334 Duration: 3.7 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and how long you've here been at CBS.
335 Duration: 11.91 seconds
Bill Plante:
I'm Bill Plante, the correspondent for CBS News, I cover the White House, have for most of the last 23 years. And I've been at CBS for 40 years.
336 Duration: 12.65 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
Okay -- In the film that I'm looking at -- I'm looking at the buildup to the military intervention in Iraq. So when you look back onto this time period, what kind of thoughts come to your mind?
337 Duration: 6.04 seconds
Bill Plante:
I covered the White House during the run up to this Iraq war.
338 Duration: 23.26 seconds
Bill Plante:
There was a great deal of coverage devoted to whether the United States would, A.) Seek a second United Nations resolution. B.) Convince the other members of the Security Council to vote for that resolution. And C.) Convince the American public that war was necessary. All of those things were covered at some length.
339 Duration: 22.39 seconds
Bill Plante:
The debate became acrimonious at times. There were substantial portions of the opposition in Washington, both the Democrats in Congress, and policy people who thought that the war was ill advised -- at least until the inspections process sanctioned by the UN -- had run its course.
340 Duration: 17.95 seconds
Bill Plante:
But it was clear, from at least the beginning of 2003, if not sooner, that the Bush administration was determined to go to war, and was basically going through the motions of trying to get the United Nations to agree.
341 Duration: 7.81 seconds
Bill Plante:
In the end, the United Nations agreed to inspections, but not to war, and the war began in any case.
342 Duration: 9.68 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
And so, when you're looking at this time period, at what point did you realize that war was inevitable -- that they were determined to go to war?
343 Duration: 11.98 seconds
Bill Plante:
It seemed to me that war was almost inevitable as far back as the fall of 2002. It seemed all but inevitable at the beginning of 2003.
344 Duration: 28.43 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
And so, in the case of this time period, you had the Congressional resolution passed in early October. And so talk a little bit about the Congress' role during this time period. And whether or not -- well, we'll talk about after the time period -- Let's talk about during the buildup -- starting from like August to October -- the Congress' role in this.
345 Duration: 10.98 seconds
Bill Plante:
When you look at Congress' role in the run up to the war you have to see it in the context of the reaction to what happed to the United States on 9/11.
346 Duration: 6.91 seconds
Bill Plante:
Many members of Congress had serious misgivings about another war in the Middle East, in Iraq.
347 Duration: 17.35 seconds
Bill Plante:
But at the same time, when it was suggested that there was some connection -- and the connection was only vaguely suggested. It was never -- almost never directly hinted at -- or directly made. It was hinted at, but not directly made.
348 Duration: 23.86 seconds
Bill Plante:
But just the fact that the United States had been attacked was enough to put most members of Congress on edge because they knew -- deeply -- felt that their constituents wanted answers, wanted the feeling of security and safety, wanted to assure that this sort of thing could never happen again. They knew that the national psyche had been damaged.
349 Duration: 33.7 seconds
Bill Plante:
Members of Congress, particularly members of the House, are extraordinarily sensitive to public opinion because they run every two years. Therefore even many of those who had personal concerns or reservations about the war were listening to their constituents, and very concerned about how they would feel. And didn't feel that the constituent concern that they heard outweighed what they considered the inadequacy of the argument.
350 Duration: 2.27 seconds
Bill Plante:
That was the situation in Congress.
351 Duration: 15.68 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
And so when you look at that do you see that the elections in November played a part in the vote that happened in early October? You mentioned something about constituents and they had to make a weight, so was that a factor as well?
352 Duration: 19.02 seconds
Bill Plante:
It probably was -- There's been a considerable amount of analysis on the effect of 9/11 on the election of 2002. I'm not really in a position to reanalyze it for you. But it was obviously on everybody's mind in that campaign. And --
353 Duration: 13.48 seconds
Bill Plante:
What brought it back to the fore in the debate about the war in Congress was the widespread belief -- promoted by the government -- that we were subject to attack again.
354 Duration: 15.45 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
And so when you look at after October, if you have a general consensus in Congress, and then after that point -- Can the media fill the void of the normal "He Said / She Said" constraints of objectivity?
355 Duration: 12.25 seconds
Bill Plante:
First of all you didn't have a complete consensus in Congress even though there was a vote to authorize the use of force. You still had dissenting voices well into February and even March.
356 Duration: 21.05 seconds
Bill Plante:
Reviewing some scripts from that period, I noticed that in mid-March we still had the Democrat leader of the Senate, Senator Daschle, complaining about the rush to war without the completion of arms inspections -- and he was certainly not the only voice.
357 Duration: 8.07 seconds
Bill Plante:
So Congress wasn't silent. That's first thing. Nor were media --
358 Duration: 13.98 seconds
Bill Plante:
Congress wasn't silent, nor were critics of the idea of war who were also heard in the media. Perhaps not to the degree that government's message was heard, but they were heard nonetheless.
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