it just keeps getting more and more contradictory.
fwiw, here is Rumsfelds response, to the whereabouts of WMD and the claims from ex Intelligence officials as to the strength of the connection between al Queda and Sadam. The claims I’m talking about are here: Message 19107218
link for the full transcript - the section extracted below, starts a ways through
defenselink.mil
STEPHANOPOULOS: On the broader subject of weapons of mass destruction, the last time you appeared on the show -- I think it was March 30th -- we talked about why no weapons had been found. It was about three weeks into the war, and here is what you said. I want you totake a look at it.
(previously taped segment)
RUMSFELD: The area in the South and the West and the North that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and East, West, South, and North somewhat.
(end of taped segment)
STEPHANOPOULOS: You said, "We know where they are." Have those sites where you thought the weapons of mass destruction were --have those been inspected now?
RUMSFELD: I probably should have said we know where they were instead of we know where they are. At that moment, the intelligence community said these are "x" number of suspect sites, meaning we have reason to believe that they might be in these various locations -- numbers of hundreds --
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- but at that time, on March 30th, you believed the weapons were there?
RUMSFELD: Exactly. We did believe that, and they may have been there. We've been out looking at those sites, and -- some of those sites -- and have gone through some fraction of them. It takes a long time. It's an enormously big country and, as you'll recall, the one individual came in and took the investigators into his backyard near a rosebush, dug down, and found things that had been buried there for years with respect to the Iraqi nuclear program, and you can imagine -- how would anyone have known that except for the person who buried them coming in and saying, "Here they are." So what the Iraqi survey group is now doing is they are, instead of running around to all these suspect sites that we had, where we believed they were, they are instead going through the interrogation process with these people and trying to find people who can tell us where they are.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So just on that they haven't looked at every one of those sites yet?
RUMSFELD: No, they have not.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But, so far, they have found no weapons?
RUMSFELD: I wouldn't say that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You wouldn't say that?
RUMSFELD: No.
STEPHANOPOULOS: They've found weapons?
RUMSFELD: They have found things -- they have not found things that when one aggregates them and looks at them that they would say, "Aha, there it is," but they are finding things, and then what they do is, they take the materials, and they send them to several different laboratories to be tested. Then it comes back, and it's not what you thought it might be. They send some more out, and it comes back, and it's a dual use. It could be this or it could be that -- something civilian or something military, and that process just -- we just have to be patient.
It's been 10 weeks now. We've got a wonderful team of people working on the problems. They are intelligent, they are serious, they are purposeful, and they are going to keep looking, and there isn't anyone who has looked at all the intelligence, that I know of, who doesn't believe that the intelligence community was correct.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you say that they may have been there on March 30th.
SECRETARY RUMSFELD: They can be moved.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You think they could have been moved?
RUMSFELD: Of course, they can be moved.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, if that's true –
RUMSFELD: -- we know they had mobile capabilities, and think of the lethality of biological or chemical weapons and what a relatively small amount can be easily moved and buried -- or transported somewhere.
STEPHANOPOULOS: If that's true, couldn't the war then, the military operation, have invoked your worst fear -- that these weapons would be moved and get in the hands of terrorists?
RUMSFELD: They could have, and they still could, which is the reason you need to find them.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you believe that weapons could have been, say, taken out of the country and sold to Al Qaeda?
RUMSFELD: I'm not going to say that. I think they could have been moved. They could have been moved within the country or somewhere else but, basically, we don't know, and we intend to find out, and I believe we will find out.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Does that show a failure, then, of the Defense Department, and it was your responsibility to secure the sites or failure to secure those sites?
RUMSFELD: No, I mean, how can you secure a site that's -- sites in a country the size of California that has open borders, porous borders, people moving in and out? Even today, people move in and out. It's not possible to secure every single site, and what one has to do is go in and win the war, throw out the regime, and then as rapidly as possible, shift that fighting force into a presence force and try to provide security in the country. Think of all the things that -- the bad things that didn't happen. There was not a big humanitarian crisis; there was not enormous -- tens of thousands -- of refugees fleeing the country; there was not enormous destruction to the infrastructure; the dams were not broken and flooding the people; the weapons of mass destruction were not used, even though they had chemical weapons suits we found in Southern Iraq ready to be used.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But can you be certain that they had these weapons ready to be used. You're not certain of that.
