hello, everyone.

welcome to the washington times for this special episode of history. as it welcome to hthe washington times. we'll talk about the iraq war, 20 years on. on march 20, 2003, president bush announced that the united states was invading iraq and wars of mass destruction. the weapons did not exist. we were not greeted add liberators. why? >> i'm delighted to discuss this important topic with you. >> welcome to the washington times. this is the author of

confronting saddam hussian and president george w. bush and the invasion of iraq. you've been working on this book quite a while. you seemed reluctant to take on this project to begin with. why? >> i was reluctant for two reasons. first i was trying to finish up work that i was doing on the evolution of the cold war, topic of which i've written a great deal about. and secondly, and most importantly, i was reluctant to take it on because it was really contemporary history and the availability of primary source documents would be very limited. i'm a historian who has spent his career in the archives with hundreds and hundreds of archive boxes of documents. i knew for certain, i would never have access to such documents in writing this type

of a book. so i was reluctant to undertake it, till i met one. >> you tried to write this in the most positive light. >> it is danger to just rely on interviews and people memoirs. i was conscious of the in fact people were far better at

spinning me. so i made a commitment to myself that if i pursued this book, i would continue my reliance on as many archival documents as i could secure. i knew i would have symptomatic access to the archives. but i also benefited, over time, by the fact that the national security archive that is and institution, they were able to bring about the declassification of thousands of documents. of course nothing like the totality that really exists. i also benefited greatly by the

fact that the british parliament mandated an investigation of the question of why did tony blair take great britain into the war in iraq on the side of george w. bush? so there was a formal parliamentary investigation called the -- inquiry. and the result of that inquiry were thousands and thousands of pages of interviews with every single top british official, including hundreds of pages with tony blair and foreign secretary jack straw. but in the midst of those interviews, every time a government official liken toy blair would say, i got a memorandum from jack straw on such and such a date that said such and such, the inquiry was able, the investigating in the

was able to secure the declassification of those documents. over time, in 2014, 15, 2016, all of those documents went up on a website. so there is a lot of information about when jack straw talked to, for example, secretary of state powell or blair's national security advisor david manning would talk to condelezza rice. you would find out a lot of information that way. >> history of meetings and conversations and teleconversations et cetera. the classification process takes decades. and sometimes documents are never declassified. you think 10, 20 years we'll have more when it comes to iraq? >> no, i don't think so. i submitted many mandatory

declassification requests in order to get notes of various meetings of the national security council principle advisors like powell and rumsfeld and rice and the deputy national security advisors. all of my mandatory declassification requests were denied in full or redacted or i will have not gotten the results of them. of the intellig.

it would be of the intellig. of understanding the decision- making process for iraq, one really needs to get a comprehensive systematic grasp of the intelligence records. it would be phenomenal useful if researchers could for example get the presidential daily briefs that were presented to president bush every single day. >> those were voluminous each day? >> well, they occur every day. they vary in numbers of pages. during the weeks and months after 9/11, something was presented to the president every day. something called the threat matrix. which enumerated the scores of threats that had been assessed just the previous day. and george w bush was presented with this document with his briefer and the director of the

central intelligence, george tenet. they would go over all the threats that came in on the previous day and try to assess the salience of these threats. if we could have a sense of what that was, day by day, that would help us tremendously in terms of understanding the subsequent decisive actions that were taken or not taken. >> your aim in this book was to explain why things happen the way they did. it was not to write an indictment of george w. bush and his administration or nor to let him off the hook. i praise you for that. when i picked up the book, i wanted to learn two things definitively to the extent possible. let's admit, emotions are issti raw. 20 years is not a lot of time. anniversaries have a way of focusing our memories back on unpleasant events and we are still living with the consequences of this disastrous war today.

so i had to clear my mind and approach this with an open mind and i wanted to learn two things primarily. when and why? when was the decision to invadea iraq and why? let's start with one. it's some people saying the decision was made pretty much after 9/11. but you say definitively that was not the case. >> that's correct. a lot of people believe that the decision to invade iraq and bring about regime change in iraq was actually made even before 9/11, that is to say the neocons in the administration like paul wolfowitz joined the administration with the intent to bring about regime change through an evasion of iraq. those notions exist in the literature -- >> regime changes they are but not going for war for.

>> that's the issue. there was a rhetorical commit mitt. a legislative commitment to bring about regime change. a piece of a resolution passed by congress under bill clinton that the administration itself endorsed to bring about regime change. that was a rhetorical commitment in essence with some financial support behind it to assist exile groups inside the united states. but what i found in my research because i systematically looked at this proposition, was that there was no agreement prior to 9/11 whatsoever to really do anything concrete to bring about regime change in iraq. in fact policymakers discussed what to do with regards to saddam hussein prior to 9/11. and they simply couldn't resolve what to do.

