CNN's Crossfire Interview with Ritter...
cnn.com
<<...Congress Ponders War with Iraq
Aired July 31, 2002 - 19:00 ET
ANNOUNCER: CROSSFIRE. On the left, James Carville and Paul Begala. On the right, Robert Novak and Tucker Carlson.
BEGALA: Saddam Hussein, however, we can agree is a murderous tyrant. He is ready, willing and able to commit mass murder, to terrorize, to starve, and even gas his own people. But we've known that for years. So why is the Bush administration so hot all of a sudden to invade Iraq now? And why are our battle plans on the front of the paper every day. Those were some of the questions on Capitol Hill at a hearing. There were no easy answers.
In the CROSSFIRE tonight to find answers, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter and retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Bob Maginnis. Gentlemen, thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
BEGALA: Thank you very much.
CARLSON: Scott Ritter, thanks for joining us.
SCOTT RITTER, FORMER CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: My pleasure.
CARLSON: We'll do the meanest thing ever and confront you with your own quotes.
RITTER: No problem.
CARLSON: Here's what you said November 9, 1998 on CNN about Iraq. You said, "the United States needs to know that you can't talk about the weapons of mass destruction in isolation from Saddam Hussein. They're inextricably linked. You can't deal with one without dealing with the other." This is essentially what the Bush administration is now saying.
This year, March 11, this was your line about the cause of evading Iraq. You said, "there's no just cause right now for such a war." What happened to change your mind?
RITTER: Nothing. What makes you think something happened to change my mind?
CARLSON: Well, in the first quote you are saying that if you want to deal with...
RITTER: If you link weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein. CARLSON: That's exactly right. And here we have overwhelming evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
RITTER: Negative. That's where you are wrong. We don't have any evidence.
CARLSON: You are a lone voice on this. Explain.
RITTER: We don't have any evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. We know that as of December 1998, when weapons inspectors left Iraq, that we had documented a 90 percent to 95 percent level of disarmament. We have destroyed the weapons and factories used by Iraq to produce the weapons that we were concerned about. We destroyed the means of productions. There were some that we couldn't account for, some of the product, the chemicals, the biological agent and ballistic missile components. And that's why I say 90, 95 percent. But not being able to account for it does not automatically translate into retention by Iraq. And before we go to war with Iraq, we better put some facts on the table to say these weapons exist.
CARLSON: I'm glad...
(CROSSTALK)
LT. COL. BOB MAGINNIS, U.S. ARMY: I'd like to respond to Scott. You know, you said back in '98 as well, Scott, that within six months, they could reconstitute their programs.
RITTER: I agree.
MAGINNIS: And you testified that you thought that would happen. Now, you know, the evidence is out there. If you look at the UNSCOM report, which you were part of...
(CROSSTALK)
It documents a lot of the precusors. As you outline some of the stuff that was unaccounted for, tons of it, and then you go to other external references, and you find much the same.
But then you begin to look at the track record from the intelligence community and you find they have an insatiable appetite for these biothings. Even our secretary of defense yesterday...
(CROSSTALK)
MAGINNIS: ... was talking about the bioweapons systems that are in mobile vans.
RITTER: There's no such thing. It's a fabric of his imagination.
MAGINNIS: I don't think so.
(CROSSTALK) CARLSON: ... confront you with information that came out today on the Hill. An Iraqi defector, Mr. Hamza, testified today that he had evidence, or certainly believed, that the Iraqi government is in possession of enough nuclear material to create three nuclear bombs within four years, three-and-a-half-years.
RITTER: This is Khidhir Hamza, Saddam's bomb-maker, the same man who was fingered by Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, when he defected, as being a fraud. The same man who is now...
CARLSON: Wait, wait -- back up: So your saying so Saddam Hussein and the people who work for him believe he's a fraud?
RITTER: No, know he's a fraud. We, in 1991 we seized...
CARLSON: Oh, so you're completely taking Saddam's side in this. Saddam says...
RITTER: Absolutely not. I take the side of truth and fact.
In 1991 there was a parking lot...
CARLSON: You're using Saddam as a character witness here, I just...
