it always came with caveats and qualifiers."
David Albright, physicist and former Weapons Inspector: "There were pretty robust debates among the various people who gathered and assessed information, but that somehow as it went up higher in the chain of command, finally reaching the White House, that there was a selective use of information to make their case."
Dr. David C. MacMichael, Former CIA Analyst: "I think this particular time that has been very disturbing to my colleagues, is the extent of massive intervention by people, particularly from Vice President Cheney's office, and Vice-President Cheney himself in the process, and the very heavy leaning on the director of Central Intelligence and his staff to produce precisely the language, let me say, which would allow them to make the statements which they have been making to support the decision to go into Iraq."
Robert Baer, 21 year CIA operative: "They call this data mining: going back over old information and coming up with new conclusions. The whole purpose of the CIA was to leave those people out of 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 re-think their positions because then you come up with nonsense like we saw."
Graham Fuller, 25 years Foreign Service: "I think when you begin to distort the evidence, it leads you into some very dangerous rationale. And I think the administration has not been honest with what its longer range goals and philosophy were."
Vice-President Dick Cheney: "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from first-hand testimony from defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: His son-in-law's name was Hussein Kamel. It turned out that he also said that at his command, and he was in charge of the bio, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs, at his command, all these things had been destroyed in 1991. And it wasn't really revealed until an enterprising British scholar went and got the debriefing report from Vienna, and discovered that Kamel, highly touted Kamel, also said that at his command, and he was in command, they were destroyed."
Patrick Eddington, Former CIA Imagery Analyst of 8 years: "Why was Hussein Kamel so cavalierly ignored, in essence, when he made his claims in 1995, that after I've given you the aflatoxin and the other anthrax filled bombs and warheads, that's it, that's all that was left? Everything else is just the infrastructure for the program that we can re-start once you guys go away."
President George Bush: "Delay in decision and inaction could leave [sic] to a massive and sudden horror."
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice: "It simply makes no sense to wait any longer ..."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "Take action before it's too late ..."
President Bush: "We will not wait ..."
Vice-President Dick Cheney: "As President Bush has said, time is not on our side."
Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector Hans Blix: "I still thought that 3-1/2 months for new inspections was rather a short time before (inaudible), and especially when we now see that they say, the U.S. government is saying, that look, you have to have patience, you know these things take time."
Milt Bearden, Former CIA station chief in Pakistan - 30 years service: "Pre-emptive 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. Uh, 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 pre-emptive war."
Hidden speaker: "I think the real reasons behind the Iraq war lie in an almost a kind of philosophical and geopolitical vision of the neo-conservatives who dominate our foreign policy establishment today, and that is the belief that the United States does dominate the world as the world's sole superpower, that it must assert its power globally everywhere, and that anyone who resists this or defies American power is absolutely unacceptable and becomes automatically very much the enemy."
Chas Freeman, 30 years Diplomatic Service: "The theory that you can bludgeon political grievances out of existence doesn't have much of a track record. And so essentially, we are, we have been neo-conned, into applying a school of thought about foreign affairs that has failed everywhere it has been tried."
Mel Goodman, 20 year Senior CIA Analyst: "So by the late 1990's, let alone 2003, 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 adviser Condie Rice, drummed up the idea of a reconstituted nuclear capability, and particularly the notion, that I think has some resonance among the American people, of the mushroom cloud."
The Honorable Henry Waxman, Congressman - 30 years: "... for those who are advancing a different doctrine, with which I strongly disagree, and that was that the United States could take unilateral preemptive action. But if you believe in unilateral preemptive action, it certainly has to be in response to an imminent threat. and the idea that Saddam Hussein could have nuclear weapons wasn't truly an imminent threat, and nothing more graphically pointed that out except the most powerful argument that was made, 'Let's not let the smoking gun be a nuclear cloud.'"
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "If someone is waiting for a so-called smoking gun, it's certain that we will have waited too long."
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
President George Bush: "We cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
Philip Coyle, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense: "A lot of people who actually 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 it in the first Gulf War, they didn't have it in this war in Iraq, and they don't have any way of getting it in the future."
Bill Christison, Former CIA Director of the Office of Regional and Political Analysis: "That very first day, on September 12th, 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?"
