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.
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.
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.
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.
1796 Duration: 29.43 seconds
Jim Lobe:
I mean, I’d already looked at what a lot of key people who were obviously very influential within the administration were writing. It was pretty clear to me that Iraq was indeed probably already conceived of as the major target of the quote War on Terror back in late 2001 already. So, by August of 2002 it was very, very clear indeed.
1798 Duration: 21.89 seconds
Jim Lobe:
So a lot of what I was writing in the summer of 2002 -- or in the late summer of 2002 -- was about how clear it had become that you had Cheney and Rumsfeld and neo-cons around both of them are going for war. And how clear it was that Powell was dragging his feet.
1799 Duration: 35.67 seconds
Jim Lobe:
Now I think in early August, I think around August 3, that was 3 days I think before Powell finally got a private audience with Bush to persuade him to go through the UN, I wrote an article that actually got some notice that said that I couldn’t understand why Powell remained Secretary of State. That I thought that, I mean, he really was being used as a fig leaf, a reasonable and trusted fig leaf, for really a group of extremists who were determined to take the United States to war.
1935 Duration: 11.98 seconds
Jim Lobe:
If you don't like what the professionals or Congress is telling you, then create your own institutions to tell you the things you want to hear
1943 Duration: 37.84 seconds
Jim Lobe:
I think as we find out more about how the White House used intelligence and what intelligence it got from what sources -- We'll find again that the professionals were much more on target about the actual state of affairs in Iraq or with relationship with al Qaeda or even on weapons of mass destruction than the amateurs who were brought in by the Pentagon -- by Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz to find the intelligence that they needed to justify what they wanted to do.
1965 Duration: 27.29 seconds
Jim Lobe:
An assistant producer came and said that that person had been reading my material, and had become persuaded that really 'This was a war that --' as Tom Friedman in the New York Times told an Israeli newspaper, 'If you had taken 24 individuals and put them on a desert island in early 1982, this war would not have happened.' I mean, Friedman said as much as that.
2652 Duration: 12.88 seconds
Helen Thomas:
I saw it from the day the President stepped into the White House. All of a sudden, out of no where, Saddam Hussein was on the radar screen. We hadn't heard from him for twelve years. We had a chokehold on him.
2686 Duration: 10.44 seconds
Helen Thomas:
Well, we knew the die was cast. I think that reporters had the sense of the inevitability, and they were simply accepting what he said.
2752 Duration: 10.01 seconds
Helen Thomas:
But I think that the CIA knew what was expected of them. I think that they very well knew that they had a President who was quite determined.
2763 Duration: 22.36 seconds
Helen Thomas:
Well, they had already made up their minds, I think, to go to war. And so, anything they could to repudiate what was going on, and say that they were being -- Saddam, you know, kept saying he didn't have them. I'm not saying he had told the truth. He's very deceptive himself. But that still didn't give them the excuse.
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