Following is a transcribed excerpt from Fox News Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002......................
SNOW: All right, Scott Ritter is in Baghdad today. He addressed the Iraqi parliament, such as it is. I want to play a quote from him and then get your response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT RITTER, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: The rhetoric of fear that is disseminated by my government and others has not to date been backed up by hard facts that substantiate any allegations that Iraq is today in possession of weapons of mass destruction or has links to terror groups responsible for attacking the United States. Void of such facts, all we have is speculation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: Is that right?
POWELL: We have facts, not speculation. Scott is certainly entitled to his opinion, but I'm afraid that I would not place the security of my nation or the security of our friends in the region on that kind of an assertion by somebody who's not in the intelligence chain any longer.
There is no doubt in my mind that he does have capability and he is trying to improve that capability and build upon that capability. And it's debatable as to how much and where it is, and all sorts of questions can be raised, and they should be raised and should be debated; this is an important issue.
But there can be no debate about the fact that he is in violation of the obligations he entered into at the end of Gulf War. And if Scott is right, then why are they keeping inspectors out? If Scott is right, why don't they say any time, any place, anywhere, bring them in, everybody come in, we are clean? The reason is, they're not clean. And we have to find out what they have and what we're going to do about it.
And that's why it's been the policy of this government to insist that Iraq be disarmed in accordance with the terms of the relevant U.N. resolutions. And we believe the best way to do that is with a regime change, and that's why that has been U.S. policy, even though it's not United Nations policy..............
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