ministration in the run up and during the iraq war. weapons inspection process was little more than a game taken sealed denied to see return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever to eliminate by inspection is quite frankly a fool's errand on the contrary there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that saddam was somehow back in his box reality is that between the original unscom inspections and the unmovic inspections you destroyed with those inspections ninety two probably ninety five percent of the iraqi arsenal the first gulf war destroyed almost nothing and you know post-war u.s. battle damage assessments confirm that the weapons inspectors were effective they force saddam to get rid of this stuff. they had that country under control by one nine hundred ninety eight at the latest those inspectors had discovered most of the

weapons of mass destruction and the iraqi programs at that point were essentially at an end before the war in iraq the united nations inspectors told us. that saddam hussein. did not have nuclear weapons capability ironically the major fact of the invasion of iraq in terms of weapons of mass destruction as to be has been to show that the inspectors were right all along the inspection regime worked. it was the most intrusive inspection regime in history and it worked and at the end the day that's another reason why we went to war for not.

these maniacs. urging our enemies weakening our troops resolve and confusing the american people you should listen to these protests because they're obviously hoping saddam hussein who would have guessed that you could build a massive international peace movement on the protection of sadam hussein the media is culpable for the misleading of the american public they bought into the bush administration's rhetoric they don't understand that there was moral violence and immoral violence we use moral violence god bless this president he is truly a great man reducing troop morale confusing the american people involving our enemies they are absolutely committing sedition treason as far as i'm concerned there's a huge difference between personal opinion and opinion which the grades and the bases are military in a time of war it's a disgrace i don't believe that mainstream media acted responsibly in regards to iraq you know i was be little i was called a traitor i was called crazy palos on the c.n.n.

accuse me of drinking saddam hussein's kool-aid for making statements in response to aluminum tubes people out there accusing you of drinking saddam hussein's co i thought of an idealogue that i'm a republican idealogue i'm actually a fairly conservative person who voted for george w. bush but i don't allow my ideology to get in the way of the facts and the reality of my duties and responsibilities as an american citizen and the media is supposed to be the fourth of state but they decided to completely climb in bed with the administration on this in a way the administration constructed a box were and that was that box had all the information that the administration wanted to the media and the public and congress what they would do is you'd have the iraqi national congress. taking bogus defectors the information from them giving them to the pentagon and the iraqi national congress then giving them to the journalists and they said if you don't believe us iraqi national congress call the pentagon so you have the circular reporting and you had the new york times

admitting that it was using one source for all of its information and weapons of mass destruction and it was you know self affirming by going to the pentagon which to put this stuff on paper it was a lot of exaggerations partial information sometimes the whole information but on balance a very one sided view of iraq's w m d program and a lot of these stories the journalist didn't want to look into because the editors told them to run with we're going to be supportive of the administration it's the patriotic thing to do i think that there was on the part of the media too much of of in a sense getting into the upcoming war and not enough look at do we really need to go there were some journalists out there raising the alarm bells the seymour hersh is the walter pincus of the world but unfortunately those great investigative reporters there are usually exiled when the heat is all and and it's only after the fact that they end up being praised and given the pats on the back the excitement

was to make the case to go to war you know to show that you know that was the controversy that the media barbie's you know it was the titillation of a w m d here eunice not to not there to do a sion of or the conflict of tacky administration both the washington post the new york times. it very conservative advisers that support of the white house on this. please the people of the united states and their friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an al gore regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder his regime has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons and let there be no doubt about it we know for a fact that there are weapons there. there are a group of people who for many years had advocated going after saddam

hussein and they push this hard and of course raw intelligence data can be interpreted in a lot of different voices i'm sure experts who talk to you and so there were a group of people i think that were adamant that this was the right course to pursue.

why did the administration so dramatically underestimate the cost of this war we did not have perfect foresight into what we were going to find in iraq. with the cost of the war rising and the search for weapons of mass destruction

going nowhere the administration turns to david kay this work is being carried out into the direction dr david kay a respected scientist and former u.n. inspector was leading the weapons search in iraq we are determined to take this apart we have a tremendous group of dedicated american men and women involved in this with the best assets of the intelligence community can provide. dr kay and his team are making progress we have had found a large body of continuing activities and equipment. we are surprised by new advances that we're making at work of laboratories and safe houses controlled by iraqi intelligence and security services and unlike pre-war intelligence we don't require someone just to say something we actually need the physical evidence equipment suitable for continuing chemical and biological weapons research. david kay is not going to be done with this for quite some time

