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Titles:
“Cinema Libre Distribution Presents:
MoveOn.org and The Center for American Progress
Present
A Robert Greenwald Film
Uncovered
Co-Producers: Kate McArdle, Devin Smith, Co-Producer: Philippe Diaz
Editor: Kimberly Ray
Additional Editing: Deborah Zeitman
Music: Brad Chiet and Jim Ervin & Mars Lasar
Researcher/Associate Producer: Jim Gilliam
Additional Editing/Associate Producer: Chris Gordon
Producer/Director: Robert Greenwald
Uncovered: The War”
Title: “The Experts”
MILT BEARDEN
Thirty years with the CIA from 1964 to 1994.
RAND BEERS
I worked for the government for 35 years starting with the Marine Corps from 1962 to
1968 with some service in Vietnam.
GRAHAM FULLER
I was 25 years as a professional intelligence officer with CIA.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI
Almost 5 years in the Pentagon and the last almost 3 of that working in the office of the
secretary of defense.
JOHN BRADY KIESLING
I spent almost 20 years with the state department. Three years in Athens as a political
counselor for the chief of the political section
PATRICK LANG
I’m a retired colonel in the United States army, military intelligence special forces.
LARRY JOHNSON
I was previously with the state dept’s office of counter-terrorism from 1989-1993 prior to
that I worked with the Central Intelligence Agency.
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DAVID C. MACMICHAEL
I’m a former senior estimates officer with the Central Intelligence Agency.
PETER ZIMMERMAN
I started actually as a science fellow with the arms control and disarmament agency and
became the chief scientist of the arms control agency.
RAY MCGOVERN
For 27 years I was an analyst first of Soviet affairs and then of wider responsibilities.
THE HONORABLE HENRY WAXMAN
I’m a congressman representing the 30th district in Los Angeles.
COLONEL MARY ANN WRIGHT
I’ve just completed almost three decades of service to the United States.
PHILIP COYLE
Most recently I was an assistant secretary of defense in the Pentagon from 1994 to 2001.
JOSEPH WILSON
I served for 23 years in the American Foreign Service as a diplomat.
BILL CHRISTISON
I worked for the CIA for 28 and a half years.
PATRICK EDDINGTON
I joined the agency in 1988, originally with what was then known as the national
photographic interpretation center.
DAVID CORN
I’m Washington editor of The Nation magazine, I’ve been doing that for about 16 years
now.
THE RT. HONORABLE CLARE SHORT
I’m the labor MP for a constituency in Birmingham called Birmingham Ladywood, I’ve
been the MP for 20 years.
CHAS FREEMAN
For 30 years I was a diplomat serving my country abroad, my last position however was
ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.
JOHN DEAN
In July of 1970, the president asked me to come over to be White House counsel and I
served for roughly a thousand days until it all fell apart.
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THOMAS E. WHITE
I spent 23 years as a commissioned officer in the United States Army. I came back to
public service in 2001 to be the secretary of the army.
ROBERT BAER
I spent 21 years in the CIA. Of that time I spent 90 percent in the Middle East.
SCOTT RITTER
I’m a former weapons inspector with the United Nations in Iraq, I served in that capacity
from 1991 until 1998.
MEL GOODMAN
I worked for the CIA for 20 years, from 1966 to 1986.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
I’ve worked on assessing secret nuclear weapons programs for almost 20 years.
ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER
I never expected that I’d leave the navy and become chief spook of our country, director
of Central Intelligence, but that happened.
Title: “UNCOVERED:THE WAR ON IRAQ”
OVERLAPPING VOICE OVERS
RICHARD CHENEY
Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
GEORGE W. BUSH
-Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
-A clear threat to the United States
EXPERT VO
-it has dozens of ballistic missiles
GEORGE W. BUSH
-It has sponsored and sheltered terrorists
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
-paying suicide bombers
COLIN POWELL
-chemical weapons are equally chilling
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DONALD RUMSFELD
-biological weapons including anthrax and botulism toxin
GEORGE W. BUSH
-biological and chemical agent to kill millions of people
DONALD RUMSFELD
-chemical weapons including VX and sarin, mustard gas
GEORGE W. BUSH
To a massive and sudden horror
COLIN POWELL
Massive death and destruction
RICHARD RICHARD CHENEY
Death on a massive scale
GEORGE W. 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 forty-five minutes, after the order were given. The regime has longstanding and
continuing ties to terrorist organizations and there are Al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. The
regime is seeking a nuclear bomb and with fissible..fissile material, could build one
within a year.
MEL GOODMAN
The Bush administration made up its mind to go to war on September 11th, 2001.
BILL CHRISTISON
That very first day, on September 12, one day after September 11, uh, the, meeting that
was held in the White House, in the situation room, uh, led to Rumsfeld asking the
question, “Shouldn’t we use this as an opportunity to do something about Iraq as well?”
