>> it is at worst lies and deception. it is at best, incokaumcompeten lack of understanding. >> a lot of people who purposefully used extreme rhetoric to gin up popular support for the war, there have been no consequences for them. >> we sit here some eight years later, 4,000 americans lost their lives. maybe 100,000 iraqis lost their lives. it cost about a trillion dollars. was it worth it? did you give the right advice? >> i think i did. if you look back at the proposition we faced after 9/11, with respect to saddam hussein, we were very concerned about the prospects of terrorists like the 9/11 crowd, acquiring weapons of mass destruction, biological agent or nuclear weapon they could use on the united states. there's no question the news media didn't do its job during the run-up to the iraq war. far too often, the press simply

accepted these sweeping assertions by the highest officials in the government. without looking for the hard evidence to support it. >> more concern about the politics of my decision rather than what is right and what is wrong. >> i have prayed to god many times that he would forgive me for sending his children to die in a war that never had to happen. >> was there ever any consideration of apologizing to the american people? >> i mean, apologizing would basically say the decision was a wrong decision. and i don't believe it was a wrong decision.

good evening. i'm chris hayes. you have just seve "hubris, the selling of the iraq war." ten years ago, the united states invaded iraq. teb years ago, what was accomplished, what was lost, and have we changed how we think about war? joining me, alex wagger in, patrick murphy, and chris matthews, michael isikoff, and david corn, msnbc political analyst and washington bureau chief for mother jones. rachel starts off the documentary in that intro, i think a really important point,

which is living through what happened in the iraq war, you can pay very careful attention as the documentary traces the specificity of the consequences, but she draws it back to draw some broader lesson about how do we as a society choose to go to war? what is it about the machinations about american politics and the media and all of that that makes us go to war or not go to war. i want to read something you wrote september 2, 2011. so i'll say it, i hate this war that is coming in iraq. don't think we'll be proud of it. you talk about bush trying to avenge his father. what about the tens of millions of arab sons who want to finish a fight we start next spring in bad dad? i think it's interesting this was your last column that you wrote that. what was the political temperature of the national conversation at that moment when you wrote that column? >> well, i was alone -- there

were obviously other war critics like ted kennedy, but myself, i felt the country was rushing to war, and i was really embarrassed with my country, with a president of such limited ability, could talk us into a war a war that was totally against our history. the neurm brg trials were against people who launchled an aggressive war, and this was an aggressive war. i never heard of the united states making a case like that. they have weapons we don't like. all through this movie, it allows the realization, it wasn't about the wmd. that was all the sales pitch, like selling a new car, don't you see the hub caps, the antenna. it didn't matter if it was anthrax or the prague meeting or aluminum tubes or the yellow cake, just looking for something to sell it, but the main question alt the end, did

cheney, dead bisid bush believe? it seems to me irrelevant. they just wanted a case to make. >> but the important thing is all the things you point to, the hub caps, the radio, what's on the hood, it was all about an element of generating fear. it was about the threat. they kept saying there's a threat, there's a threat. he's working with al qaeda, and he has all these things that can hit us. dick cheney, we saw in the film, said in august of 2002, he's amassing weapons of mass destruction. no doubt to use against us. so that was the big overall point. they knew it was, you know, a lot of people knew it was wrong, or iffy at best. when he says no doubt, there was plenty of doubt. >> there's two ways to look at this, right? one way is say, 9/11, who is this horrendous trauma for the nation, and scares people, completely understandably, right? the thought of that happening again is horrific to think of.