the pros and cons of various tactical actions were very complicated and they could not agree on it. so nothing whatsoever had been resolved prior to 9/11. after 9/11, some policymakers like paul wolfowitz and donald rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, suggested to president bush that he turned his attention to iraq. but i show in my book that initially president bush rejected those notions. >> was just days after 9/11 when this happened. and i believe president bush did tell them, listen, if you're going to talk to me about an iraq-al qaeda nexus relationship or whatever. you have to find evidence for. wolf is wolfowitz directed douglas five to set up an office of special plans inside

the pentagon. in a very and nefarious sounding name to look for this evidence. there were people early on trying to find something on saddam hussein. that's why some people today even at the time thought that war was decided pretty early here. >> yes. there are many people who focus on the creation of the office of special plans and that did happen in inside the office of the secretary of defense. but the most important thing rs for you and for readers to know about this is that it's the cia and president bush's briefers told him in the days after 9/11 that saddam hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. >> i have to agree with that. >> i have found no evidence to suggest that president bush eg believed that saddam hussein had anything to do with 9/11.

however he was told and it is a fact that the iraqi regime led by saddam hussein was gloating over 9/11. expressed satisfaction and gratification that 9/11 had happened. saddam hussein's newspapers in t baghdad published articles more or less praising the fact that 9/11 had occurred and that the united states deserved this. no other government, i think around the globe, expressed gratification and pleasure with 9/11. so top policymakers in the united states were immediately informed about saddam hussein's praise of the event. and this was one of the fact there's that drew policymakers attention to iraq in the

aftermath of 9/11. of course there were other very important factors. >> his history with weapons. he did use chemical weapons in the past. in the war with iran in the 1980s. he attacked the kurds in the north of the country. >> in order to understand why attention gravitated to iraq, why the president's attention gravitated to iraq, in the weeks and months after 9/11 -- you need to understand the confluence of several critical events. first of all, one needs to he understand that there was enormous apprehension in policymaking circles about the likelihood of a follow on attack in the united states. there was a widespread belief that another it tack was imminent. that another attack of significance dimensions and may

be even greater dimensions would occur. so the evidence of an impending subsequent attack was on the present. second, you need to understand that when american forces moved into afghanistan, american special forces moved into afghanistan and and along with the northern alliance displaced the government to, the taliban government in kabul. and forced al qaeda terrorists to flee from their training camp's, evidence was found in those training camps that al qaeda was indeed seeking weapons of mass destruction and hoping to develop chemical and biological weapons or to acquire them. it was incontrovertible evidence of that that emerges

in october and november and december of 2001. at the same time, i'm talking about a confluence of events here. at the asame time one needs to recall that in the united states there was a great fear of anthrax. that envelopes and letters containing anthrax spores circulated in the mail. several postal workers were killed. these envelopes turned up in the senate office building. congressional buildings were closed down. the supreme court itself was forced to move its deliberations to another location. in the middle of october, there were sensors inside the white house that went off suggesting that there was a toxic substance inside the white house. all of this suggested that

there was the likelihood or possibility of a biological or chemical attack taking place in the united states. at the same time, we are talking about confluence of circumstances. at the same time there were real ports, intelligence reports coming in that saddam hussein was either restarting or accelerating his biological and chemical weapons programs. we now know in retrospect that much of this information was ill informed. it was coming from suspect informers. a person who was codenamed curveball. but at the time of course, what's important is that at the time this was not known. so you have information coming in suggesting that saddam hussein was involved in restarting or accelerating

these programs. programs that we knew that he once had had an weapons that he had been willing to use against his own people. so it's this confluence of circumstances that led president bush in late november and early december, to say we need to prepare war plans for iraq should it be necessary to take action. one of the things we now know that we really didn't know as until recently was how exasperated president bush was over the fact that when he came into office, there was no war plan to deal with the talib and and al qaeda in afghanistan. in fact, after 9/11 when he was eager to take action in afghanistan, he was extraordinarily exasperated by

the fact that there were no plans to deal with this situation. the defense department and the central intelligence agency's hurried to develop some type of improvised idea to deal with the telly band. to disrupt the training camps of al qaeda but no such plans existed. what is clear now is that bush wanted to have plans in place to deal with iraq should he find it necessary to do so. but it did not mean -- one of things i emphasize in my book, is that it did not mean he was committed to going to war. >> the attention on iraq intensifies after the taliban falls in afghanistan. like, what's next in our war on

terror? the party declared a war on terror. they are creating a set of circumstances of their own per day putting the country on war footing but the final decision is january and february of 2003 shortly before the invasion exit begins is when george bush says go. right? >> that's pretty much true. nobody can really tell you when the final decision was made. >> this was a process. >> it's a long process. one of the problematic aspects of the decision-making process was that there never were meetings that either discussed one, the pros and cons of invading iraq to begin with. the fundamental issue of should we invade iraq. or the perspective benefits outweigh the prospective liabilities. such a meeting in which these things and issues should have been discussed were never

systematically discussed. nor was there a formal meeting of any sort in which there was resolution about, now we are going to war in iraq. such a meeting took place in late february between bush and his top military people and wish he asked them, are our warplanes -- this is late february when a lot of our american combat troops had arctic been deep lloyd and vessels deployed. >> he makes it look like war is inevitable. >> he makes it look like war is inevitable. and perhaps it was by late february of 2003 for a lot of other reasons as well. but at that time president bush did convene his top military people and say our we ready. and they say yes, of course we're ready.