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "There are Al-Quaeda in Iraq ..."
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice: "Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorist ..."
President George Bush: "Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own."
Chas Freeman, 30 years Diplomatic Service: "Well, the war really had 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."
John Brady Kiesling, 20 years Foreign Service: "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."
Joe Wilson, 23 years Foreign Service: "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 on whether or not they are 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 a sociopath, he was not an irrational being in the sense that he was going to ensure his own demise by doing something like that."
Graham Fuller, 25 years Foreign Service: "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, Islamic leaders extremely harshly ..."
Mel Goodman, 20 year Senior CIA Analyst: "Iraq, and we have very good intelligence on this, was not part of the picture of terrorism before we invaded. Saddam Hussein and bin Laden were 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 there was an extremist group. But he had no control over that. It was near the Iranian border."
Narrator: "There is no doubt that Anzara Islam is a radical 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."
Anzara Islam Guy: "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."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: "The ties to Al-Qaeda was just the scare tactic to exploit the trauma, the very real trauma, that the American people have felt ever since 9-11, and to associate their trauma with Iraq. As you know from the polls, most Americans believed that Iraq had something to do with 9-11. And it was a very successful, very deliberate, and very unethical, immoral operation on the part of the PR people of this administration."
PRESIDENT BUSH STATE OF THE UNION, JANUARY 28, 2003:
Newspaper: "War talk shifts from 'if' to 'when'" -- New York Times, 1/30/2003
Newspaper: "U.S. Stand on Iraq is Entering 'Final Phase'" -- Wall Street Journal, 1/30/2003
Newspaper: "The Case for War" -- Economist, 1/29/2003
Newspaper: "Support for a War with Iraq Grows After Bush's Speech" -- Washington Post, 2/2/2003
President George Bush: "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."
John Dean, Former White House Counsel: "Bush presented so many distorted beliefs, estimates and guesstimates, that it appears he was misleading the public and the Congress."
President George Bush: "From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990's, had several mobile biological weapons labs."
Peter Zimmerman, former Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "What we were working on before the war was a set of cartoons, of sketches, if you will, of what was said by a defector who probably had his own self-interest at heart, and was willing to tell this government whatever he thought would get him the usual million dollar reward, and a settlement with a new name and a nice house somewhere."
John Brady Kiesling, 20 years Foreign Service: "Unfortunately, every reliable source of our own was unable to find anything convincing, so we were dependent upon the defectors provided by Mr. Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. It's fascinating to see that he has been providing intelligence for many years and every checkable piece of that intelligence that has come to public notice has proven to be false or at least self-serving in the extreme."
Newspaper: "U.S. paid $1 m for 'useless intelligence' from Chalabi" -- Washington Post 9/30/2003
President George Bush: "Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
Peter Zimmerman, former Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "Any sarin that they were making in 1990,1991, had a known shelf-life of about 2 months. I have confirmed this with inspectors and analysts who were deeply involved in the 1990's analysis. 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's no way the Agency could not have known that."
President George Bush: "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."
David Albright, physicist and former Weapons Inspector: "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 is a very weak way to predict anything. And I think it borders on propaganda to argue that there are a small number that have been found by inspectors imply that in this case, over 29,000 exist."
President George Bush: "Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions."
David Albright, physicist and former Weapons Inspector: "The 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 at all what the inspectors said or found."
President George Bush: "He hasn't accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it."
David Albright, physicist and former Weapons Inspector: "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."
President George Bush: "Saddam Hussein had material sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin. Enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure."
David Albright, physicist and former Weapons Inspector: "The inspectors have evidence to say that Iraq had not fully revealed its biological weapons program, particularly its ability to make botulinum 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."
President George Bush: "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
Peter Zimmerman, former Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "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 of the specs for that."
Scott Ritter, Former UN Weapons Inspector: "Nuclear experts, for instance from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's Z Division, the experts on centrifuge in Richmond, came out and said, 'No, you couldn't enrich uranium using these tubes. They are not compatible.'"
David Albright, physicist and former Weapons Inspector: "I saw it as a deliberate attempt to take information, selectively take information, and try to basically say Iraq poses an imminent nuclear threat, and therefore action is absolutely necessary. And I felt that was absolutely wrong."
President George Bush: "The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990's that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program."