that plus unskupulous leaders is the equation? >> you can't think they thought they were unscrupulous. they continue onwards with it, i believe they had an agenda, but i think ultimately, they thought they were doing the right thing. they had sort of negotiated with themselves on this. and it was a sort of -- must have been, and i would wander what you think, a collecting sense inside the administration that we're doing what's right for the american people. saddam hussein is a bad guy and we're taking him out. >> a certain point is this is what has to be done. how do we get there? every ingredient, every piece of that that we now know to be false and wrong and hyped and exaggerated was necessary to make the case because the american public, you couldn't sell the congress, you couldn't sell the public based on what they had. that we just think we need to do this. we think we have to take out --

act pre-emptively. >> policy. >> that goes back -- >> this predate 9/11. it predates any attempt to accumulate the evidence. i was just going through the ti timeline, a week after 9/11, dick cheney is on meet the press saying we have evidence they have weapons. then you have mccain pushing the anthrax connection. they would grab at anything. it was idealogical, a mix of a number of people, but the sales pitch was emotional. we have to remember the times. we had just been hit, and even the cowboy music, the western music, remember how we had failed, let's get even with them, and the conflation was the genius. we don't like what happened to us on 9/11, let's get the iraqis. we hear the phrase wmd, nuclear, nuclear in the region? no, it's nuclear against us. it's conflation to the fact we were strategically involved in

something we weren't involved in. you don't like 9/11, go to iraq. >> was the failure of leadership broader than just that small group of people in the bushel administration? >> it states it's the congress' authority to declare war. no matter how much they want to kick the can or not be responsible, whether it's the war powers act or whatever, they're trying to do that, just like in the gulf of tonkin resolution, which is a point that rachel alluded to. i'll go back to alex's point earlier, when you have the leadership of our country, especially the president and dick cheney, the vice president, tell the intelligence community and say, find the connection to 9/11, and also find the weapons of mass destruction. they're like, it's not here but it could be here or whatever, and i'm not excusing the intelligence failures, but at the same time, it's human nature. they're going to try to please the boss. >> it's an amazing line in there. he said there was an extremely

strong policy wind that was blowing. and the quote is so fascinating because actually that metaphor extends throughout the society. it's through the halls of congress. it's in the media, in the culture. every channel, it's whimmipping through. no one is giving instructions. >> ultimately, this is a matter of trust. there was a case to be made for the war. we're not sure he has weapons. we're not sure about these connections, but if we're wrong and he does, he could pose this threat to us. let's ask the public if that's enough to go to war on. i think they realized the public would say no. they couldn't have that mature conversation. particularly in -- even at that emotional time where people might have given them more leeway to have the benefit of the doubt in terms of security, so while that's not happening, you have everybody, whether it's tom daschle, and others cowered because they didn't want to be caught on the wrong side. >> watching that testimony when you see hillary clinton and john

kerry, i didn't think cowardice, i thought cutharths. here's a republican president, this is a time of national security failure, this is a feeling that the democrats have never been quote/unquote strong on foreign policy and national security. here is a chance to be bipartisan, to say, we're going to be tough. we're going to -- >> no, no, look, i'm not saying i agree. >> finish your point. >> i think for leading democrats, and that's who we're talking about, tom daschle, john kerry, whatever their reasoning, it felt good for them to say we're going to get him the power. >> everybody who was considering running for president voted for that war. and that was the operative -- the guy who made the biggest difference at the time in the house was dick again hard, who was planning his campaign for the presidency. he went to the rose garden with bush to say, i'm voting for this

war. and that turned it to the house. >> he undercut joe biden in the senate who was trying to create a more restrictive resolution. >> positioning himself. >> bill clinton did it in 1992. his wife did it in this situation. bill clinton taught the democ t democrats because he was the 1 who won in '92, and he positi positioned himself for the gulf war. if you want to be president, not just be the nominee, you have to be a hawk. they all did the same. >> let me spare a moment to let the historical note that paul wellstone, who we lost, was in a neck and neck race, it probably would have come down to a couple hundred voedz, ates, and he die. >> in light of this wonderful doc, when did the wind start to blow? i had a good source with colin powell, secretary powell at the time in the fall of 9/11, and he