RUMSFELD: I didn't say that. I said we found the suits that an Iraqi would wear, were they going to use those weapons or deal in that kind of a conflict. We had ours, as well. Our people were all equipped with those kinds of protected devices. They had to be, because we were convinced and remain convinced, that they had that capability. We know this from 12 years -- the U.N. has said so; the defectors have said so; all the intelligence community; the debate in the U.N. wasn't whether they had chemical/biological or a nuclear -- we never said they had a nuclear weapon -- we said they had a nuclear program. That was never any debate. The debate was -- how long should you wait after they violate 17 U.N. resolutions before you enforce those resolutions?
STEPHANOPOULOS: You mention now that the teams are talking to scientists. Journalists have talked to some of these scientists as well, and I want to show you something from the "New Republic." A journalist named Bob Drogin has interviewed a number of the Iraqi scientists, and here is what he wrote. He said, "The Iraqi scientists I met insist that the combination of U.S. bombing, U.N. inspections, disarmament efforts, unilateral destruction by Iraqi officials, and stiff U.N. sanctions had, indeed, eliminated Saddam's illicit weapons in the mid-90s.
Ultimately, the scientists and others say Saddam may have feared that admitting his WMD were gone would have shown a weakness that could have threatened his hold on power." Is that what the scientists are telling the U.S. teams?
RUMSFELD: I don't know. I'm sure there are a lot of scientists, a lot of interrogations. I don't doubt for a minute that some people are saying that. Others have done what I said -- taken you to a backyard under a rosebush and said, "I was told not to destroy it, I was told to bury it and
keep it and not let anyone know about it." Now, where is the truth? Maybe they're both true.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How would that be?
RUMSFELD: Well, there would be some people who believe that they were told that they were going to destroy them and others that were told -- bury this, hide it, spread it around, take it into private residences, get the documentation dispersed so they can't know where it is. You could have one person told one thing and another --
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- but the theory he is talking about there -- is it plausible that perhaps Saddam Hussein, by the time the war began, really didn't have an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction?
RUMSFELD: I think it's unlikely, and I'll tell you why. It seems to me that he could have had billions and billions of dollars, of revenues from his oil lifting. If he had wanted to do what other countries did, what Kazakhstan did, and say, "Come in here, inspect." Instead, what he did was they hid, they deceived, they lied, they filed a fraudulent report that everyone knew was not true. There wasn't any debate up in the U.N. about whether his report was fraudulent. Why would he do that? Why would he give away billions and billions and billions of dollars instead of doing what other countries have done and say, "Come on in."
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, it could be for the reason those scientists said -- because he didn't want to show weakness. But you say, in the end, it's unlikely that he didn't have an arsenal but not impossible?
RUMSFELD: You know, until we have done this job -- we've been there 10 weeks, less than 10 weeks, I guess -- until we've done this job and talked to enough people and been through it, we won't know precisely what we'll find. I believe that the intelligence community was correct; that he had these capabilities, and that -- we know he's used them in the past. It's not like this is some innocent. He is a person who has used chemical weapons on his own people as well as his neighbors.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask you about links to Al Qaeda. Do you still believe the intelligence that showed Iraq's links to Al Qaeda is bulletproof?
RUMSFELD: I think that the information we had, over a period of time, that I cited, that the intelligence community gave to me, and I read as opposed to ad-libbing, was correct. It was carefully stated. One argument was that Iraq was secular and Al Qaeda was religiously motivated and therefore they wouldn't link. I mean, the facts are we've seen accommodations take place in the world where people who don't agree end up cooperating because they have a common enemy.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But several Al Qaeda operatives who were in custody have said that Osama bin Laden rejected any alliance with Saddam Hussein.
RUMSFELD: And there is intelligence information that suggested there were interactions between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and those are the ones that I cited that the intelligence community provided to me to be cited publicly.
STEPHANOPOULOS: There are two former intelligence officials quoted in the Associated Press today saying there was no significant pattern of cooperation that were working in the intelligence community at the time of this administration, and a U.N. committee has also said they have found no evidence. Do you dismiss their doubts?
RUMSFELD: I don't dismiss them. How did you phrase that they said there was no what? No significant --
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- there was no significant pattern of cooperation.
RUMSFELD: Well, that may be, but there were pieces of indications of cooperation. I don't know what significant pattern -- I'm not going to say that they are incorrect nor can anyone say what I said is incorrect, which was provided by the Central Intelligence Agency. |