>> nobody questioned the fundamentals of whether the united states had a omright to preemptively invade another country. whether they lied about the intelligence or not, your argument is that they did not like. we'll get to that in a moment. we will return to some public statements that were made. i think we tackled when but the why here is also very important. for what reasons. and you downplayed the role of ideology or missionary zeal is the term you use in your book. when you just touched on this about some of the decision- making process here. the reasons why. you say fear, excessive confidence in american power and hubris. not spreading democracy not ideology or other factors. >> i discussed the basic motives for going to war. motives are different than goals. the overriding motive for going to war was fear about a

perspective attack again, in the united states. fear about american national security. short-term and long-term. there were two aspects to this fear. there was the short term aspect in which president bush clearly was worried that saddam hussein's allege weapons of mass destruction. his chemical or biological weapons, might find their way into the hands of terrorists. perhaps al qaeda terrorist or other terrorist. he was certainly very concerned about that prospect. he was also concerned as were many of his leading advisors about the intermediate and long- term problem that if sanctions failed, if the existing -- if the existing regime of

sanctions and containment failed, and if saddam hussein restarted or accelerated his programs of weapons of mass destruction, which he had been very much committed to in the he 1980s and the 1990s, if he did these things, in the intermediate term, he would develop weapons of mass destruction and with those weapons he would be able to in the words of american policymakers, blackmail the united states. in other words the very presence of weapons of mass destruction, chemical or biological or after five or 10 years, nuclear weapons. the very presence of those weapons would force the united states to self deter in a crisis in the middle east. in american policymakers did not want to face the prospect that they would be paralyzed in the long run by the presence of

weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a dig tater like saddam hussein. so there is the short-term fear of another -- of a perspective attack inside the united states and in intermediate term fear that american power will be circumscribed or constrained in the intermediate and long-term. >> i want to backtrack replete about the decision when he made that decision to go ahead with the invasion. and we will return to the white issues. that was when inspections were actually taking place. they were to the entire subsection of the western world but there were still inspections going on. i meant to say was saddam was not entirely cooperating. but nothing was coming up. they weren't finding any actual weapons and that was used as evidence that he was hiding

something rather than give us some pause. maybe we should wait a abit longer. so when you say the president didn't rush to war, he is accused of rushing in those final weeks instead of allowing the full inspection regime to play out. as if saddam is about to prove us wrong. he actually doesn't have these weapons. your response to that? >> one can argue that and that is an argument often made. and one can't legitimately say that in february and march of 2003, there was a rush to war. that's different than saying in september of 2001 there was a rush to war. but even -- it's important to know that in january and february 2003, as the instant vectors engaged in their investigations inside iraq as you suggested, and they were not finding evidence of the

weapons, nonetheless, nonetheless, the chief of the of the inspectors reported again and again that he did not think that saddam hussein had made what he considered, what hans blix considered quote", a strategic decision to cooperate and collaborate. it is true as you are saying and has often been written that hans blix became exasperated with american inpatients. >> that's true. hans blix became very impatient and angry with the united states for eventually going to war in march of 2003. but what is also true and very often stated was that hans blix

believed that the only way to get saddam hussein to cooperate was through the use of military intimidation. hans blix was not opposed to the deployment of american forces. he believed that it was absolutely indispensable to get saddam hussein to corporate. indeed almost everyone at the time and observers everywhere assume that saddam hussein would not cooperate and would not allow inspectors back. would not reveal what materialse he had if he had them. would not disclose the materials. unless threatened with the use of force. so hans blix said again and again in january and february, he used the term -- saddam hussain and president bush are in essence playing a game of

chicken with one another. and it's uncertain how long this game can continue. and it's clear that president bush and his top advisers felt that saddam hussein was toying with them. that he was defying them good that despite the fact that things weren't being found, he wasn't cooperating with the u.n. inspectors even to their own satisfaction. >> in key members of the bush team includes present himself still thought they had to go through this process. not all of them were on board with the process. >> no, and that's one of my key themes in my book, of course. president bush is the key decision-maker. not cheney or rumsfeld and not the wolfowitz. and president bush did want this process to go on. president bush was committed to these notions of coercive diplomacy. >> i want to ask about the diplomacy and what that is.

that is the tact they chose to take after the initial days we've been discussing here when they decided to focus on iraq. we've been discussing for what reasons. it was a missionary zeal or ideology. it was realism and fear of ke another attack. >> i should say by the way, as we discussed this. often the discussions about what happened after 9/11 focus exclusively on iraq. one should keep in mind that policymakers in the administration were not just interested in iraq. policymakers were interested in the existence of terrorists in many places around the globe. they were very focused on indonesia. they were focused on the philippines. they were preoccupied, extremely preoccupied that

pakistani weapons might find their way into the hands of terrorists. so one should keep in mind that iraq was not the exclusive focus of policymakers. they were focused -- the global war on terror was happening in many, many places. now they did decide in january and february of 2002 to embark upon this course of coercive diplomacy with regard to iraq. >> and to me coercive diplomacy made more likely not less. although that could be my memory looking back on things. >> one can readily say that. i agree with that. coercive diplomacy did make war more likely if saddam hussein did not cooperate. and one of the themes of my book and what's important to realize in this whole story is

that saddam hussein is an important part of the story. there is contingency here. i purposefully start my book with a chap of saddam hussein because it is important for readers and observers to understand who this man was. what he had done in order to really grasp the fears and ig apprehensions of american policymakers. >> they didn't expect him to cooperate though. that's one of the contradictions here. they wanted him to go along of what they were demanding of another sovereign country. >> they were uncertain if he would cooperate. no one believed he would cooperate unless threatened with military force. that was a given. so then there was the issue of if threatened with military force, will he cooperate.