RITTER: I'm am absolutely not. I'm using Scott Ritter as a character witness, and let's keep the record straight.
CARLSON: Well, you just involved Saddam's son as a character witness.
RITTER: No, the son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, to whom Khidhir Hamza worked for.
When shown a document that Hamza was farming out to the intelligence community, Hussein Kamal said, this is a forgery, this is a fraud. When asked who did it, we said Khidhir Hamza, he said, the man's useless, he knows nothing, he knows no knowledge.
This is a man who defected to try and take Saddam down.
MAGINNIS: But radiological weapons were tested back, by Saddam, in the '80s, as I recall.
RITTER: '87-'88.
MAGINNIS: I think the UNSCOM report says that.
Also, you know...
RITTER: And what happened to them?
MAGINNIS: Your former boss said today that they were six months away from the possibility of a nuclear weapon.
Now when they left, and when you left in December of '98, you left behind a complete infrastructure. Now, you may not have had all the precision equipment. You may not have had fissionable material out there, but the market is rife with it, as you well know, out of the, you know, former Soviet Union. It can be obtained.
And we have reason to believe, bases on the evidence that's circulated in the international media as well as internally, it appears from the secretary of defense, that that material is there and it's being used. And as Hamza was saying today, it probably will be used in a few years.
BEGALA: Colonel, let me ask you this very simply: 3,000 Americans were not killed by Saddam Hussein on September 11...
MAGINNIS: We don't know that.
BEGALA: They were killed by al Qaeda.
How does invading Iraq advance our war against al Qaeda?
MAGINNIS: Well, first of all, you've made the assumption that there's no nexus at all. And I'm telling you...
BEGALA: There's certainly no proved nexus. Even the CIA says that.
MAGINNIS: And you will never convince some people, Paul, that there is ever any nexus there. The reality is that...
(CROSSTALK)
BEGALA: But just tell me -- I want to stop al Qaeda. Tell me how invading Iraq stops al Qaeda.
MAGINNIS: We have to deal with principles here, Paul. If their principle says that you assume the risk, then -- and something terrible happens like al Qaeda or Iraq comes in and equips al Qaeda or one of these other terror groups with a particular weapon and they use it here in the United States, then we assume that risk because we overlooked the possibility of going out there and stopping that beforehand.
You know, I...
BEGALA: I want to be clear, that's the rationale. For someone to whom al Qaeda is the risk, we invade them to stop them -- stop Iraq -- from arming al Qaeda.
How about China? They would certainly arm al Qaeda, I would think.
MAGINNIS: Paul, if the people in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf, thought that Mr. Saddam Hussein was such a nice guy, they'd come to his defense. They don't want us to go in there necessarily, but they're not coming to his defense, saying that this guy doesn't have the...
(CROSSTALK)
RITTER: ... Saddam is a nice guy. But the clear thing is Saddam is a secular dictator, a brutal dictator who has waged war against Islamic fundamentalism...
MAGINNIS: And his own people.
RITTER: Sure, but Islamic fundamentalism. And you cannot make a case between him and al Qaeda.
(CROSSTALK)
RITTER: ... it's not what you say it is.
Malveaux: That's not necessarily the case, because obviously your boss disagrees with you, Scott, and a number of other people on your team disagree with you.
BEGALA: OK, we're going to have to take a break real quick.
And in just a minute we're going to come back to these guests and ask them why the United States warplanes can't remain secret.
Later: living in prison and liking it; advice to help Jim Traficant adjust to his new status in life.
And then our "Quote of the Day" from a man who is so partisan he even had to endorse a severely admonished senator.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE.
There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein is a deeply crummy guy. But just like the Soviet Union, is it better to contain him until he falls on his own, or should the United States go after him no matter what the cost?
That's our debate.
In the CROSSFIRE tonight, former Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Bob Maginnis.
BEGALA: Colonel Maginnis, several members of this audience, young people, are active-duty military. How do you tell them and their parents that our Bush administration is so incompetent that they're leaking the war plans every single day to the enemy?
MAGINNIS: Well, it may be disinformation or psychological warfare. I hope the real plans...
BEGALA: You don't really believe that.
MAGINNIS: ... are not getting out there.