RICHARD CLARKE
We all said no, 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.
EXPERT VO
From that time on, you were dealing with rationalization, justification for the war. You
weren’t dealing with real causes for the war, or the real reasons for the war. There was
never a clear and present danger, there was never an imminent threat.
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CONDOLEEZZA RICE
-With weapons of mass destruction
RICHARD CHENEY
-Weapons of mass destruction
GEORGE W. BUSH
Weapons of “math death.”
RAY MCGOVERN
Weapons of mass destruction was a convenient way into tricking our congress into giving
our president authority to wage this war.
DICK CHENEY
We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
DONALD RUMSFELD
-Develop nuclear weapons
GEORGE W. BUSH
-Nuclear weapons.
MEL GOODMAN
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 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.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
Leaders will use worst case assessments, uh, that point to nuclear weapons, to generate
political support because they know people fear nuclear weapons so much.
RAY MCGOVERN
The evidence was simply not there. Um, Wolfowitz would be asked to explain, you
know, how good is the evidence, can you tell us more about it? This is in NATO, mind
you, and he’d say, “Well, um, it’s like this, it’s like pornography, uh, hard to describe, but
I’ll, you, you recognize it when you see it.” My God. And we’re going to go to war on
that?
DONALD RUMSFELD
If someone is waiting for a so – called smoking gun, it’s certain that we will have waited
too long.
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CONDOLEEZZA RICE
We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
GEORGE W. BUSH
We cannot wait for the final proof. The smoking gun. It could come in the form of a
mushroom cloud.
PHILIP COYLE
A lot of 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 it in the first Gulf War, they didn’t have it in this, uh, war in Iraq, and they
don’t have it, uh, any way of getting it in the future.
MEL GOODMAN
What the Bush administration did was try to round up as many people as they could who
would make the case for them.
ROBERT BAER
What the white House wanted was the CIA to give it talking points to justify this war.
It’d already made up its mind.
DR. DAVID C. MACMICHAEL
Massive intervention, by, uh, people, uh, particularly, uh, from Vice President Cheney’s
office and Vice President Cheney himself, in the process.
EXPERT VO
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 , as people were sugges-, were saying.
DAVID C. MACMICHAEL
Intelligence director of the department of energy, simply ordered his experts who had
raised questions about the, the evidence being used on the, on the nuclear, end of it, to,
as, uh, the news accounts say, to sit down and shut up, so that the DOE would be on
board with the overall estimate.
JOHN KIESLING
They were not given the opportunity to speak because no one wanted to hear what they
said.
ROBERT BAER
I was in chief of collecting information on Iraq through the mid-nineties. I know what
we had, and what we didn’t have, and I’m here to tell you there was no information.
RAY MCGOVERN
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I understand that the Director himself, George Tenet, is now accompanying the briefer in
the morning. This never happened in the past. In the past we were trusted, we 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.
DAVID C. MACMICHAEL
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 have been making to support the decision to go into Iraq.
RAY MCGOVERN
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…”
ROBERT BAER
They call this data mining. Going back over old information coming to new conclusions.
MEL GOODMAN
And the overwhelming opinion from the scientists of this government, at the department
of energy, and even at the CIA and some at the state department, were arguing against
using weapons of mass destruction as a case to go to war.
RAY MCGOVERN
You’re talking about the vice president of the united states, and you’re talking about a GS
13 or 14, a mid-level 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 CIA, is a member of the team, you know? A lot of pressure on that.
Shouldn’t happen.
ROBERT BAER
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 ‘em alone, ask ‘em what they think, but don’t tell them to
rethink their positions. Because then you come up with nonsense, like we saw.
GRAHAM FULLER
The administration 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, where with whom,
etc.
MILT BEARDEN
Preemptive war by its very nature is something that is entirely new to the United States of
America and to what we call the Western Alliance. You go back through history and at
the Peace of Westfalia in 1648 a group of nations that had just killed most of each other
off decided that 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.
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GEORGE W. BUSH
Delay, indecision and inaction could lead to a massive and sudden horror.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
It simply makes no sense to wait any longer.
DONALD RUMSFIELD
Take action, before it’s too late.
GEORGE W. BUSH
We will not wait.
GEORGE W. BUSH
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’ve become imminent.
RICHARD CHENEY
As President Bush has said, time is not on our side.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
It was a rushed N.I.E., it was done, I believe in three or four 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.
MEL GOODMAN
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.
Graphic: Seals for National Intelligence Departments
DAVID ALBRIGHT VO
The National Intelligence Estimate is really about, I don’t know, five major players, but
ten 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 N.I.E., and then once it was out, selectively picked what was useful to their
argument.