David Albright, physicist and former Weapons Inspector: "The administration showed photos of nuclear, or former nuclear weapons sites in Iraq, pre-1991 nuclear weapons sites, and claimed that new construction showed they were ongoing nuclear weapons production sites. Complete nonsense."
Philip Coyle, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense: "Before the war in Iraq, the United Nations inspectors told us that Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons capability. It turns out that's true ..."
John Dean, Former White House Counsel: "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."
President George Bush: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Narrator: "Eight days later 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."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "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."
Narrator: "CIA officials warned members of the President's staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the statement, 'Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.'"
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice: "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 yellow cake. It was taken out of the Cincinnati speech because whenever the director of Central Intelligence wants something out, it's gone."
Tim Russert, Meet the Press: "How did it get back in?"
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice: "Uh, it's not a matter of getting back in. It's a matter, Tim, that three plus months later, uh, people didn't remember that George Tenet had asked that it be taken out of the Cincinnati speech , and that it was cleared by the Agency."
SECRETARY OF STATE POWELL'S ADDRESS TO THE UNITED NATIONS FEBRUARY 5, 2003:
Newspaper: "Masterful" -- Hartford Current
Newspaper: "With the coolness of Marshal Dillon ..." -- Denver Post
Newspaper: "Piling fact upon fact ..." -- Los Angeles Times
Newspaper: "Iraq is busted ..." -- Jacksonville, Fl, Times-Union
Newspaper: "Overwhelming" -- Tampa Tribune
Newspaper: " ... Powerful New Case ..." -- Washington Post
Newspaper: "Secretary of State Powell delivered -- and then some" -- USA Today
Scott Ritter, Former U.N. Weapons Inspector: "First of all, it should be noted that Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations was theatre. A masterful theatre, effective theatre at the time. Um, 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."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: "My first visual impression here, watching George Tenet, the 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 Colin Powell says, that was a terrific blow to the morale of the Central Intelligence Agency analysts."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons."
Patrick Lang, Former Chief of Middle East Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency: "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."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Saddam Hussein has used these horrific weapons on another country and on his own people."
David Corn, Washington Editor of the Nation Magazine: "He used weapons, Saddam Hussein did back in the 1980's when the U.S. Administration, the Reagan administration, was actually supporting him, and allowing him to import the chemical precursors for that. Donald Rumsfeld, actually as a special envoy for Ronald Reagan back in those years, helped, you know, open the door for better relations between Washington and Baghdad."
Scott Ritter, Former U.N. Weapons Inspector: "Colin Powell spoke of thousands of liters of anthrax that were unaccounted for, and he said they're probably hiding it. And then he held up a little vial of white powder, and he said, 'A couple of teaspoon fulls of white powder like this, if launched against American cities, could kill thousands of Americans.' If he was truly to reflect Iraqi capability, he would have held up a bottle of diet coke, and said the Iraqis produced anthrax that looked like this. It has a shelf life of three 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."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Just a few weeks ago we intercepted communications between two commanders in Iraq's second republican guard corp."
Scott Ritter, Former U.N. Weapons Inspector: "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."
Col: Hello.
Capt: Hello.
Col: Hello.
Capt: May I help you, Sir?
Col: Who is this?
Capt: Captain Ibrahim, Sir.
Col: Captain Ibrahim, how are you?
Capt: God bless you, Sir.
Col: How is your health?
Capt: May God preserve you.
Col: How are you?
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers."
Scott Ritter, Former U.N. Weapons Inspector: "There were never any chemical weapons in that facility. I'm intimately connected with that facility. I've inspected it a number of times. Other inspectors have inspected it many more times than I have."
David Albright, Physicist and former weapons inspector with the IAEA Action team: "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."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "The truck you also see is a signature item. It's a decontamination vehicle."
Scott Ritter, Former U.N. Weapons Inspector: "The U.N. weapons inspectors knew that the trucks shown by Colin Powell in those photographs were fire trucks, not decontamination trucks."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: "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 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 set up."
David Albright, Physicist and former weapons inspector with the IAEA Action team: "From our point of view, I mean, we do all kinds of analysis with 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 that facility."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Now look at the picture on the right. You are now looking at two of those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles are gone, it's been cleaned up , nd it was done on the 22nd of December as the U.N. inspection teams [were] arriving."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: "The 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."