said they were able to shut down wolf awitses the first time. the president said work through channels, work through rumsfeld, stop talking. and somehow, he found another way to the president, and that's where some of the winds start to blow behind bush's back. do you know when he said i'm going to war? >> we do not know when bush said he's going to war, but we do have the documentary record, which we show in "hubris," first, the handwritten notes from rumsfeld on the day of 9/11 saying find the connection to uvl. and no intelligence that there's any connection to ubl, and november of 2001 when he's meeting with general frank, and the most chilling words in this documentary, the hand type written memo, how to start? how to start a war? >> what's the context going to be? >> bush in those early days did say, let's do afghanistan first. basically, he said one war at a time. and i think they bided their

time and waited until they thought the war in afghanistan, although not done, had reached -- >> you look at the architects of the war when you say bush, cheney, wolfawitz and rumsfeld, all chicken hawks. they are the biggest cheerleaders. but when it was their generation's war during vietnam, not one of them served y not one of them. >> rumsfeld served. >> on active duty. >> right, for the record. >> in fact, this does come down to a certain -- i mean, psychology is underneath some of this, right? you didn't serve. you feel a certain amount of shame. therefore, you're going to be more aggressive when you're giving the opportunity to quote/unquote serve. >> i don't understand that thinking. the great warriors whether it's rubin or sadat or eisenhower, the great warriors of our time have been basically against war. that's the great value. >> completely misunderstanding my point.

>> what's your point? >> i'm not traying to validate this. >> what we call fake tough in the neighborhood. >> you feel like you have -- >> she used the phrase correctly. chick en hawks. >> here's the point. when we're talking about the wind blowing, if we're going to use this metaphor, there are certain institutions in society, because people can be frightened, particularly after an attack, and war is a common occurrence, there should be institutions built into a society politically and in the culture and institutional structure that stop the winds of war, that stand up strong to them, and what we saw was a sequential failure of so many, one of, which crucially, the trade in which we are now engaged, the media. i want to talk about this after the break. >> the mental and emotional bedding of this kind of media. >> yeah, i want to talk about that. stay with us. you're going to hear stories you didn't hear about hubris, including something about what made front page news and what should have. >> where were the whistle

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welcome back to "talking hubris." we're talking about the american war in iraq, and one of the key elements in the rush to war was the role the media played. there's this amazing bit of sound from bill keller, executive editor of the "new york times," and this is him talking about the internal incentive structure in the "new york times" that contributed to stories ending up on the front page and in the back of the paper. >> there was kind of this mainstream view that this was real. add to that the kind of -- just the competitive urge that motivates newspaper reporters,

the desire to get stories first, to get stories exclusively, to get stories on the front page. you know, all of those came into play. and in fact, you know, the "t e "times" wrote a number of really bad stories, inadequately sourced, unskeptical stories about -- particularly about saddam's weapons capabilities and those stories were rewarded with kind of lavish front page display. "times" also wrote a lot of very good stories, more skeptical stories, and those tended to be buried on pages 8 through 13. so reporters respond to those sorts of incentives so there was at least some reporters, you know, went out looking to feed that hunger for scoops. >> you know, i think it was a day or two before the invasion of iraq, the "washington post"

had a story rin by dana billbank, and walter pincus, a straight news story that said president bush is about to lead this country to war on the basis of assertions that have been disproved by other governments and some inside the u.s. intelligence committee. here is one of the most important papers in the country saying the president is in essence lying to the nation. "washington post" put that on page a-13. why is that not front page? >> amazing. >> why is that not front page news? a year later, michael getler, the ombudsman for the post looked back and looked and found about 20 stories the type that bill keller is talking about, that were skeptical, and every single one of them, buried, buried, buried. >> what is that about? >> the winds again. they don't want to get out too far out, confronting the administration. >> you're saying the candidates for president were doing it, and the problem is that the media

got played like a fiddle. no offense, anyone in here, but they got played like a fiddle as a whole, and it's a shame because they're the four tth estate. they're suppose to keep it honest and be the referee. >> first of all, that was an interview for "hubris." we didn't have room for it in the documentary. if you put it together -- >> irony of irony. >> if you talk about what is in there, which talks about the judy miller and the story about aluminum tubes which gets sigci by dick cheney on "meet the press" which gets the pickup and the buzz we all crave for in the news business. it gives you an insight ton to what we're talking about. we want stories with an impact. that's a payoff. >> there's also, when you're talking about the wind, the wind, let's be honest. cable news did not cover itself in gloera, the media we were in.

