846 Duration: 14.35 seconds
Jonathan Landay:
And it was a failure of most major media to delve behind -- in a meaningful way -- the administration's rationale for going to war, and the intelligence that it was using to make it's case.
1035 Duration: 26.29 seconds
Jonathan Landay:
For some of them, yes. Getting the military -- Getting a major US presence in the so-called -- right in the slap-bang -- in the middle of what's known as the "Arc of Instability." -- this arc of instability that -- across the Islamic -- largely across the Islamic world. Absolutely -- was one of the motivations of some people who were involved in this.
1038 Duration: 7.34 seconds
Jonathan Landay:
I think there were a bunch of motivations involved -- All of which sort of came together. I mean, they were all self-reinforcing.
1040 Duration: 3.7 seconds
Jonathan Landay:
Getting US bases in the "Arc of Instability."
1042 Duration: 25.19 seconds
Jonathan Landay:
Getting Saddam Hussein out of power -- perhaps genuinely because people believed he had Weapons of Mass Destruction. And they were really were genuine concerns that he could give them to terrorists. But I think that the fact that he was still in power, you know, how many years after George Bush, the first President George Bush left office.
1044 Duration: 18.15 seconds
Jonathan Landay:
People talk about the -- oil being the motivation -- I'm not so sure about that. My take on that would be -- There wasn't an effort to control oil. It was an effort to ensure that nobody controlled oil -- that it remained a free-flowing commodity.
1046 Duration: 22.99 seconds
Jonathan Landay:
Oil is such a fungible commodity now, that even if you stop oil flow -- anywhere in the world -- it will impact prices of oil coming out from other parts of the world. So the idea is, you don't want anybody -- Saddam Hussein -- to be able to control the flow of oil. You want it to remain an uncontrolled open market.
1049 Duration: 18.79 seconds
Jonathan Landay:
Then I think there was also this concern about the security of American troops in Saudi -- Gotta get them out of Saudi. That gives motivation to extremists like bin Ladin -- gives them justification for -- or it gives them a justification for waging jihad.
1052 Duration: 26.73 seconds
Jonathan Landay:
If you read books that are out there now -- particularly the one by the former, the one featuring the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, it's quite clear that this was on the agenda -- that Iraq was on the agenda before 9/11 -- that they came into office with the intent of regime change -- Some of them -- Some senior members of this administration.
1175 Duration: 12.65 seconds
Julian Borger:
I think the causes of the war are fairly complex, and they're different in Britain from the US.
1176 Duration: 17.02 seconds
Julian Borger:
I think in the US, you had a very strong, ideological constituency that came on board with George Bush in 2001 that were determined to go to war in Iraq -- Because they saw it as unfinished business from the first Gulf War.
1178 Duration: 4.2 seconds
Julian Borger:
I think the causes of the war are very different in the US and in Britain.
1179 Duration: 14.61 seconds
Julian Borger:
In the US, you had an ideological constituency that came to power with George Bush in 2001that was determined to take on Saddam Hussein -- and to topple Saddam Hussein. It was all about unfinished business from the first Gulf War.
1180 Duration: 17.42 seconds
Julian Borger:
This sense -- that he was a primary threat to the US -- in the oil-producing Gulf region, primarily -- But also, ultimately, to US power -- to US interests elsewhere.
1182 Duration: 28.26 seconds
Julian Borger:
The sense that they had been attacked once. They were responsible for having allowed that attack to happen, and were determined to strike out -- not just at the immediate foe, but any potential future foe -- and to strike back hard before they were struck again. And there was this sense that "We have to get them before they get us."
1184 Duration: 16.28 seconds
Julian Borger:
That coincided with a strong constituency within the Administration that was saying continually into George Bush's ear, "Iraq is the big problem." And so when those two came together, it produced an irresistible force to go into Iraq.
1186 Duration: 27.03 seconds
Julian Borger:
I don't think they would have gone into Iraq in the first -- at least in the first term -- if it hadn't been for 9/11. I may be wrong about that, and we'll never know. But I don't think the neo-cons and the Iraq revanchists would necessarily have had enough power inside the Administration to take the US into the same scale of war as it did in 2003.
1192 Duration: 4.67 seconds
Julian Borger:
First of all, he was a convert to the belief that Iraq had serious WMD.
1194 Duration: 10.51 seconds
Julian Borger:
Secondly, he made a strategic decision that it is in British interests to stick with the US even when Britain doesn't agree in the direction the US is going. Because that is Britain's power in the world -- to be this bridge between Europe and the US.
1195 Duration: 24.22 seconds
Julian Borger:
He also argued that it was better that we go in with the US, and have an influence -- Than the US go in alone, and be this rogue superpower on whom no one has an influence. So there was that consideration as well.
1837 Duration: 14.88 seconds
Jim Lobe:
Why were we going to war? What was the root of all of this? What was going on in the Pentagon in terms of doing the strangest things with intelligence? What was outside of kind of accepted rules of institutional behavior that made this so extraordinary?
1852 Duration: 11.28 seconds
Jim Lobe:
I viewed the notion that the Bush administration wanted the oil in Iraq as pretty ridiculous from the beginning.
1856 Duration: 20.79 seconds
Jim Lobe:
I saw the primary motives for going to war as 1) An effort to kind of decisively reshape the balance of power or forces within the Middle East in Israel's favor.
1857 Duration: 20.45 seconds
Jim Lobe:
And that I think was the principal motive of -- let's call them "the mainline neo-conservative movement" and the Christian right, which pretty much has deferred to the neo-conservatives on the issues having to do with Israel.
1862 Duration: 38.27 seconds
Jim Lobe:
The decision to go into Iraq was an attempt to be a kind of demonstration project, particularly to China to say, "You desperately need oil, and local sources will not give you enough oil for your development. You will have to rely on Gulf oil, and we can cut it off if absolutely necessary. So it is much better to deal with us and to take fully into account what we want than to try to challenge us, because we can really do to you and your economy immense damage if we feel that it is in our interest."
-->