and this is an important part of my book and one that is not usually discussed elsewhere because it depends -- my information came from british records. tony blair spoke to president bush about the fact that if we go to the u.n., if we engage in the diplomacy at the u.n. and if we get another resolution, and if it is backed by force and then if saddam hussein actually agrees, tony blair said to president bush, we need to take yes for an answer. tony blair did not expect yes. that hussein would say yes. nor did president bush expect hussein to say yes. but they acknowledge to one another and their national

security advisors talk to one another about this. that if saddam hussein actually did say yes, if he did cooperate with a new resolution. if he did disclose and/or relinquish his allegedly weapons of mass destruction then we would have to live with this regime. but we would never get to know this unless he was threatened with force. whether he would agree or not was up to saddam hussein. and so he could have agreed. he could have been more forthcoming at an earlier moment. hans blix wanted him to be more forthcoming. >> ultimately you couldn't give up llwhat he didn't have. >> ultimately he could have been more much more fourth coming in terms of cooperating. >> yes. that's one of the interesting aspects of this whole episode is that saddam hussein

ultimately did not have at this moment in time the weapons of mass destruction. but almost everyone believed that he did. including most of his own military officials and most of his own advisors. they believed that he had weapons of mass destruction. he had such a record of deception and concealing that nobody really knew for sure and even his own and visors, . whether he had weapons of mass destruction or did not. >> he was stunned late in the game when he told them to start operating with the inspectors. and very careful studies, a lot more careful than mine who have looked into this, illuminate the fact that when he tells his top military people in top scientific people to cooperate, they don't know if they actually should cooperate.

if he really means they should cooperate or not to cooperate. and if they do cooperate, they sort of think well, others aren't cooperating because the others know they should not cooperate. so it is part of this impact that saddam hussein has not only on adversaries abroad but on the people who work for him. i mean, one has to understand or try to understand -- >> he was not a good employer. they were afraid of him, of course. >> of course they had good reason to be intimidated by him. >> you paint a more sympathetic portrait of george w bush then his harshest critics. you say he wasn't a warmonger and not lazy and a puppet of his advisors. he was the decider. he was engaged. i still come away from reading your work, confronting saddam

hussain convinced that bush was almost totally ignorant of the history and culture of the middle east and intellectually lazy about the word. he didn't understand what there was so much anti-americanism in the region. he subscribe to a simple worldview. you are with us or against us. one of the turns of phrase that lives on from that era. fr of freedom or dictatorship and good versus evil type of worldview. r no one wants to live in a dictatorship so naturally why wouldn't the rockies be willing to live under freedom, western- style freedom. he also didn't understand the motivations and you made this clear in your book. he didn't understand the motivations of the terrorists themselves and didn't know a lot about al qaeda or osama bin laden. what can you say about bush's mindset and how that contributed to this disastrous mistake? >> there are many things that could be said about george w. bush in this respect.

the themes of my book relate to fear as you said earlier. power. and hubris. and it's incredibly important to understand the inter-action of these three factors. many of the qualities you just enumerated fall under the subject matter of hubris in my book. yes, george w. bush believed that all people wanted to be free. all people wanted to have it democratic institutions. he believed. he did believe that american soldiers would be welcomed with chocolates and flowers as iraqi exile leaders in the united states told him.

>> some of them were conmen. >> right. those are your words. and you are entitled to them. actually george w. bush did not want -- to take over iraq. one of the interesting aspects was he was actually opposed to l that. but that is a sideshow. but you are absolutely right and i tried to make clear in my book that there was a great deal of hubris that contributed to this venture and to the decision to invade iraq. most importantly, what you did not mention, was the notion or the memory firmly in place in the mindset of all these advisors. especially people like condi

rice and dyk cheney who had participated in the endgame of the cold war. but all his policymakers had in their minds vividly in their minds was that the cold war ended with the berlin wall toppled. with east germans enthusiastically parading in the streets. witness with easter pains and poles and hungarians embracing the possibility of freedom and democracy. and there notion was the american policymakers was we had to wage the cold war for 40 years successfully and the pe return on that was jubilation. in that part of the world that had had to live behind the iron curtain. >> the people took to the streets. >> and so the policymakers,

president bush, cheney, condi rice, paul wolfowitz. i think they all did firmly believe that the united's dates in the soldiers would be welcomed and the iraqis would embrace them. i emphasize in the book that ri they did not understand and did not grasp the degree to which iraqis were extremely suspicious of american intentions. they did not really understand the degree to which the kurds in the north of iraq had deep reasons to suspect the credibility of the united states because the united states had betrayed the kurds many times in the past. he did not understand the degree to which the shia in the southern parts of iraq were totally suspicious of the united states because bush's own father when president, in