Graphic: Dossier: “National Intelligence Estimate: Iraq’s Continuing Programs for
Weapons of Mass Destruction”
Becomes:
“Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs”
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Caption: “Although we have little specific information on Iraq’s CW stockpile, Saddam
probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of
CW agents…”
Becomes Caption: “Saddam probably has stocked a few 100 metric tons (MT) of CW
agents…”
EXPERT VO
Most of their qualifications were simply filtered out.
RAY MCGOVERN VO
The sanitization of the original estimate was not true to its real meaning. How all the
modifiers were dropped off.
Caption: “We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
programs”
Caption Becomes: “Iraq has continued weapons of mass destruction programs”
DAVID ALBRIGHT VO
It was a prosecutor making a case, using what benefited his case, ignoring evidence that
would undermine his case, and there was no defense attorney to give us the other side.
Caption: “The activities we have detected do not however, add up to a compelling case
that Iraq is currently pursing what INR would consider to be an integrated and
comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR
considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment.
Caption becomes lined-out.
EXPERT VO
-and the end product used by policymakers, 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 Department’s intelligence and research.
Caption: “The Director, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, U.S. Air Force,
does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms
for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents.”
Caption becomes lined-out.
Caption: “We assess that Baghdad has begun renewed production of mustard, cyclosarin
and VX.”
Caption becomes: “Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents,
probably including mustard cyclosarin and VX.
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RAY MCGOVERN VO
It was a bizarre warping of the intelligence process and they thought they were going to
get away with it because who was going to see the classified version? Well, later, several
months later, they release parts of the classified version. They thought no one would
notice.
Caption: “Revelations after the Gulf War starkly demonstrate the extensive efforts
undertaken by Iraq to deny information. We lack specific information on many key
aspects of Iraq’s WMD programs.”
Caption becomes: “Revelations after the Gulf War starkly demonstrate the extensive
efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information.”
Caption: “INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began.”
Caption becomes lined-out.
Caption: “We judge Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents, for delivery by
bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives.
Caption becomes: “Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents, for delivery by
bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives, including potentially against the
US Homeland.”
LARRY JOHNSON
So this was not a case where the National Intelligence Estimate was driving the war.
This was to provide an excuse after the fact.
MILT BEARDEN
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 would in any way allow you to go to war.
Title: “Terrorism”
DONALD RUMSFELD
There are Al Qaeda in Iraq.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Secretly and without fingerprints he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists
or help them develop their own.
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CHAS FREEMAN
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.
RICHARD CLARKE
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 at this issue for years, there’s
just no connection.’
JOHN BRADY KIESLING
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
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’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 a sociopath; he was not an irrational being in the
sense that he was going to insure his own demise by doing something like that.
GRAHAM FULLER
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.
MEL GOODMAN
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 VO
There’s no doubt that Ansar Al 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.
ISLAMIST LEADER
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 Islam’s zone.
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RAY MCGOVERN
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 believed that Iraq had something to do with
9/11 and that was a very successful and very deliberate and very unethical and immoral
operation on the part of the P.R. people of this administration.
Title: “Informers”
RICHARD CHENEY
What 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.
GEORGE TENET
We had access to émigrés, and defectors, with more direct access to these programs…
GEORGE W. BUSH
From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq in the late 1990’s had several mobile
biological weapons labs.
ARI FLEISCHER
It was only after defectors told us about it. The inspectors were in the country…
DONALD RUMSFELD
The most important information that inspectors have ever gotten on what’s going on in
Iraq have come from defectors.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ
We know about that capability from defectors and other sources.
DAVID KAY
A recent defector has stated that as recently as August of ’98, that’s while inspections
were still going on, a formal order was issued to proceed with a nuclear program at full
blast.
AHMED CHALABI
Our strategy is to bring to the world the danger that Saddam poses in his current state.
SHARIF ALI BIN EL-HUSSEIN
Without doubt he is developing weapons of mass destruction. Without doubt he has
chemical and biological weapons. And without doubt, for thirty years he been trying to
acquire a nuclear weapon.
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DAVID ALBRIGHT
The usual scrutiny of these kind of guys was just not done adequately. There was this
attitude of , “let’s find the smoking gun. Let’s find the evidence.” Rather than lets look
at what’s out there and weigh the evidence.
LARRY JOHNSON
They wanted to believe him. It goes back to contacts originated as early as the 1990s
with individuals like dick Cheney, like Paul Wolfowitz, like Richard pearl, dealing with
Ahmed Chalabi. They became enamored of this fellow who dressed like a Westerner,
talked with a British accent, and appeared to be upper crust, and therefore was quite
believable.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
Everyone in Washington was believing them. And I thought people had really, somehow
checked out of reality in order to go to war. That it was a war fever that had taken over.