Well, it's a possibility. After all, we may be playing to the audience in Iraq, not to downtown Washington, D.C., Paul.
But you know, it is serious...
(CROSSTALK)
BEGALA: ... it's incompetence.
MAGINNIS: It's certainly being debated at the national level. You know, the idea of 250,000 Anglo-Saxons marching up the Tigris- Euphrates River to go put a bullet through Saddam Hussein's head, I don't think is very you know, creative. There are other ways of doing this.
But I do think that, as Paul Wolfowitz said here recently, you know, you give this guy enough time, enough rope, he's going to hang us, and we need to be very careful about that.
RITTER: Well, I think one of the things you're seeing right now is that there's a lot of opposition in the uniform military services to this war. Now, we keep in mind the Constitution of the United States holds that civilian leadership directs the military, and ultimately the civilians make the decision.
But right now many generals are concerned that you have a bunch of neo-conservative ideologues heading -- you know, running head-first into a war that they don't understand. And it's a very dangerous thing. So these plans make it out so that there's some sort of informed debate amongst...
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: An informed debate, I think, is different than what you're presenting here.
A minute ago you said that this bomb-maker, Mr. Hamza was discredited because he defected.
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: I think you're coming very close to defending Saddam Hussein.
RITTER: Don't think that...
CARLSON: Earlier this year -- late last year the "Weekly Standard" ran a piece by Steve Hayes that alleged that you took $400,000 to make a documentary film from an Iraqi living in the United States...
RITTER: And you're going to repeat that on CROSSFIRE, aren't you.
CARLSON: My question to you is: Is it true?
RITTER: Four hundred thousand dollars from an American citizen of Iraqi origin who gave me the money. This money has been fully investigated by the FBI, the Treasury Department, the IRS. There's been no wrongdoing.
The American Jewish Federation is going...
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: I'm trying...
RITTER: There's no Iraqi fingerprint whatsoever, and how dare you bring it up on national audience.
CARLSON: It's a question that I think you need to address.
RITTER: How dare you.
CARLSON: The question is this...
RITTER: I addressed it.
(CROSSTALK)
RITTER: ... issue of Iraq.
CARLSON: I'm attempting...
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: The question is your position has changed 180 degrees.
RITTER: My position has never changed. I made it clear.
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: ... let me read you a quote from your own book, OK, your own book, in which you said -- let me find it here.
Throw it up on the screen: "I'm often asked if there is any chance of a peaceful settlement with Iraq. Invariably, knowing what I know about Saddam Hussein's regime, my inclination is to respond negatively."
Now that doesn't sound at all like what you're saying here. That's from your own book. What has happened?
RITTER: What's the next quote? I mean, it's nice to take it out of context...
CARLSON: Well, give me the context.
RITTER: ...because this is part of the conclusion of my book, where I say war, especially war when you can't substantiate a case against Iraq, isn't the solution, and that we might have to go forward with a consensus that the international community agrees upon, which to return weapons inspectors, deal with international law, and maybe get a situation where we don't worry about weapons of mass destruction. We've disarmed Iraq, we can lift sanctions, and Iraq is brought back in the family of nations with or without Saddam. BEGALA: Colonel, we've got about 30 seconds. There is a consensus in the Middle East. The Arab League voted unanimously, even Kuwait, who we saved...
MAGINNIS: Yes.
BEGALA: ...that if we invade Iraq it's considered invasion of all Arab countries. Why are they so against it?
MAGINNIS: Yes, I'm not for going after Scott. What I think is important here is saving American lives. We ought to find the right alternative that's going to remove Saddam Hussein, keep the situation in the Middle East so we can live with it, and at the same time not spill a single ounce or a drop of American blood.
(CROSSTALK)
We can do that. I'm convinced we can do that. But we have to be smart about it, and that's why we're having this big debate.
BEGALA: Colonel Bob Maginnis and Scott Ritter, thank you very much for a terrific debate. Very fiery but very smart...>>
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The C-SPAN interview is superior:
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Thursday, August 01, 2002
Scott Ritter, Former United Nations Weapons Inspector 1991-1998 Watch
A discussion on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Length: 40 min.
Click on "Watch" for a RealAudio webcast... |