1990 and 1991, had more or less encouraged the shia to rise up and then did nothing when saddam hussein exterminated them. >> the sanctions as well. >> and so there was a great deal of reason to understand and why iraqis would not necessarily be enthusiastic about an american invasion. but at the same time one should understand and one should keep in mind, iraqis did want to get rid of saddam hussein. it wasn't that they were opposed to the removal of saddam hussein. >> that's right. and the sanctions as well. which were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of iraqis based on some estimates. including many, many children iraqis were aware that madeleine albright went on television and asked about the sanctions. is it worth the price? all the children dying as a

result. and she said, yes. march 16, 2003. cheney is on meet the press with tim russert. the read we get with the people of iraq that there's no question they want to get rid of saddam hussein. that was true. and they will welcome us as liberators. he said that. will be welcomed as liberated several times in the interview. one of the immortal or i should say -- that will live on forever. >> one should not immediately think that the disorder and anarchy inside iraq reflected anti-americanism. what happened inside iraq in march in april and may and june of 2003 the events i cover very carefully were reflections of the inability of the united

states to really establish order inside iraq. and the initial disorder inside iraq was not anti-americanism. >> it wasn't an insurgency. >> the insurgency that we all have in our minds grew incrementally over time catalyzed by the fact -- sorry to interrupt. catalyzed by that the u.s. troops were killing so many iraqis. that drove a lot of people to the arms of the insurgency. >> of course american actions and repression worsened the situation. but there was also immediate leak the real compelling factor inside iraq in march and i

should say in april and may and june of 2003 was the disorder and strife and looting amongst iraqis. and one of the major preoccupations of iraqis, one of the reasons for the disillusionment which they state again and again anwith th united states, was the failure of the united states army to preserve order and stability. the antipathy to the united's dates mounts because of the very inability of americans to preserve the order that all iraqis wanted. and in addition to that, as i explained in my book, the united states partakes in several critical decisions with regard to the disbanding of the

iraqi army. and taking down the top ranks of the iraqi civilian agencies. those decisions which are difficult decisions, wind up alienating different sectors and different segments of the iraqi population. nt and incrementally disaffected iraqis who are affected by these very decisions move and gravitate into an insurrectionary movement. but that happens in a dynamic way over time. >> it takes on a life of its own. and shia and sunni turn on each other's. sunnis turning on sunnis. it was a debacle. and one word about the lack of order. all the way down to something as simple as trash removal. nothing was functioning in iraq.

no running water. >> one of the most important things is almost all the ministries were immediately looted and burned. >> stripped of everything. >> exactly. everything. >> so back to course of diplomacy easily. a key point of your book. really, this is diplomacy backed up by the threat of force. >> intensifying those threats by ratcheting up the pressure as time goes by if you are not complying with u.s. demands. so as john dower wrote in his great, cultures of war. i still think of these two sentences from a book i read i don't know 10 or 15 years ago. most wars easy to initiate proof difficult and costly to end. language and rhetoric themselves become a present and the machinery of destruction has its own momentum. in a sense, the bliss of menstruation trap itself. when i read the comments. the interviews, the speeches

and the news conferences of the page. the words off the page. i do get the impression that they were trying to be cautious and not rushing to war. they wanted to give diplomacy a shot. but when i have gone back and watched some of the speeches and rallies and interviews such as on meet the press. it hits you differently. it is more bellicose. it is more threatening. and as dower said, language and rhetoric themselves become a prison. >> you create a global war. you called it an axis of evil. >> yes, the words become more threatening. and they were intended to become more threatening. because coercive diplomacy was designed to intimidate saddam hussein. and to hiforce him either to disclose or relinquish his weapons of mass destruction or to flee or to encourage an assassination against him. so yes, those words were

designed to intimidate. that is what coercive diplomacy was about. but then again, saddam hussein had agency of his own. he could have acted differently during this process. and he chose not to. but you are absolutely right, at the same time. and this is why it's complicated. there are different issues here. but you are absolutely right in saying that these actions, the pursuit of coercive diplomacy given the fact that saddam hussein did what he did in traps the united states and the policymakers themselves state, as i explained, toward the end of the book -- they themselves state that are in credibility is now credibility is now invested in getting rid of saddam hussein. he's 20 with us and we cannot

allow this because if we do, our allies in the region. our perceived friends in the region like the saudi's will lose confidence in us. once again, they will think that we didn't have the will to carry out the invasion of iraq and the destruction of saddam hussein's regime. >> and our troops were ie stationed in kuwait could >> those were factors. >> i want to make clear to our viewers and listeners, at no point in the book saying that this justified invasion. you are trying to explain why this happened and what our leaders believed at the time. on that point about whether this was lying, you might remember there were some bumpere stickers from those days. bush lied, people died. sa a simplistic way of looking at things. this is where i feel dishonesty did play a role. dickie cheney at some point in

2002, before the invasion, said simply stated in an interview or an ace beach. cheney. there is no doubt saddam en hussein now has messes weapons of mass destruction. no doubt the is using this against our friends and allies and against us. that sentence or two sentences would've been fine if he said it's possible but he said there's no doubt in the administration knew there were doubts. let's return to curve ball. he was an iraqi exile living in germany who later admitted that he basically made up everything about saddam's chemical weapons. he was a fantasist. he was able to get german intelligence to interview him somehow. i don't know the whole story. his name was rough odd all jet knobby. but at the time there was questions about curveballs veracity.