MEL GOODMAN
These people wanted to get back into Baghdad. They couldn’t defeat Saddam Hussein but
they knew that US military power could. So the worst of these who would be Ahmad
Chalabi who has been in exile from his country for twenty to thirty years and who’s
clearly not a hero by the definition of heroism by his own people, sold the Pentagon on
the idea that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction and must be stopped.
EXPERT VO
They were bringing forward individuals who they claimed were either high level military
or scientists with access. They were looking for money, first of all, because Chalabi was
paying money.
LARRY JOHNSON:
Supplying money shouldn’t be a surprise. That’s how informants are dealt with in the
spy business.
ROBERT BAER
But there was no effort to check their bona fides. None.
JOHN KIESLING
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
Graphic: “US paid $1 Million for ‘useless intelligence’ from Chalabi – Washington Post”
LARRY JOHNSON
We had the U.S. congress approve and appropriate money for the Iraqi National
Congress. No telling how much they were taking off the top for themselves.
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DAVID ALBRIGHT
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 they had about Iraq.
MEL GOODMAN
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 Baghdad and establish
their own regime.
SCOTT RITTER
We have to go back and examine just the role the defectors played throughout the entire
inspection process.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
If inspections work, then you don’t overthrow Saddam Hussein.
ROBERT BAER
How does somebody like that, I don’t even know how to describe him, get into a position
where he is determining U.S. policy
LARRY JOHNSON
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 through a avenue that’s not traditional to the intelligence
community and wasn’t open to being vetted or reviewed. We’ve had Chalabi himself
admit that they didn’t mind providing false information because it helped them achieve
their goal of removing Saddam.
SHARIF ALI BIN EL-HUSSEIN
No body in Iraq will defend that regime, including the military, both the regular army and
the republican guard.
AHMED CHALABI
Our liberation would have not been achieved without the determination of President
George W. Bush and the commitment of the coalition. And 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 a Iraq where dignity, justice, and human rights are issued for all citizens.
SHARIF ALI BIN EL-HUSSEIN
There is no risk of a break up of Iraq. There is no risk of a civil war.
AHMED CHALABI
I stand before this assembly as a representative of free Iraq. To all those hear who helped
us in our struggle for liberation we extend our gratitude.
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SHARIF ALI BIN EL-HUSSEIN
The Iraqi opposition will insure the continuation of its institutions and to reestablish
democracy and the rule of law.
ROBERT BAER
He said, ‘I got what I wanted, I got my war. I’m back in Iraq. If you people relied on my
information, you’re stupid.’
Title: “President Bush State of the Union January 28, 2003”
Title: “War Talk Shifts From “If” To “When”.- New York Times”
Title: “U.S. Stand on Iraq is Entering Final Phase- Wall Street Journal”
Title: “The case for war. –The Economist”
Title: “Support for War with Iraq Grow after Bush’s speech.- Washington Post.”
GEORGE W. BUSH
Every year by law and by custom we meet here and consider the state of the union. This
year we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead.
JOHN DEAN
Distorted beliefs, estimates and guesstimates that it appears he was misleading the public
and the Congress.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and
VX nerve agent.
PETER ZIMMERMAN
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 analyses. Well if you made it 12 years ago and it had a shelf life of two 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.
GEORGE W. 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
And then they tried to use the fact that inspectors found sixteen of these as evidence that
thousands more existed and again, I mean, as a methodology it’s a very weak way to
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predict anything. And I think it borders on propaganda to argue that the small number
that have been found by inspectors imply that in this case, over 29,000 exist.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited
munitions.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
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.
GEORGE W. BUSH
He hasn’t accounted for that material. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed it.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
And the inspectors can 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. 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.
PATRICK LANG
If Saddam Hussein had admitted to the Iranians, to the Syrians and his own people that he
had been so intimidated by the UN inspections and sanctions process, given up on all
that, they would’ve torn him from limb to limb.
GEORGE W. 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. He hadn’t
accounted for that material.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
The inspectors had 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.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum
tubes, suitable for nuclear weapons production.
PETER ZIMMERMAN
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.
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SCOTT RITTER
Nuclear experts for instance from Lawrence Livermore’s laboratory’s Z division, the
experts on centrifuge enrichment came out and said - No you couldn’t enrich uranium
using these tubes, they’re not compatible.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
I saw it as a deliberate attempt to take information, selectively take information, and try
to basically say that Iraq poses an imminent nuclear threat and therefore action is
absolutely necessary and I felt that was absolutely wrong.
GEORGE W. BUSH
The international Atomic Energy agency confirmed in the 1990’s that Saddam Hussein
had an advanced nuclear weapons development program.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
The administration showed photos of nuclear or former nuclear weapons sites in Iraq,
pre-1991 nuclear weapons sites, claimed the new construction showed that they were
ongoing nuclear weapons sites, complete nonsense.