phil donohue had a show on this report that was rating well and he was an anti-iraq voice, and he didn't have that show for long, and there are calculations about what is acceptable, kind of mainstream view this was real wrfrb the acceptable boundary thatigate asserted is that seriousness was getting inside the details of the case and how strong it was and when he was going to get the weapons and not saying this was crazy. >> i was against the war, long before they started selling the thing. here's the problem with so-called objective meet yeah. objective journalism is scribe reporting. write down what the military is telling you in the bulletins. pult put it out. how about critical journalism? that's what we need, and cable is better at it. this is great, but is anybody challenging? challenging? >> it's about challenging authority, and do you really think we're that much better? are we challenging the obama

administration and their assertions about intelligence? in the same way we should then? that's a question to ask. >> there's a moment in the documentary where there's some footage from bush on the rubble at 9/11 speaking with the bullhorn, and i mean, we have gotten, you know, years almost more than a decade past september 11th, but we were all around. and there was such a sense of profond lost and anger and frustration, and i really think that has to inform all of this, right? the country was so desperate for answers or for a solution or for some kind of remedy, which doesn't excuse it, but i think that, you know, i have friends who are not hawks, who were then all of a sudden like, this is a good idea for us. >> one of the loneliest things to be in the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003 was a journalist in washington who is saying, wait a moment, let's have some questions here. why can't we have inspekctions?

why don't we tray that for a year? are there any other thicks to do other than a full-scale military invasion? do we have plans? what are we going to do? i was around at the time and i would go on these shows and people would think you were a cook. do you not believe in fighting for freedom were the type of questions i was getting from anchors on cable. you could see, you know, the night ridd eder bureau, some pee did incredible work, but the tide was so damn strong from capitol hill to the white house and all of the newsrooms in between. you were a lonely voice, i remember that, chris, but there were very, very few of us at the time, and the op-ed pages were full of neocons and non-neocons. tom friedman out there saying i don't believe these guys, the bush people, they're lying, but we still should do this. and i have to tell you one final story, one final story, a great friend of mine, i won't embarrass him, but an influential news guy said i

don't know what to make of this, but if tom friedman is for it, so i am. >> michael, you could tell it better, but in basketball, the alley-oop play where one guy throws it above the basket and the other guy stuffs it. they set it up, they gave judy, scooter gives to you guys, you know the whole thing. you want to tell the story? tell it, because they give him the story, hold it for sunday, and then in walks the vice president, who agrees to be on "meet the press." nobody knows what is coming. he turns his head, and he says, as you saw, it's all classified, but if you read the paper today, and it's this alley-oop play they put on, and it's really horrible. >> that wadss a classic. you told it well. his exact words were, i can't talk about classified intelligence, but if you look at the front page of the "new york times," you can see what is happening. >> part of the thing that comes through in the documentary comes through in some of the night ridder reporting and some of the reporting you have done, there are people throughout the federal bureaucracy, throughout

the government, who haare sayin no, no. >> they are being quoted in the stories, not at the top, but in the bottom and the middle, and the thing is the stories would begin, a typical story, today, george w. bush gave a speech saying saddam hussein is tied to al qaeda. aft halfway through, u.s. intelligence officials believe this is not the case. the fact he's saying something that is contradicted by the government is not the story, which it should have been. >> coming up, people knew things before we invaded iraq. scientists answers questioned, experts weighed in, and those voices were drowned out. why? that's next. ♪

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the fact he's saying something

as the bush administration was telling the nation about the necessity to invade iraq, many people asked where were the whistleblowers? but who would have listened? that's next. [ male announcer ] this is george.