>> and there were questions. >> and he ended up in colin powell's presentation. >> the doubts about curveballs is a port to keep in mind. the doubts about him emerged incrementally. and the credibility of his information is not widely widely questioned until long into this process of late 2002 and early 2003. and it's inappropriate to say that people knew that curveball was misinforming them. yes, there were doubts. one of the important things i argue in my book and saying that policymakers were not certain that the information compellingly demonstrated that saddam hussain had weapons of

mass destruction. but these policymakers are all experience people. they knew that quote intelligence is never dispositive. there's always questions about the veracity and credibility of intelligence. but what they did know and what they said again and again is we know that saddam hussain develop weapons of mass destruction. that he had used weapons of mass destruction against iran and against his own people. that he had lied about the ey weapons of mass destruction and that he had concealed them. they knew those things as facts. >> and that he probably wanted them again. >> and they were convinced that he wanted them again. ar

exactly as you say. so yes, they are uncertain about the credibility and the reliability of the intelligence they are getting in which people are arguing about as i illuminate in my book. but what they know in their minds which was wrong but what they know in their minds is that this guy once had it. used it. and is capable of doing things of that sort again. so one of the themes of my book or one of the extrapolations that is really important is that policymakers need to re- examine fundamental assumptions. the fundamental assumption here is that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction. i demonstrate in the book that top policymakers all believed that. as richard haas, who was against the war, he stated in his own memoir, i never met an

intelligence analyst during my years in government who told me saddam hussain did not have weapons of mass destruction. so policy makers need to re- examine fundamental assumptions. that is easy to say. correct? that's easy to say. how often do you re-examine your fundamental assumptions. half how often do i examine my fundamental assumptions. we don't because we sort of think are fundamental assumptions are fundamental and therefore we don't need to re- examine them. >> and you have a responsibility to protect the country in the climate of 9/11. >> it's easy to say that. re-examine fundamental assumptions but it's really hard to do. and yet that's one of the takeaways of my book policy makers need to re-examine fundamental assumptions because they are fundal there

fundamental assumption in this case was wrong. >> no greater responsibility or larger decision any government can't make is sending our students off to fight a war. one more point about intelligence and will wrap up with some more general thoughts about american foreign policy which you been writing about for many decades. i introduced you as the dean of -- i read a specter of communism in college but i was assigned that book in the mid- 1990s. and it is still relevant and it still sells. saddam and al qaeda connection. dick cheney said in multiple television interviews that mohammed atta who was a hijacker met and rocky intelligent agent in prague. he said this was confirmed with an interview with tim russert. it wasn't confirmed. a month later the fbi ascertained atta was in florida a time. cheney when back on tv and repeated this again. he said cheney was not the

decider but he was still an influential voice. he gave a speech to the veterans of foreign wars. a major speech that was basically freelance. he wasn't supposed to give that speech where he essentially declares war on saddam hussein. even though he doesn't have the power to do that. >> actually president bush indirectly reprimands dick cheney for giving that speech. and one should not to assume as i shown above, that dick cheney is a decision-maker. this relationship between al qaeda and saddam hussein is a relationship that is constantly being examined by the intelligence agencies. and by top policymakers. and they often come to the conclusion that there is no collaborative relationship between saddam hussain and al qaeda. but they also suggest that there is possibilities that

saddam hussein regime, his intelligence service, might be involved in various types of training exercises or providing weapons. this ambiguity and uncertainty. that is the ambiguity and uncertainty that in adheres and policymaking. they knew there was quote no collaborative relationship and i showed that president bush when he mis presented with thi evidence says good try. he says to scooter libby when scooter libby, cheney's top assistant, is making this argument that al qaeda and saddam hussein are linked to one another in august of 2002. and president bush says, good try. keep digging. but he himself, president bush, is not convinced. but he is worried, very worried about the possibility that saddam hussein may have

chemical and biological weapons and that those weapons might find their way into the hands se of terrorists. perhaps al qaeda terrorist and perhaps other tears. >> there were al qaeda dudes operating in northeastern rock outside of the control. the no-fly zone of hussain. but looking back on it now it was never expressed to my satisfaction and the american people satisfaction. >> no. >> one more quote from cheney. the cheney hall of fame, if you will. another interview with tim russert if you days before the invasion. we know, saddam is trying to produce nuclear limits. we know that he has a long- standing relationship with various terrorist groups including al qaeda organization. we know he has a long-standing relationship with al qaeda. that wasn't true. and i think cheney knew it. but i can't prove that. >> policy makers if you call