Hans Blix, U.N. Weapons Inspector: "We have noted that the two satellite images of this site were taken several weeks apart. The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."
David Albright, Physicist and former weapons inspector with the IAEA Action team: "These mobile labs have now been shown to be nothing more than hydrogen generation facilities."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Here you see both truck and rail car mounted mobile factories."
David Albright, Physicist and former weapons inspector with the IAEA Action team: "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 an artist's renditions of these facilities. Why? Because we have no proof that they exist."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "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 2,000 liters of simulated anthrax."
Newspaper: "The plane was destroyed in 1991" -- U.N. Weapons Inspectors
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Iraqis continue to visit Bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: "George Tenet's analysts had spent a year and a half of torturous investigation, torturous analysis, to see if there were ties between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. They found none."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Our conservative analysis is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: "So the Secretary of State is telling us that our conservative estimate is that Iraq possesses between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent, enough to fill 16,000 warheads on the battlefield. Uh, where are they? What happened to them? My suspicion is that this is not our conservative estimate. This sounds very much to me like our neo-conservative estimate."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "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."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: "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?"
Patrick Eddington, Former CIA Imagery Analyst of 8 years: "The 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 post-war U.S. battle damage assessments confirm that."
Bill Christison, 28 year CIA Analyst: "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."
Patrick Eddington, Former CIA Imagery Analyst - eight years: "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."
War, March 19, 2003:
Newspaper: "... disarray, it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan. 'From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.' A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq, which could come ..."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "There is no doubt in my mind but that they currently have chemical and biological weapons."
President George Bush: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons."
Ari Fleischer: We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
President George Bush: "We found the weapons of mass destruction! Uh, you know, we found biological laboratories."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Everybody knows that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "I have reason, every reason to believe, that the intelligence that we were operating off was correct."
Ari Fleischer: "No question we have said that Saddam Hussein possesses biological and chemical weapons."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "We know where they are. They are in the area around Takrit and Baghdad, and east, west, south and north."
Ari Fleischer: "A lot of this will be made clear in the course of the operation for whatever duration it takes."
Tim Russert, Meet the Press: "And are you confident that you'll also find weapons of mass destruction?"
Paul Bremer: "I believe we will find evidence of the programs of chemical and biological weapons, yes."
Tim Russert, Meet the Press: "How about the actual weapons?"
Paul Bremer: "Well, I just don't know. Let's wait and see what the teams ..."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Inspections continue with our new exploitation teams have been brought in.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "Uh, and that we will in fact find weapons, or evidence of weapons programs, that are conclusive."
Hans Blix, Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector: "It is somewhat puzzling, I think, that you can have 100% certainty about the weapons of mass destruction's existence, and zero certainty about where they are."
Reporter: "Do you agree, and does it matter, whether or not you find these weapons?"
President Bush: "We might ask the prime minister that. We won't be proven wrong."
Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary: "This is a process that takes some time, and it will ebb and flow."
President Bush: "One thing we know is that he had a weapons program."
Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary: "I don't know anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons."
Vice-President Dick Cheney: "And we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons."
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary: "But on the specific issue of weapons of mass destruction, it's going to take time, and we're going to have to be patient."
President George Bush: "Over time the truth will come out."
Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary: "Now, it's going to take time to find anything because they've had ..."
Secretary of State Colin Powell: "People will find that we presented a solid case, a case that is there, and it was there , nd will remain there."
Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary: "So, it's going to take a period of time to find the people. I don't think we'll discover anything myself."
President George Bush: "I, I, I, I, I believe that we will find the truth, and the truth is he was developing a program for weapons of mass destruction."
Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary: "I think what will happen is we'll discover people who will tell us where to go find it."
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary: "You're not going to find it simply in a house-to-house search. You're going to find it when people start to talk to you."
Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary: "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."
President George Bush: "Our people are going to find out the truth, and the truth will say that this intelligence was good intelligence. There's no doubt in my mind."
Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary: "What we will do is find the people who will tell us. There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that's just a fact."
Reporter: "Is U.S. credibility on the line over 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq?"
President George Bush: "Uh, I'm not exactly sure what that means."