JOHN DEAN
The most troubling thing about the fact, 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 to present to the Congress.
GEORGE W. 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 UN about weapons of mass
destruction, he deliberately left out any reference to attempts to buy uranium from Africa.
COLIN POWELL
I didn’t use the uranium at that point because I didn’t think that was sufficiently uh, str,
strong as evidence to present before the world.
NARRATOR VO
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.
CONDOLEEZZA 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.
18
TIM RUSSERT
How’d it get back in?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
It’s not a matter of getting back in, it’s a matter, Tim, that three plus months later 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.
Title: “Sixteen Words”
GEORGE W. BUSH
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa.
NARRATOR VO
Just sixteen 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
I uh, 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 uh, 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 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, uh, 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 there drinking mint tea and talking to everybody there
was to talk to who knew anything about the subject matter in the EMA. And I 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 documents, uh, signatures on the documents and
if the documents did not contain those signatures, they could not be authentic,
government of Niger documents.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
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. Of
course it was information that was mistaken. But it was a relatively small part of the case
19
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.
JOE WILSON
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 ELBARADEI
Based on further 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 VO
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
We all know that the documentation on yellowcake from Niger was faked, 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 even the trailers, the bioweapons trailers that were so ballyhooed. At
that point someone’s gotta 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
The question remains, who did the document? Who forged the document? And why? The
list is possibly short, somebody oughta be able to work on that.
NARRATOR VO
Wilson says his family is the subject of a smear campaign by senior administration
officials that 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.
20
JOE WILSON
The White House hatchet men came out and started writing articles that basically said
that Wilson, well the first one came out and said that Wilson told the truth cause he’s a
Democrat, well set that up as an argument. Democrats tell the truth, ergo Republicans, fill
in the blank. Then, then, uh, a couple of senior administration officials leaked to Bob
Novak that my wife was a CIA operative involved in the weapons of mass destruction
business at the CIA.
JOHN DEAN
Senior administration officials is a key to being typically, 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 that information
out. Now that’s against a statutory law that prohibits the identification of CIA operatives.
JOE WILSON
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
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’ve never seen a dirty trick that could be a hit.
JOE WILSON
A president of the United States and an administration that 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.
Title: “Secretary of State Powell’s Address to the United Nations- February 5, 2003”
Title: “ Masterful- Hartford Current”
Title: “With the Coolness of Marshall Dillon- Denver Post”
Title: “Piling Fact upon Fact- LA times”
Title: “Iraq is Busted- Jacksonville Times”
Title: “Overwhelming- Tampa Tribune”
Title: “Powerful New Case- Washington Post”
Title: “Secretary of State Powell Delivered and Then Some- USA Today”
21
SCOTT RITTER VO
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. 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.
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
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 that
Colin Powell says, that was a terrific blow to the morale of the Central Intelligence
Agency analysts.
COLIN POWELL
Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons.
PATRICK LANG
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 some place would be a deadly blow.
COLIN POWELL
Saddam Hussein has used these horrific weapons- on another country and on his own
people.
DAVID CORN
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 to that. Donald Rumsfeld actually as the special envoy for Ronald
Reagan back in those years helped open the door for better relations between Washington
and Baghdad.
SCOTT RITTER
Colin Powell spoke of thousands of liters of anthrax that were unaccounted for. He said
they’re probably hiding it. Then he 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 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.
22
COLIN POWELL
Just a few weeks ago we intercepted communications between two commanders in Iraq’s
second Republican guard corps.
SCOTT RITTER
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.
COLIN POWELL
On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers.
SCOTT RITTER
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.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
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.
COLIN POWELL
The truck you also see is a signature item, it’s a decontamination vehicle.
SCOTT RITTER
The UN weapons inspectors knew that the truck shown by Colin Powell in those
photographs were fire trucks, not decontamination trucks.
RAY MCGOVERN
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
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 that facility.
COLIN POWELL
23
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, and it was done on the
22nd of December as the UN inspection team is arriving.
RAY MCGOVERN
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
We have noted that the two satellite images of the 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.
COLIN POWELL
We have first hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.
SCOTT RITTER
These mobile labs have now been shown to be nothing more than hydrogen generation
facilities.
COLIN POWELL
Here you see both truck and rail car mounted mobile factories.
SCOTT RITTER
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 artist’s renditions of these facilities. Why?
Because we have no proof they exist.
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 2000
liters of simulated anthrax.
Title: “ The plan was destroyed in 1991. – UN Weapons Inspectors”
COLIN POWELL
Iraqis continue to visit Bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan.
RAY MCGOVERN
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.
COLIN POWELL
24
Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons
of chemical weapons agent.
RAY MCGOVERN
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 in
the battlefield. 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.