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throughout their lives. passion keeps them realizing possibilities. an ally for real possibilities. aarp. find tools and support at aarp.org/possibilities. from the information they gave me, it took me about 15 minutes to come to the conclusion that these tubes could not be used for gas. they're too thick, too heavy. >> it's now public that in fact, he has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge. >> i called my friends in oak ridge and said are these the same tubes we wur talkingu abou last year, and they said yes, and i said, i thought that the

been put to rest a year ago. >> people who knew that was really meant were ignored. joining us now, houston wood. thanks so much for being here. >> you're welcome. >> i guess first, what is your understanding now of how it was the case that after analyzing this, that it was still not debunked? >> i really -- i think the people just did not want to hear the truth. you know, i'm a scientist. and when i think about science, i think that we can find the truth. and to me, the aluminum tubes were clearly not capable of being used, and it was like, i just thought the truth would always win out. >> but why didn't it? what is your understanding of why it didn't? you told someone, yeah, this is ridiculous, and the next time you see it when it is raised in public, correct? >> yes, that's correct. there were a lot of people who agreed with me.

it wasn't just me myself. other people made that assessment in the department of energy, and the department of energy was carrying that through their channels to the government, kn the interesting thing is oak ridge is where all ofuranium enrichment work has been done, the center of the department's work on uranium enrichment for decades and they were the experts and the people who really knew, and they were being ignored. >> how does this work structurally. you have ron the ground experts, they're feeling like they're pressured. you didn't feel pressured, right? >> no. >> not at all. you made an expert judgment, and what happens in the next step? >> there was an analyst in the cia, i don't know if you ever had any interaction with him, who didn't have the technical expertise that you and your colleagues had, that kept coming up with these reasons to push t

itwa itward. he would say, it's based on a 1950s design, and you would say, no, it doesn't work either. it was what people wanted to hear. what is interesting to me in the film, you say you felt betrayed. i assume other people felt betrayed, too. yet, there was no -- i take it there was no avenue you would have to say, hey, wait a minute, guys. and sort of come out. if you did it publicly, you would have lost your job, i presume, or your security clearance? >> i was working for the university of virginia at that time, so i wasn't working for the doe or the labs, but i did have a security cleernls. and so that would have been -- they could have taken away my security clearance for doing that, i think. i don't know. but i think a lot of the people were just concerned about losing their jobs and -- and didn't have an avenue to go through. i'm on the outside as a consultant, and i don't have a boss to call. i mean, i could call the people in doe, and i'm thinking they're going to take the message up.

>> i remember when we talked back when we first wrote "hubris" and i remember asking you about this. and i think you told me that there were others who you had talked to who were in the government who wanted to sort of get the word out, but felt the fear because of the classification, because they would lose that security clearance, because they would lose their job if they went public or protested what was going on. >> right, and i think in the government and doe in particular, that's my experience, maybe in other parts of government, too, but everything is classified, every you do is born classified. once you're working, dhats the term. so you grow up in that culture and you respect it. you can't do that if you don't respect it. it's even harder -- >> you can't willy-nilly run outside of the walls of secrecy, the necessary precondition for all of the work that's being done. >> that's right. >> this is such an important point, because whistleblowers

are so important to our democracy, to, you know, people who can come forward and say hey, what's being said at the top and wrong or false or covered up, and yet in the national security field, the fear is so palpable and so real that it suppresses the whistle blowers from coming forward, and as we have seeb and are seeing now as it's played out, they get criminally prosecuted when they do. >> you need an agency in government, too, that is going to be receptive. if you come to someone and say you're wrong, it will be taken seriously and evaluated and willing to protect you and engage with the rest of the government. >> everyone works really sort of in a silo. you know, so i can be over here in d.o.e. and somebody else could be in another agency and i don't know what they don't know, and they don't know what i don't know. and maybe if there's someone else who knows something i don't know. >> is that what goes through your head, i look at the tubes