COST OF WAR:
Rep. Jim Moran, 8th Congressional District, Virginia: "We're being told now that there's no way that we're going to be told what it's going to cost until after you have begun military action."
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary: "It depends on the assumptions. It depends on how long the war lasts. It depends on whether weapons of mass destruction are used."
Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary: "What we have done is, we have taken estimates looking at different variables, and said if this were the case on this variable, and then on this variable, but there's so many variables, that the numbers of possible point answers create a range that simply isn't useful."
Ari Fleischer: "I'm just not going to get into any speculation about numbers."
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary: "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary: "So the money's going to come from Iraqi oil revenue. As everyone has said, they think it's going to be something like $2 billion this year, they think it might be something like $15 and $12 next year, they think it might be something like $18 to $20 plus the next, $19, the next year."
SEPTEMBER 7, 2003:
President George Bush: "I will soon submit to Congress a request for 87 billion dollars."
Tim Russert, Meet the Press: "Why did the administration so dramatically underestimate the cost of this war?"
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice: "We did not have perfect foresight into what we were going to find in Iraq."
SIXTEEN WORDS:
Newspaper: Slime and Defend" -- Paul Krugman, NY Times, 10/3/03
Newspaper: "Justice Dept. plans wide probe into CIA leak" -- USA Today, 10/3/03
Newspaper: "CIA Officer's Identity Leaked to Columnist" -- LA Times, 10/2/03
Newspaper: "Justice Dept. Launches Criminal Probe of Leak" -- Washington Post, 10/1/03
Newspaper: "Beyond dirty tricks" -- USA Today, 10/1/03
Newspaper: "Diplomate at Eye of Storm" -- Wall Street Journal, 10/1/03
Narrator: "Just 16 words in the State of the Union address, words that we now know were misleading. A retired career diplomat, Joe Wilson, tried to warn the administration of just that nearly a year before the speech."
Joe Wilson, 28 years Foreign Service: "I received a call from the CIA in February 2002, and I was invited out to talk to those people within the broader intelligence community who deal with three 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 piqued the interest of the office of the Vice-President, and that report was of a purported Memorandum of Agreement authorizing the sale of uranium yellow cake, 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'd spent the eight days there drinking mint tea and talking to everybody there was to talk to who knew anything about the subject matter in Niamey, and I'd come back persuaded 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 documents, a series of signatures on the documents. And if the documents did not contain those signatures they could not be authentic government of Niger documents."
Condoleeza Rice, National Security Adviser: "The 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. Uh, of course, it was information that was mistaken."
Joe Wilson, 28 years Foreign Service: "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."
Dr. Mohamed El Baradel, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA): "Based on our analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic."
Narrator: "Numerous French words were misspelled in the documents. One of the letters was signed by a Niger official who had left office ten 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."
Milt Bearden, Former CIA station chief in Pakistan - 30 years service: "We all know that the documentation on yellow cake 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 then at the same stream of consciousness that was prevailing at that moment on the aluminum tubes, and the even the trailers, the bio-weapons trailers that were so ballyhooed, at that point someone's got to say who is putting this intelligence out there and why? And I don't think that question's been answered. And maybe because the answer is known and it's not a pleasant one."
Senator Bob Graham: "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."
Milt Bearden, Former CIA station chief in Pakistan - 30 years service: "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."
Narrator: "Wilson says his family is the subject of a smear campaign by senior administration officials. They deliberately 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 ..."
Newspaper: "What I didn't find in Africa ..."
Joe Wilson, 23 years Foreign Service: "The White House hatchet men 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 because he's a Democrat. We'll set that up as an argument: Democrats tell the truth, ergo Republicans fill in the blank. Then a couple of senior administration officials leaked to Bob Novack that my wife was a CIA operative involved in the weapons of mass destruction business at the CIA."
Newspaper: "U.S. probing leak of CIA officer's identity" -- Reuters, 9/28/03
John Dean, Former White House Counsel: "Senior administration officials is a key to being very, it's 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 Novack, told Time magazine. They wanted that information out. Now, that's against a statutory law that prohibits the identification of CIA operatives."
Joe Wilson, 23 years Foreign Service: "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."
John Dean, Former White House Counsel: "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 was a very vengeful act against the ambassador to try to hurt him by hurting his wife's career, if not wishing her physical damage. I have never seen a dirty trick that could be a hit."