COLIN POWELL
Iraqi denials of supporting terrorists take their place alongside the other Iraqi denials of
weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies.
RAY MCGOVERN
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?
GREG THIELMANN
It was probably one of the low points in his long distinguished service to the nation.
Title: “Inspections”
GEORGE W. BUSH
The old weapons inspections process was a little more than a game.
DAVID KAY
They concealed, deny, deceived.
RICHARD CHENEY
The return of Inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever
DAVID KAY
To eliminate by inspection is quite frankly is a fool’s errand.
RICHARD CHENEY
On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam
was somehow back in his box.
PATRICK EDDINGTON
The reality is that between the original UNSCOM inspections and the UNMOVIC
inspections, you destroyed with those inspections 90 to probably 95 percent of Iraqi
arsenal. The first Gulf War destroyed almost nothing. Uh, and post war US battle
damage assessment confirmed that.
25
ROBERT BAER
The UN weapons inspections were effective, they forced Saddam to get rid of the stuff,
they had that country under control.
BILL CHRISTISON
By 1998 at the latest, those Inspectors have discovered most of the weapons of mass
destruction, and the Iraqi programs at that point were essentially at an end.
PHILIP COYLE
Before the war in Iraq, the United Nations Inspectors told them that Saddam Hussein did
not have nuclear weapons capability.
CHAS FREEMAN
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 all along.
PATRICK EDDINGTON
The inspection regime worked. Its was the most intrusive inspection regime in history
and it worked. And at the end of the day that’s another reason we went to war for
nothing.
Title: “War in Iraq”
Title: “On the Brink of War”
Title: “News Teams Ready Their Troops”
Title: “Showdown with Iraq”
MICHAEL SAVAGE
These maniacs who are encouraging our enemies, weakening our troops resolve and
confusing the American people.
WILLIAM BENNETT
Well, you shouldn’t listen to these protests because they’re obviously helping Saddam
Hussein. Who would have guessed you could build a massive international peace
movement on the protection of Saddam Hussein.
SCOTT RITTER
The media is culpable for the misleading of the American public. They bought into the
Bush Administrations rhetoric.
DENNIS PRAGER
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.
26
MICHAEL SAVAGE VO
Reducing troop morale, confusing the American people and emboldening our enemies.
They are absolutely committing treason or sedition as far as I’m concerned. There’s a
huge difference between a personal opinion and an opinion that degrades and debases our
military in a time of war. It’s a disgrace.
SCOTT RITTER
I don’t believe the mainstream media acted responsibly in regards to Iraq. You know, I
was belittled, I was called a traitor, 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.
PAULA ZAHN
People out there are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein’s Kool-Aid.
SCOTT RITTER
If I’m an ideologue, then I’m a Republican ideologue. 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 facts and reality of my responsibilities and duties as an American citizen.
JOE WILSON
There is 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.
HENRY WAXMAN
I think it’s so unfair to try and silence debate and criticism by attacking those who saying
something with which you disagree.
LARRY JOHNSON
Former State Dept., Counter Terrorism
The media is supposed to be the Fourth Estate but they decided to completely climb into
bed with the administration on this.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
In a way the administration constructed a box and that box has the all the information that
the administration wanted the media and Congress and the public to have, and it was a lot
of exaggerations, partial information, sometimes the whole information but on balance a
one-sided view of Iraq’s WMD program.
ROBERT BAER
What they would do is they would have the Iraqi National Congress taking bogus
defectors, taking information from them, giving them to the Pentagon, then the Iraqi
National Congress giving them to journalists, and they said if you don’t believe us, the
Iraqi National Congress, call the Pentagon. So you had this circular reporting and you had
the New York Times admitting that it was using one source for all of its information
27
about weapons of mass destruction. It was self-affirming by going to the Pentagon which
put this stuff on paper.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
It was a lot of exaggerations, partial information, sometimes the whole information but
on balance a one-sided view of Iraq’s WMD program.
ROBERT BAER
And on a lot of these stories the journalists didn’t want to look into because the editors
told them to run with, we’re going to be supportive of the administration, it’s the patriotic
thing to do.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
I think there was on the part of the media too much of getting into the upcoming of the
war and not enough look at: “Do we need to go to war?”
LARRY JOHNSON
There were some journalists out there raising the alarm bells, the Seymour Hershes, the
Walter Pinkuses of the world, but unfortunately those great investigative reporters, uh,
they’re usually exiled when the heat is on and it’s only after the fact that they’re given the
praise and the pats on the back.
DAVID ALBRIGHT
The excitement was to make the case to go to war and that was the controversy the media
loved. You know, it was the titillation of a WMD hitting us, not the titillation or conflict
of attacking the administration.
ROBERT BAER
Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have conservative editors that
supported the White House on this.