and say this is a nonstarter, this isn't what the tubes are for. is the thought going through your head, there must be some part of the story i don't know? >> not on the centrifuge. no on that, but there could be other things going on. i don't know about chemical weapons. >> if it was absolute, why? this is a hard question, and i have never been in your shoes, but why not come forward? >> what does come forward mean? what is the avenue? where do i go? so when colin powell gave his speech in february of '03, i thought -- i was just surprised. i thought we had given him the truth. and you know, he was betrayed by the system. >> you know, there was a great story. we talk about the media a few moments ago. after the "new york times" story came out that said tubes, tubes, tubes, and dick cheney cites it in "meet the press" a few days later "the washington post" did a story, again, buried on

a-20113, but it said, actually, there's a debate among experts, and i don't know, you don't have to tell me if you talked to him, but he got to either you or some of your colleagues and he got that into the public realm, but the "post quotes was so squared to make it a big deal, and you had condoleezza rice saying the tubes, no question about them. >> houston wood of the university of virginia, thank you so much for joining us. >> coming up, what we haven't heard from the architects of the war, sorry. all stations come over to mission a for a final go. this is for real this time. step seven point two one two. verify and lock. command is locked. five seconds. three, two, one. standing by for capture. the most innovative software on the planet... dragon is captured. is connecting today's leading companies to places beyond it.

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go national. go like a pro. speak to the people who felt the direct pressure. which, by the way, those that did couple voices anonymously that were heard in the immediate months following the invasion of march 2003, as we started to hear from these analysts, although anonymously that there had been undue pressure from the white house, when the leak of my name happened in july of 2003, those voices dried up immediately. >> that's of course valerie pla plameu wilson after her husband came forward and blew the whistle on some dodgy intelligence. we're talking about whistle blowers during this era. there's a set of institutions

that should have acted as bullworts against going to war, and one by one, they failed in different ways or they were overcome by the people who were determined to take us to war. one of the things i think is so fascinated about the book is this idea of what does a bureaucracy know and who knows it? and how does information move through a bureaucracy? right? and we saw this real kind of procedural distortion of the normal rules of procedure within these bureaucracies. that was one of there great sins of the rush to war. >> well, you saw in all of these things that we showed in the movie and other examples in the book, again and again and again, the bureaucracies worked. people who had the front line responsibility for evaluating intelligence came up with the right answers. and they, you know, sent it along. at some point, somebody says thank you very much. we don't care. we're going to war. >> hold on a second. the nie was a function of the intelligence burr ocerousy and it was completely false, and it

ignores that they were in there, that were put in the back, much like the stories in ark-13, and they reached the conclusions that we now know to be false. i don't know we can say it worked. >> at certain levels at the ground level, people were getting the right answers even if they weren't clear answers. >> and there's a war that went on through the war and after the war, you saw it. talking about the really good reporters like dana milbank and dana priest as well. they're at war. if you read the papers right at the war when we discovered there was no wmd, there was a war, who would be blamed, and you have the cia going to war every day, and at foiights with defense in their special office, and they were fighting back and forth on who gets blamed. valerie wilson was a victim of that. the people who ratted her out, if you will, or outed her,

wanted to get somebody in the agency. it wasn't that she was joe wilson's wife, she was in the agency, she was fair game. >> patrick. >> all during this time, we're talking urabout the washington inside game, there were 4,400 american lives taking in iraq, which is the most important lesson learned. you can talk about the $3 trillion or the $4 trillion that this cost, but look at the treasure of our country, and you compare it against a backdrop of the history of these foelks who wanted to get us into this war and justify it every step of the way. can you imagine what it was like when i was there in '03? when i'm there in 138 degree heat with a bunch of paratroopers and we get word they're going to cut our combat pay. that's what they tried to do. >> imagine calling it the other name. >> and imagine the president of the united states, do a christmas video from the white house, joking, are there weapons of mass destruction under the