Joe Wilson, 23 years Foreign Service: "A President of the United States and an administration who has come to office on a platform of restoring dignity and honor to the White House, what they did was neither dignified nor was it terribly honorable, nor was it germane to the issue at hand."
TERRORISM AFTER THE WAR:
Rand Beers, Former Special Assistant to the President - 35 years Government Service: "It is fair to say that the Iraq war was a diversion from the war on terrorism. It certainly meant that 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."
Robert Baer, 21 year CIA operative: "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, this is imperialism, this is colonialism, you know. And this is why it's a distraction because you need the help of these people. If you get this view that the CIA and the FBI are lurking around the bazaars and the sukhs in the middle east, and handcuffing people, or assassinating them, that's not the way the world works. 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."
Colonel Mary Ann Wright, 26 years Army/Army Reserve, 15 years diplomatic service: "In January of 2002, as I was sitting in the bunker of the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, and I and several colleagues were sitting around the one little working TV, and lo and behold. here came the infamous statement of the Axis of Evil. You know, 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 is talking about, and talking in very belligerent terms about, these other three countries, and we don't have Afghanistan anywhere close to being settled."
Robert Baer, 21 year CIA operative: "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 can name them: Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia. Any time you create a vacuum, it's where people flock to, are discontented, to fight wars."
Chas Freeman, 30 years Diplomatic Service: "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 battlefield in the war on terrorism. Why? Because we've sent a lot of Americans into a place where they are sitting ducks for people who think the only good American is a dead one."
Reporter: "22 people were killed in the attack. About an hour ago a massive car bomb ripped out the corner of a building here and the casualties are still coming out."
Robert Baer, 21 year CIA operative: "Iraq cannot be governed by Americans. I don't care what the intention is. I don't care if we truly want to build a democracy. It cannot be ruled by a foreign power."
Hidden Speaker: "We, as the one indispensable nation of the world, as we characterized ourself 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."
Hidden Speaker: "The only tool in the toolbox of the Bush administration is military force. Military force is a very blunt instrument. It just doesn't work. We created more terrorists in Iraq, and we haven't even solved the problem in Afghanistan."
Chas Freeman, 30 years Diplomatic Service: "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 of this war is that if you have to fight the United States, you better have nuclear weapons."
Hidden Speaker: "In some respects, it's as if 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 be an exemplar for the rest of the world. We're supposed to be, in Ronald Reagan's words, that shining city on the 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've violated, I think, fundamental principles that have guided this country's foreign policy so successfully since 1947."
Colonel Mary Ann Wright, 26 years Army/Army Reserve, 15 years diplomatic service: "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 , nd lands on an aircraft carrier, and then waddles out with his little straps between his legs, 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."
Milt Bearden, Former CIA station chief in Pakistan - 30 years service: "There is a sense in Washington now that you can't raise objections to this, because you're not supporting troops in the field. I would rapidly point out that unlike almost anybody I know that holds office in this country, I've had two sons in uniform, both of whom have been in combat, so I don't have to take any nonsense from anybody, nor will I."
Dr. David C. MacMichael, Former CIA Analyst: "Mark Twain's definition of patriotism is patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
Chas Freeman, 30 years Diplomatic Service: "Well, I don't think it's patriotic to stand by and remain silent while your country stumbles into disaster."
Mel Goodman, 20 year Senior CIA Analyst: "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 are attacking the patriotism of others."
John Dean, Former White House Counsel: "Having been an insider, I know that the insiders don't have it all right. They make mistakes. And indeed, there's more likely to be mistakes, and there's more likely to be misjudgment, if there is no criticism."
Patrick Lang, Former Chief of Middle East Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency: "It was Jefferson who said that our kind of government is not based on trust, it's based on in fact suspicion."
Karen Kwiatkowski, Air Force Lt. Colonel, Office of Under Secretary of Defense - 20 years Military Service: "Supporting the Constitution, understanding what's in the Constitution, caring about the Constitution, that's why we don't have a king, because we have a piece of paper. So I think that is patriotism."
Stansfield Turner, Former Director of Central Intelligence: "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."
Graham Fuller, 25 years Foreign Service: "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 are on the wrong course."