LARRY JOHNSON
I didn’t foresee all of this. I’d like to say I was all prescient, that I knew what the others
in the intelligence community were saying, I didn’t. I’m one of the ones who drank the
Kool-Aid. But early on I felt there was some dangers going into the war and I tried to get
an Op-Ed into the various major newspapers and the word that kept coming back was:
“nobody wants to hear this because we’re going to war.”
Title: “War, March 19, 2003”
GEORGE W. BUSH
The people of the United States and their friends and allies will not live at the mercy of
an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.
28
DONALD RUMSFELD
His regime has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons and let there
be no doubt about it.
ARI FLEISHER
We know for a fact there are weapons there.
THOMAS E. WHITE
There were a group of people who for many years had advocated going after Saddam
Hussein and they pushed us hard. And of course raw intelligence data can be interpreted
in a lot of different ways. As I’m sure experts have talked to you about. And do I think
there were a lot of people that were adamant that this was the right course to pursue.
GEORGE W. BUSH
We found the weapons of mass destruction. Uh, you know, we found biological
laboratories.
COLIN POWELL
Everybody knows that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
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.
DONALD RUMSFELD
We know where they are, they’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west,
south and north somewhat.
ARI FLEISCHER
This will be made clearer in the course of the operation for whatever duration it takes.
TIM RUSSERT
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
How about the actual weapons?
PAUL BREMER
Well, I just don’t know, let’s wait and see what the team that’s over there.
29
COLIN POWELL
Inspections continue with our new exploitation teams that have been brought in.
DONALD RUMSFELD
Uh, and, uh, and that we will in fact find weapons or evidence of the weapons programs
that are conclusive.
HANS BLIX
It is somewhat puzzling, I think, that you can have a hundred percent 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?
GEORGE W. BUSH
Well you might ask the Prime Minister that. We won’t be proven wrong.
DONALD RUMSFELD
This is a process that takes some time and uh, it will ebb and flow.
GEORGE W. BUSH
One thing we know is that he had a weapons program.
DONALD RUMSFELD
I don’t know anybody that I can think of that has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear
weapons.
RICHARD CHENEY
And we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ
Well on the specific issue of weapons of mass destruction, it’s gonna take time and we’re
gonna have to be patient.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Over time the truth will come out.
DONALD RUMSFELD
Now, it’s gonna take time to find anything because they’ve had-
COLIN POWELL
People will find that we presented a solid case, a case that is there, and was there and will
remain there.
30
DONALD RUMSFELD
So it’s gonna take a period of time to find the people, I don’t think we’ll discover
anything myself.
HANS BLIX
I still felt that three and a half months for new inspections was a rather short time before
pulling the, especially now that the U.S. government is now saying you have to have a bit
of patience, you know these things take time.
GEORGE W. BUSH
I, I, I, I, I believe that, uh, uh, we, we will find the truth and the truth is, he, he, he was
developing a, a program for weapons of mass destruction.
DONALD RUMSFELD
I think what will happen is we’ll discover people who will tell us where to go find it.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ
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
It, it, 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.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Are people 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
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.
COLIN POWELL
He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass
destruction, he is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
We are able to keep arms from him, his military forces have not been rebuilt.
JOURNALIST
Is U.S. credibility on the line over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
GEORGE W. BUSH
Uh, I’m not exactly sure what that means.
31
Title: “Cost of War”
PAUL WOLFOWITZ
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
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 BREMER
We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively
soon.
DONALD RUMSFELD
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 dollars this year, they think it might be something
like 15?
VOICE
12.
DONALD RUMSFELD
-12 next year. They think it might be something like 18 to 20 plus the next, 19?
VOICE
19.
GEORGE W. BUSH
I will soon submit to Congress a request for 87 billion dollars.
TIM RUSSERT
Why did the administration so dramatically underestimate the cost of this war?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
We did not have perfect foresight into what we were going to find in Iraq.
Title: “David Kay”
NARRATOR VO
With the cost of the war rising and the search for weapons of mass destruction going
nowhere, the administration turns to David Kay.
32
RICHARD CHENEY
This work is being carried out under the dir of Dr. David Kay, a respected scientist and
UN inspector who is leading the weapons search in Iraq
DAVID KAY
We are determined to take this apart. We have a tremendous group of dedicated
American men and women involved in this, the best assets of the intelligence community
can provide.
Title: “’Solid progress’ being made in hunt for banned Iraqi weapons.– 7/31/03 Agence
France Presse”
Title: “CIA adviser says Iraq weapons search is making progress. – 7/31/2003 AP”
RICHARD CHENEY
Dr. Kay and his team are making progress.
DAVID KAY
We have found a large body of continuing activities and equipment
Title: “U.S. Weapons Expert Cites Progress But Urges Patience; Advisor Speaks of
Possible ‘Surprise’ in Iraq. – 8/2/2003, International Herald Tribune”
DAVID KAY
We are surprised by new advances we are making.
