Text Only | Disarmament Diplomacy | Disarmament Documentation | ACRONYM Reports

Disarmament Documentation

'We Had The Coalition We Needed. We Went To War': Interview on Iraq with US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, July 27

Paul Wolfowitz, US Deputy Secretary of State for Defense, NBC television's 'Meet the Press' programme, July 27.

Question (Tim Russert): Let me turn to the rationale for the war. You gave an interview in Vanity Fair magazine, and the Pentagon released the full transcript of your remarks, which we're going to use, because they are your words, and let me share them with our viewers: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason for the war in Iraq, if you will. But there have always been three fundamental concerns, one is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis, but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did. The second issue about links to terrorism is one about which there is the most disagreement within the bureaucracy." Just analyze your comments, one, weapons of mass destruction. Thus far, we have not found weapons of mass destruction. Two, in terms of support of terrorism, as you acknowledge there is broad disagreement within our intelligence community about that and whether there's any direct link of Saddam to Al-Qaeda. And the third, as you said, Saddam's treatment of his people is not a reason to go to war. So, if you don't have weapons of mass destruction, and you don't have a direct link to terrorism, and you do have the third, which the administration has been emphasizing, but you yourself said it's not a rationale to go to war. What now is the rationale for having gone to war?

Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz: Okay, let me have as much time to answer as you took to ask the question. It's important. I appreciate it. And, by the way, you know, you go to war based on your best assessment before the war. You will, especially with a country like Iraq, you will learn things afterwards that may be different. But, first of all, the fundamental thing I was saying, and I wish people would pay attention to it, was there was no disagreement before the fact whatsoever on weapons of mass destruction. It was unanimous. And, frankly, the Senate and House Armed Services Committee, the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, had access to all the intelligence that people are now debating.

Question: But, not on nuclear, it was not unanimous?

Wolfowitz: It was unanimous that there was a program, there was disagreement about how far along it was, or how long it would take him to get there. Okay. That's point number one.

Question: This is important, because this is what the State Department said, and this is from the National Intelligence Estimate that the White House declassified and released. This is what they said: "The activities we've detected do not add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what the State Department Bureau of Intelligence Research would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons."

Wolfowitz: I don't have the text in front of me, Tim, but everyone including the State Department, look at those qualifiers - "comprehensive", "integrated" - everyone agreed there was a program of some stage, and that it would become comprehensive, integrated, and real the minute he got rid of inspectors. There was no disagreement in the government about that. The nature of terrorism intelligence is intrinsically murky. And while I haven't had a chance to read the 900-page report that was released last week, my understanding from what has been said about it is that the basic conclusion there is that we should have connected the dots, we should have seen in this murky picture of terrorism intelligence what was coming to hit us. Well, if you wait until the terrorism picture is clear you're going to wait until after something terrible has happened. And we went to war, and I believe we are still fighting terrorists and terrorist supporters in Iraq, in a battle that will make this country safer in the future from terrorism. It is, as I said, I think winning the peace in Iraq is now the crucial battle in the war on terrorism, and the sacrifices that our magnificent troops are making is for their children, and their grandchildren, for our children and our grandchildren, and it is for our security.

Question: Porter Goss [Republican]...the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, led a delegation to Iraq, and wrote a report, this is what his conclusion came to. The evidence does not point to the existence of large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons. That's the Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Do you agree with that?

Wolfowitz: Look, I don't know how he knows. I flew over Baghdad, it's a city, I believe, as large as Los Angeles. You look at all those houses and realize that every basement might contain a huge lethal quantity of anthrax. I don't know how anyone can know yet. It's a difficult job, and people are working hard at it, but since we're quoting things, I mean, as the vice president said, the NIE, and this was a unanimous judgment, we judged that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction program in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. If left unchecked, he quotes the NIE, it will probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. It has currently chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions. And as the vice president said, it would be irresponsible for an American leader to ignore that kind of judgment.

Question: Many people are now asking, why the urgency in going to war, if, in fact, we have not found the weapons of mass destruction, could not we have waited a few months, with more coercive inspections, and have resolved this without a war?