Scott Ritter, Former U.N. Weapons Inspector: "It's not unpatriotic to demand that Congress upholds its Constitutional responsibilities regarding the declaration of war. It's not unpatriotic to be very upset, vocally upset, when Congress abrogates its Constitutional responsibility by transferring war powers authority to the President of the United States as they did in October of 2002."
Robert Baer, 21 year CIA operative: "Listen, when you guys were working Nasdaq and the dot-coms, I was out in Iraq trying to get rid 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."
Joe Wilson, 23 years Foreign Service: "When we did the first Gulf War, when I came out of Baghdad 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 had to plumb 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."
The Rt. Honorable Clare Short, Former UK Cabinet Minister: "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."
John Brady Kiesling, 20 years Foreign Service: "For me, America is this amazing land of opportunity, of 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, libeled, blackened the image of America to our friends and allies around the world."
Patrick Eddington, Former CIA Imagery Analyst of 8 years: 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 to this entire debacle that we now call enduring freedom."
Ray McGovern, 27 year CIA Analyst: "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."
President George Bush: "Let me comment on that. I'm not so sure that the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, this is the way it's gotta be. We can help. And maybe it's just our difference in government, the way we view government, you know. I want the power of the people. I want to help people help themselves, not have government tell people what to do. So I'm not exactly sure where the Vice-President is coming from, but I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American, is for us to go around the world saying we do it this way so should you. Now, we trust freedom, we know freedom is a powerful, powerful, powerful force, much bigger than the United States of America, as we saw recently in the Balkans, but maybe I misunderstand where you're coming from, Mr. Vice-President, but I think the United States must be humble, and must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course."
Re: UNCOVERED: THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR
Posted:
Thu Jun 25, 2015 8:32 pm
by admin
EXTENDED INTERVIEWS:
Joseph Wilson, Former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq and special assistant to the President.
"I was in charge of the American Embassy throughout the period of Desert Shield, which included the period that from the invasion of Kuwait on August 2nd, until we left on January 12, 1991. During that period, Saddam's henchmen took about 150 American hostages. He called them human shields. He put them at what he called strategic sites. There were also a couple of thousand Americans in hiding in Kuwait, and there were another 60-70 employees, mostly from Bechtel Company, who sought refuge in the American embassy, and so for whom we were responsible. We were responsible for the feeding, care, and welfare of all of them, until such time as all of the Americans were released. And hostages, and those in hiding, were permitted to leave, and those who were in the Embassy were permitted to leave, in early December of 1990.
I met with Saddam on August 6, 1990, which was four days after the invasion of Kuwait. He had a couple of items on his mind, one of which was the Al-Sabbah regime. The ruling family of Kuwait was history. That's the way he put it, and that's an exact quote. That they had overthrown the regime, and that whatever they decided about the future of Kuwait, the regime, the ruling family would not return. And the deal that he offered to the United States in that meeting, was to provide us with a steady supply of petroleum at a reasonable price, in exchange for which we would allow him to keep Kuwait and serve essentially as our policeman of the Gulf, have a privileged relationship with us in exchange for his being the dominant power in the Gulf. My response to him, or the points that I raised with him, were the following: leave Kuwait and leave it now because you are in violation of the U.N. Charter, the Arab League Charter, as well as your own draft constitution. While you remain in Kuwait, you quit looting American properties. And the third point was to allow all Americans to leave the region, because he had closed the borders and was not permitting Americans or other foreigners to leave. Uh, he responded to that last one by saying, 'Well why are you so interested in Americans leaving? Is there something you know that I don't know?' I took that to mean that, and I believe it to this day, that what he was most concerned about was that the United States might react unilaterally. In other words, what he was worrying about was that we might be sending the B-52 bombers over to bomb Baghdad at that point.
I told him in response to that question that I, he basically said what do you know that I don't know, and I said look, I'm not going to share with you any planning that might be being done by the United States government, but what I will tell you is that so long as there is a potential for a diplomatic solution, I intend to stay here. But I want all of the Americans to be permitted to leave.