GEORGE TENET
The network of laboratories and safe houses controlled by Iraqi intelligence and security
services
DAVID KAY
And unlike pre-war intelligence we don’t require someone just to say something, we
actually need the physical evidence.
RICHARD CHENEY
Equipment for continuing suitable chemical and biological weapons research.
Title: “Iraq weapons probe progresses at a crawl – 10/7/2003 The Record, Kitchener-
Waterloo, Ontario”
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
David Kay is not going to be done with this for quite some time.
CNN NEWS ANCHOR
David Kay wants more time.
33
CBS NEWS ANCHOR
He says it could take another six to nine months to make a definitive finding.
NEWS ANCHOR 1
The administration is asking congress for hundreds of millions more.
NEWS ANCHOR 2
Six hundred million dollars to fund the continuing search.
DAVID KAY
We still have not found shiny pointy things that I would call weapons.
SCOTT MCCLELLAN
Before we can draw firm conclusions, we need to let the Iraq survey group complete its
work.
DAVID KAY
To me its clear Iraq had no large stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons at the
time of the war. We were all wrong probably in my judgment and that is most disturbing.
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN
It’s inevitable that there will be an outside commission appointed on an issue of this
gravity
SENATOR PAT ROBERTS
We will have public hearings and we will get to the bottom of this and let the chips fall
where they may.
DAVID KAY
In a democracy you have an obligation, your obligation is to speak truthfully to the
public. That’s the basics of civility and our belief in our system of government.
SENATOR CHUCK HAGEL
It is going to require outside effort probably through an outside commission to deal with
some of these very serious problems.
DAVID KAY
Because I think that explanation is important in a democracy.
CBS NEWS ANCHOR
This whole episode has caught the White House completed by surprise.
DAVID KAY
They have become so fearful of admitting error, that they stand and defend things that on
their face are untruthful.
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NEWS ANCHOR
President Bush is being pounded with calls to for an independent investigation into how
US intelligence so badly misjudged Iraq’s capabilities before the war.
SENATOR JOHN ROCKEFELLER
Having the President holding all the cards and appointing to all the people, having
everyone accountable to him, is a very bad idea.
DAVID KAY
If you say you are 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 when that
didn’t work but here I have a second explanation.
I was asked, if I would care to try operationalize some of the comments I made of what
was going wrong in Iraq…. And so I said if you among other things, if you are going to
do this you have to treat it as an intelligence problem and that is not go looking for
hidden weapons but go looking for people who would be associated with hidden
weapons… Uh, what I did was form teams for each of the areas and formed like half
hypothesis’s, half the team took hypothesis’s that where there and the other half that said
it wasn’t there, and both followed exactly the same method. If you believe it’s there,
what is the proof that will in fact conform that, prove that hypothesis or what evidence
clashes with it. 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, I was uh, unsure whether they would come back pro or con, and I
really didn’t care, and that was intentional because I did what 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 done this week, here’s how the evidence stacks and here’s what we
propose to do the next week. And there will be a discussion between the groups and
myself over, on each of them, on what they were doing, a lot cross-fertilization…. There
is a gradual build up of evidence that forces you to challenge your preexisting belief and
then keeps generating either more questions or generates questions about the hypothesis.
For example in 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. Uh, nor was
it found, that 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 you’re about and what
you have to offer. And usually you’ll have people coming to you, and I have a lot of
money, reward money and I have green cards and passports to virtually to 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, have absolutely no evidence. Iraq was a horrible
place in June, July, August, September, October, and November; insecurity, the economy
hasn’t working, there was violence, there is still violence there. It was remarkable to me
and disturbing that in a place this bad, who wouldn’t want a golden lifeboat to get out?
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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 had to leave your
family behind. You’ll be taken care of but you’ll have to find a new family in California.
Some of them might have like to. But no one bought it so that worried me. Around the
weapons programs, if a weapons program exist, you are going to find people, people
engaged in the production, the technology, engineering and design. People involved in
protecting the weapons, people prepared 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 had stacked up to explain
something other than large stockpiles of weapons. I had the habit of writing a personal
report back every weekend that was quite separate than the official report saying this is
what it looks and smells like to me, here are the issues of the week. I always found that it
was a good way to keep people informed of what you’re doing. Oh, it would go to the
director of central intelligence and where it went beyond that of course you’d never know
in the field. I don’t think there was a surprise about the conclusions I was drawing
because those were folly and completely inadequately reported. I think the surprise would
be that he would speak out and say that.
I had the privilege, although I didn’t see it as a privilege, of watching a lot of senior
government officials come agonizing terms about Vietnam and decide not to speak out
because t