Wolfowitz: Let me say a couple of things, Tim. People act as though the cost of containing Iraq is trivial. The cost of containing Iraq was enormous, 55 American lives lost, at least, in incidents like the Cole and Kobar Towers, which were part of the containment effort, billions of dollars of American money spent.

Question: Was Iraq linked to those?

Wolfowitz: Absolutely. Not to the - I don't know who did the attacks. I know that we would not have had Air Force people in Kobar Towers if we weren't conducting a containment policy. I know we wouldn't have had to have the Cole out there doing maritime intercept operations. And worst of all, if you go back and read Osama bin Laden's notorious fatwa from 1998, where he calls for killing Americans, the two principle grievances were the presence of those forces in Saudi Arabia, and out continuing attacks on Iraq, 12 years of containment was a terrible price for us, and for the Iraqi people it was an unbelievable price, Tim. I visited a village of Marsh Arabs, people who have been driven nearly to extinction by 12 years of Saddam's genocidal policies against them. They would not have survived another three years, much less another 12. We went to that mass grave, and the people who were buried in those mass graves, the people who were executed in this industrial style execution factory in Abugra prison, for them every year was a terrible cost, every year under sanctions was a terrible cost. So the question is, what did you gain by waiting? And I think one of the things that would have come by waiting, frankly, is more instability for the key countries in our coalition, including Arab countries, and unfortunately still prefer not to be named. But, we had the coalition we needed. We went to war. There was no knowing if six months later some of those countries would still be with us.

Question: John Deutch, the former director of the CIA, testified before Congress on Thursday and said something that was quite striking, and I'll put it on the board for you and our viewers: "If no weapons of mass destruction, or only a residual capability is found, the principle justification enunciated by the US government for launching this war will have proven not to be credible. It is an intelligence failure, in my judgment, of massive proportions. It means that our leaders of the American public based its support for the most serious foreign policy judgments, the decision to go to war, on an incorrect intelligence judgment."

Wolfowitz: Well, it's interesting, he's the former director of the CIA, and I'm sure if you go and read the intelligence judgments made when he was director, they would be equally emphatic about the existence of those weapons, and those programs. President Clinton spoke in 1998 in words that are almost identical to President Bush, he has these weapons, and if we don't do something about it I guarantee you some day he will use them. I think people should be a little careful about throwing around words like intelligence failure. It's easy to go around and play this blame game. I mean, let's stop and realize that in a country like Iraq, and let me repeat, where children are tortured to make their parents talk, secrets are kept in a way we can't even imagine. And let's take some things that aren't secret at all. We know that for 12 years Saddam Hussein did everything he could to frustrate UN inspectors, he sacrificed $100 billion in money that he could have spent on palaces, and tanks, and all those things that he loved so much, in order to frustrate those inspectors. Isn't that in itself an indicator there was something there? Let's be patient and let's wait until we can find things out.

Question: Maybe the inspections worked, and if in fact we do not find significant amounts of weapons of mass destruction, should we be willing to say our intelligence community missed this, and we have to go back and reexamine why?

Wolfowitz: Well, we always ought to compare what we thought from our intelligence with what we discovered later, and it's a difficult job to do, especially if every time somebody discovers a discrepancy it is described as a "failure." ...

Question: Let me go back to Deutch's testimony and share this with you. The next time military intervention is judged necessary to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction, for example, North Korea, there will be skepticism about the quality of our intelligence. Is that fair?

Wolfowitz: If people keep treating every intelligence uncertainty as an example of failure I guess we have a problem, But, stop and think, if in 2001, or in 2000, or in 1999, we had gone to war in Afghanistan to deal with Osama bin Laden, and we had tried to say it's because he's planning to kill 3,000 people in New York, people would have said, you don't have any proof of that. I think the lesson of September 11th is that you can't wait until proof after the fact. I mean, it surprises me sometimes that people have forgotten so soon what September 11th, I think, should have taught us about terrorism. And that's what this is all about. ...

Source: Wolfowitz Says "Difficult Work" Remains in Iraq, US Department of State (Washington File), http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/products/washfile.html, July 27.

Back to the Top of the Page