them two days before the war, they are mobilizing american opinion for the war. it doesn't explain those quotations don't explain why the decisions were made. >> which is a few days out. >> there's a difference between what is influencing policymakers and what they are saying to the public in order to mobilize support behind a particular policy. as is always the case. >> how has u.s. foreign policy changed since 2003? as a result of this? >> are you talking about compared to today? >> over the last 20 years. have you seen any major changes? >> of course the quagmire and debacle in iraq had huge impact over the subsequent years in

terms of president obama's willingness to get involved in various types of insurgencies. it led to a great deal of he caution in terms of what to do in syria and libya. it affected what the united states would do in afghanistan and certainly what it did subsequently in iraq. so the debacle and quagmire in iraq, the insurrectionary activity had a huge impact on america's willingness to use its power and subsequent situations. which many people would say was a good lesson. i mean, a good lesson of the war was to grasp the limits of your power. and that is an dates doesn't

have the power and didn't have the power to build democracy in iraq or in syria although there are elements of democratic institution, important ones in iraq today, as a result of what the united states did. it doesn't justify what happened. >> there may have gotten it on their own. >> but grasping the limits of your power is an important lesson. but it's easy to say that what does it mean to grasp the limits of your power it's important that you can do everything you want to do but it doesn't really explain when you should use your power. >> when you listen to president biden's remarks about ukraine it doesn't sound like the establishment, foreign policy establishment. both major parties question the fundamentals about american agenda. >> when you listen to president obama,, president biden

listening to talking about the present situation in ukraine, i would suggest to you that he's learned a lot from this situation. one of the important takeaways from my book is the importance of policymakers defining priorities. and in this case in iraq, president bush never really clarified priorities. i would say that one of the lessons that president biden has learned is that in this situation in ukraine and overwriting priority is to avoid the nuclear war with russia. and so the steps you want to take will be limited but influential, hopefully helping the diukrainians without provoking a major conflict with russia. >> your point about bush in 2003, they never resolved the

contradictions and his parties. do we want regime change or do some? can we bring about regime change without going to war. there were some inconsistency there which i think led to the expectation among many people that this was just all about a pretext for war. your book does challenge that notion. to what extent was the global war on terror, if i can call it in the best tents. to what extent is the global war on terror a condition of u.s. foreign policy post-1945? >> first of all, let me link that to the question you just asked. one of the important things to realize is that during this period of late 90s and after 9/11, the focus of american foreign policy was on non-state actors. on terrorists.

on counterterrorism. that for roughly a decade or 15 years became the major preoccupation. why was that the case? that was the case because the united states had in effect achieved a gemini at the end of the cold war. no late power -- so the preoccupation for legitimate reasons was with terrorism and counter terrorism and nonstate actors. what's changed in the world mightily over the last 10 or 15 years is that we have a resurgence of traditional geopolitics. we have the resurgence of geopolitical rivalries among great powers. one of the consequences of this preoccupation with iraq and with counterterrorism is that it did divert attention from the rise of china and from the

relaunch of russia during these years. but geopolitics today is hugely different than geopolitics during this era. >> there are still continuities in the specter of communism you write about and it's been a while since i read the book. >> you should read it again. >> everyone should read it. you wrote about how the u.s. had advantages over ussr post- 1945 trade but inflated the threat. you can watch harry truman or listen to harry truman's 1947 speech about communist domination of the world. this is the speech of the truman doctrine and talked about needing aid for greece and turkey. and you can say that socialism that truman knew it would be someone in the so-called developing third world, it would appeal to people of third

world and u.s. had something to do about pit so inflating the threat of communism, looking back on it again. the benefit of hindsight. at the time their people post 9/11 who were inflating the threat to our country of islamic terrorism. and preemptive invasions is not the right way to go about doing this. that wasn't so much fear neededa wa my view, it was a well-founded fear of another terrorist attack. whether that fear needed to gravitate into a war against iraq, is a different question. in retrospect, if you assess the perspective benefits against the perspective cost or liability, you would decide not

to go to war in iraq. the fact that people were preoccupied with fear was a legitimate apprehension at the time. in terms of continuities of american foreign policy, one of the things i wrote long ago before i wrote this book was that, in fact, bush's national security strategy reflected basic continuities in american foreign policy. the idea of establishing military supremacy was not a new idea. ever since the beginnings of the cold war, the united states sought to have military supremacy except for a very brief time when it was pursuing detente. basically, the desire of military superiority was not new in the history of american foreign policy, especially since world war ii. nor was the

idea of having an open international order based on free markets and the movement of capital. these were, in many ways, traditional american foreign policies. even the idea of preemption, i would argue, that people say this was something really new for george w. bush. preemption was not a new policy for the united states foreign policy. when you think about it and president john kennedy imposed a blockade on cuba and he was, you know, during the cuban missile crisis, that is an act of war. the united states was taking preemptive action at that period of time. president clinton, sort of, announced in the 1990s that he would be willing to take preemptive action against terrorist. there is a lot of continuity heret in the history of americ

foreign policy. >> one last point i will make and we will wrap up. i and i may be the only interview in washington who reads to his gas but the listeners of my podcast know that i often pick up books written by historians and i share ideas but not a historian myself but i must cite the work of others. e john w dower in his book the violence of american ascension rights when the ministration of george bush responded to september 11th by declaring a global war on terror and watching the invasions of afghanistan and iraq, was not really deviating the thrust of existing policy is so many that have argued. the excessive response to the atrocity carried out by the 19 terrorists inaugurated in the case of the 2003 bombardment and check to the shock of over a century rights, involved unleashing a war fighting machine already primed and experienced in overseas interventions including intensive bombing, covert operations and practices on the dark side, referring to torture.