We left curiously on kind of an odd note. It had been a tough meeting. He had lost his temper when he started talking about the Kuwaits, the Kuwaitis, and what they had done to Iraq. He accused them of having slant-drilled and overpumped oil, having pumped oil out of an Iraqi oil field by this slant drilling, of refusing to renegotiate loans that they had given to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and he accused them of refusing to loan them additional money that Iraq needed for its own reconstruction and budgeting. He was obviously not pleased with the Kuwaiti royal family. And I, from my perspective, I had not slept for four days, and I was worried about the health of the American citizens who were in hiding, and those who he had taken hostage. So I was not in my best mood either. And I gave no quarter. I was at least as firm with him as he was with me. And at one point, when I was going through what I wanted to say to him, he interrupted and pushed back. Which was very unusual. Usually, he would speak, and then I would speak, and then he would speak, but this time he interrupted, and he pushed back hard, so I pushed back hard.
Anyway, at the end of it, as I am walking out, he puts his arm around me and says that was a good meeting, which didn't comfort me at all."
***
"Well, we really need to spend some time looking at the way ahead. History requires that you go back, and you think through how we got to where we are, and how we've been doing that in the Spanish American War ever since the sinking of the Maine. So it should not be unusual that you begin to take a look at how we got to where we are. And I take a look at this, and I come up with three pillars that underpin the justification of going to war: One was the weapons of mass destruction, which in my judgment was adequately and appropriately handled through the passage of U.N. Resolution 1441. I don't quite understand to this day why we felt the compulsion to move from 1441 to invasion, conquest, and occupation, without going through some intermediate steps, particularly since it was pretty clear that what we were doing was disrupting whatever programs may have remained. The second pillar, of course, was the links to international terrorism. By international terrorism, if you use the President's own definition that he used after 9-11, that's terrorism with a global reach. In other words, with an ability to attack, and a desire to attack, specific American interests. And that language was settled upon very carefully to avoid the possible freedom fighters, and also to take the Palestinian question out of our global war on terrorism, because it is much more complicated. And as bloody and as terrible as it is, there are other ways that we have to get at that issue, rather than what are we going to do, invade Palestine?
So, ultimately, I think, what you're going to end up with is an understanding that the links between Saddam Hussein and international terrorists with a global reach are essentially non-existent. There are a number of people who have written opinion pieces, who are much better versed in international terrorism than I am, who have come to that conclusion. And there have been a number of articles written since the publication of the 9-11 report that also seem to indicate that there's nothing in the body of evidence, that we've taken a look at, that demonstrates that there was an operational link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.
The third, which is a subset of these two pillars, is a potential transfer of weapons of mass destruction from a government like Saddam Hussein's to a non-state actor, or international terrorist organization. And a number of us, and I wrote on this, but George Tenet also testified in Congress that in his judgment, and in the judgment of our intelligence agencies, this sort of transfer would not take place except as a last desperate resort. I call it the posthumous last laugh. That Saddam, in extremis, might hand off his weapons of mass destruction in the hopes that a terrorist organization could revenge, could avenge his death. Unless that were to be the situation, 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 have 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 on whether or not they are 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 a sociopath, but he was not an irrational being in the sense that he was going to ensure his own demise by doing something like that.
The third pillar, of course, is the war of, the humanitarian pillar, the war of liberation. Liberate the Iraqis from a brutal tyrant. And Saddam was, of course, a brutal tyrant, and everything that everybody says about him is true: the mass graves, the torture of his own citizens, the use of weapons of mass destruction on his Kurdish populations, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The problem with moral war is that one, we never had a debate on the genocide convention. Was Saddam practicing genocide? There is an international convention on genocide that is kind of a loophole, that would allow countries to intervene in another country in the event that these brutal, barbaric practices were taking place. That debate wasn't had. Now, if we were going to invade on that, we should have at least had the debate. We should have understood why it is we were invading.
Second, when we construct our military, and we review our military doctrine every four years in a document that's called the Quadrennial Review. Every four years. Quadrennial. And it is that document that determines how we structure our armed forces. What they exist to do, the resources allocated to them, the way that they are disbursed, what tasks they are expected to accomplish. Wars of liberation, or humanitarian wars, don't reach that cut line. That is not the way we structure our military. In other words, we generally do not send Private Lynch, Jessica Lynch, off to fight somebody else's wars, Ahmad Chalabi's wars in this case. Our armed forces exist to defend us against foreign threats."