christmas tree. to think of the arrogance of this administration. >> even now, patrick, i wonder, i have not served. i probably will never serve. but there are thousands who have that have lost sons and daughters. and you see these people all sort of coming to the confessional and saying, you know, i sort of let the intelligence go or the decision was made above me, or you know, we were wrong. i mean, what does that feel like to be a veteran here or to be the family of a veteran and see this kind of mea culpa after someone has died? >> i feel betrayed by those in leadership for our country. not that a country that i love, but those who had the responsibility to lead our country, they led us down a wrong path, and those 4,400 families will never get their most prized treasure back. >> and let me say this about wilkerson, who is featured prominently in the book and has been cast in liberal narratives

of the war as something of a wise man, right? he's saw through it, i mean, the moment where he writes down the mark on the calendar and says colin powell says we're going to find a wmd, go to the paper. i'm sorry, but there was a failure on the part of those folks to do the right thing. it's very easy for me to say that, i understand, but it's still wrong. >> blame colin powell for believing that and still giving that speech. now he's seen as a wise man, and the president courts him, you know, networks court him, and we pay a lot of attention, but he knew. you know, he knew when he took the job, he was there to be a front for these guys and he served dutifully as that front. >> you think he knew that? >> in the beginning, yeah. >> cheney was down and pulled him out of line, really discovered him in the white house when he was in the white house as an intern. and then car lucci and all those guys. he had a lot of history with those republicans and i'm going to defend him because i like him. >> he's likable.

>> he was a military guy thinking his job was to salute. he was a minister of government, his job was to challenge. you're more or less, a cabinet member means someone who can challenge the president and should. >> and resigns when he has a difference of opinion. >> can i bring it back to your original question about whistle blowers or people who step forward and challenge the white house or challenge the power structure. look at -- one of the early scenes in the documentary is the dick clark story of george bush coming into him in the situation room after 9/11 and saying find the weapons. and remember when clark first told the story and the attack on him from the bush white house, chris cr discrediting him, discrediting his story, saying in this documentary, we have lisa hag aertd, who was there, who heard it, who said i heard the president say this, and confirming exactly the story

that dick clark

memoi memoirs, they show very -- they also don't baulother mentioninge iraqi civilian deaths. if you look at that, the fee for one column, in fact, their careers went on and they're still now asked what they think about syria, iran, and whatever the next war is going to be from their perspective, so there was no price to be paid, paul wolfowitz, where did he end up? >> the perverse irony is this is the flipside of the incentive

structure for whistle blowers. the people who took the risks got beaten down. the people who did the wrong thing, and you still see it, people who were wrong about the war, it was like, everybody was wrong together or something. >> don't you think the active apology is something that is snot done on the public stage anymore, and again, this all begins, the context for this is vietnam, right? the idea we would have done it again, and that there are tens of thousands of peeople, bodies in the ground because of mistakes or collusion or a political agenda is horrifying. >> because the message truly has not been learned from vietnam to this war, et cetera. until we learn our lesson and make sure we have to be reluctant warriors. we can't get involved in these offensive campaigns unless it's as a last resort, and this clearly was not. >> i think ultimately all of them know that there is -- that there is the judgment of history. >> yes. >> and that, you know, chuck hagel in his confirmation hearings said we'll have to let

history jurj the final verdict on the war in iraq and how it plays out -- >> this isn't the surge we're supposed to have redeemed the entire enterprise retroactively. >> but the verdict of history on the subject of this documentary and the subject of our book, which is the selling of the war, is in. and thereat is that we were all subject to a mass deception. the american public was deceived. the world was deceived by the people who were the architects of this war. and every one of them knows that that's the verdict of history. >> i have to say, the lesson i have come away with, having watched this is i'm incredibly skeptical of bipartisan consengss. i'm serious. bipartisan consensus, in my recent memory, two big bipartisan consensus votes were t.a.r.p. and the iraq war. i'm skeptical. also, what you said patrick, and this is the really