let us play stop the historian. i will tell you why i am reading this quote after do so. see if you can figure out which president said this. it is easy to say that we have no interest in who lives in this or that valley in bosnia who owns a strip of brush land in the horn of accra for or earth by the jordan river. the true measure of our interest lies not in how small or distant these places are or whether we have trouble pronouncing their names. the question we must ask is, what are the consequences to our security of letting and spread? we r should not be involved everywhere but where our values and our interests are and where we can make a difference, we must be prepared to do so. >> i do not know who said that i could imagine george h.w. bush saying something like

that. >> it was clinton in 1999. at the end of the decade that is criticized as a decade of american-born policy draft. this was clinton trying to explain where the united states should get involved in the world now that the soviet union -- >> i would tour george h.w. bush at the end of his ministration gave a couple of er speeches in which he said almost precisely the same thing. what that quotation suggests is something that i firmly believe. there is turmoil everywhere in the world. and there always will be. it is vital for american decision-makers and for the american people to assess and determine what constitutes a so- called existential threat? what is an existential threat? it is also extremely important, as this quotation suggests and which i embrace, for american

policymakers and the american people to carefully assess what constitutes of vital interest? where are our vital interests ? do we have a vital interest in taiwan? yes or no? i believe very thoughtful people can argue that in both ways. it has no easy answer. it is imperative, as clinton's quotation suggests, to think hard and long what constitutes of vital interest? what constitutes an existential threat? once you decide if something is a vital interest or is not, then you can begin to grapple ty with what are the appropriate tactics.ha ow >> i don't think we have done that effectively that is why i brought up the quinn -- clinton

quote. i thought it was an opportunity reassess what the u.s. role should be an role of u.s. power the soviet union now gone. we basically hit the gas pedal and trumpeted the triumph and went full speed ahead. clinton was trying to explain why we would get involved in tiny little places. >> the issue is, what constitutes a reassessment? >> that is a tough one. >> what is it that is desirable to achieve. many people living in the 1990s, like president clinton himself, believed that this was a decade in which democracy was spreading around the globe and it was spreading. this was a decade in which prosperity was growing around the globe and it was happening. that this was a decade in which

impoverished people in many critical countries like china and india were climbing out of fundamental impoverishment. there were many reasons to think in the 1990s that the world, that the united states, was trying to nurture and was indeed a world that not only benefited the united states but was also benefiting other countries. one has to understand that context and president clinton actually believed, as did george h.w. bush, that the problem after the cold war was that american people were losing interest in the world. that there was a growing isolationism. that there was not enough concern

with the idea of continuing the effort to promote democracy and prosperity. whether that required the united states to build up its military infrastructure as it did and whether it required the united states to get involved in controversies in different parts of the world. these were difficult questions to decide. what constitutes a transformative moment is the fact that you have 9/11. 911 represents a transformative event in the sense that making americans, not only a policymakers but most americans feel extraordinarily warner bold print because americans feel extraordinarily runnable, they are in trying to support

initiatives that they might otherwise not support. >> we have not been doing enough and paying attention. >> the important thing is always to decide, well, what constitutes a vital interest that we now need to do? what is a real threat? do what extents do the threats that exist after 9/11 justify a, b, c or d? the threats that existed after 9/11 were real threats. it does not mean that united states needed one to have a global war on terror. it does not mean that the united states should have invaded iraq. the facts -- but the fears were real. what i tried to do in my book is both to illuminate why policymakers felt fearful and then to examine whether they

took appropriate actions in relationship to the fears that existed. my book is both very empathetic but also, as you know, extremely critical. it raises the basic question of when there is fear, when there is threat perception, what sorts of actions are appropriate? and how to calibrate them in ways that maximize, benefits and minimize the cost. i am very critical of a bush administration for not systematically examining cost and the consequences of a perspective invasion of iraq. >> really remarkable how little thought went into that part of it. as you say, the musket the story right if we want to avoid these mistakes again. the book is confronting saddam hussein : george w. bush and the invasion of iraq.

melvyn leffler, thank you for being here. i plunged the depths of your mind . thank you for everyone who has been listening. this is martin dicaro with history as it happens. testimony on traumatic brain injury and last exposure with officials from the defense department and policy advocates before the senate armed services subcommittee on personnel. live at 3:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. you can also watch on the c- span now video app or online at c-span.org . if you're joining -- enjoying american history tv presented for our newsletter using qr code on those screen to receive highlights of upcoming programs, like lectures and history, american artifacts, the presidency and more. sign up for the newsletter today and be sure to watch american history tv every weekend or anytime online at c- span.org/history.