david kay wants more time and he says it could take another six to nine months to make a definitive finding ministration is asking congress for hundreds of millions more six hundred million dollars to fund a continuing search we have not yet found shiny pointy things that i would call a weapon before we can draw from conclusions we need to let the iraq survey group complete its work. we were all wrong probably in my judgment and that is most disturbing. it's inevitable that there will be an outside commission appointed i mean the issue of this gravity the caring and we will get to the bottom of this and we will let the chips fall where they make democracy you have an obligation your obligation is to speak truthfully to the public that's the basis of civility in our belief in our system of government it is going to require an outside effort probably through an outside commission to deal with some of these very serious problems is i think

explanations are important in a democracy this whole episode has caught the white house completely by surprise they've become so fearful of admitting error that they stand up and defend things that only are face to face are untruthful president bush is being pounded with calls for an independent investigation into how u.s. intelligence so badly misjudged iraq's capabilities before the war president holding all the cards pointing all the people having everybody accountable to him is a very bad idea if i would care to try to operationalize some a common sign made about what was going wrong in iraq and so i said if you among other things that if you're going to do this you've got to treat it like an intelligence problem and that is not go looking for hidden weapons but going looking for the people who would be associated with hidden weapons one of the first things that worried me was we had a big army running through iraq in march and april. w.d. was not used against them. nor was it found that sort of remarkable if they had had

large stockpiles i really believe in the jungle telegraph put the word out on the street let people know what you're about and what you have to offer and usually you'll get people coming to around a weapons program for weapons program exists you're going to find people people engaged in the production technology engineering design people involved in protecting the weapons people involved in moving them and people involved in preparing to use the weapons we found none of that we were running and fewer and fewer leads profitable and a lot of evidence that stacked up to explain something other than large stockpiles of weapons this committee has a special responsibility to the men and women of our armed forces to look at the prewar intelligence because planning for military operations is very well done makers take data they interpret threat they assess risk you talk about it and

how much more. it's left out of the public white paper of the sea any of us feel that the evidence so far leads only to one conclusion. what has happened was more than a failure of intelligence was a result of been if you lation of the intelligence to justify a decision to go to war secret societies have their own rules and. secret societies generally don't feel an obligation to openly and democratically communicate prime minister blair has set up a sit somewhere commission in great britain at his going to report back in july right ours are not going to be until march of two thousand and five five months after the presidential election should the american people have the benefit of the commission before the election well the reason why if we gave it time is because we didn't want to be hurried this is a this is a a strategic look kind of a big picture look about the intelligence gathering capacities of the united states of america.

if there are no weapons of mass destruction which there aren't if there are no ties with al-qaeda which they were and which they aren't maybe now there are. then why do we go to war. well all you need do is go on the web and and download project for a new american century day you will find the video logical and the strategic underpinnings for this policy which was rejected by george bush the first which is ridiculed out of town in those days became the devout policy of this government and was implemented starting with the war i felt in my last year in the pentagon that i felt there was a great deal of contempt for the constraints on government that our constitution lays out. and i also felt that there was

a contempt for the constitution and i only absorbed this sense of contempt by association with with some of the so senior appointed civilians who are all neoconservatives who all believe in dominance who believe in preemption who believe in the military option as the first resort rather than the last resort they have had a very fixed indeed almost obsessive idea that in fact iraq is a major actor in the world and a probable threat possibly a deadly threat to the united states this is a group of people who have essentially believe that might makes right. that the united states at this stage of history has unchallengable power and therefore responsibility to use it to. make the world over in the manner that we or they rather i think it ought to be made over i think behind the basic neoconservative philosophy is

a considerable arrogance that american interests are the primary. goal of all american foreign policy and they seem to have a really serious habit of not being interested in listening to what other people say about this subject because i don't think it's an accident at all. so much of the justification turned out to be full aisha's. misleading deliberately so they thought they had a place in history they were going to bring dad obviously a very dysfunctional arab peninsula as well as a rat and they were going to change history they believe they won the cold war. and they said i we won the cold war because we were tough with the soviet union we get tough with these people and they're going to become like us it is fair to say that the iraq war was a diversion from from the war on terrorism it certainly meant to people who weren't

paying as much attention to afghanistan as they should have and the resources that might have gone to afghanistan ended up being focused more narrow if you if you attack another country with no justification people going to say wait a minute this isn't a war on terrorism this is a war on. this imperialism this is colonialism you know and this is why it's a distraction because you need the help of these people to get this view that the cia and the f.b.i. are lurking around the bazaars in the souks the middle east and handcuffing people are assassinated just does not believe the world works you've got to have the help of the locals to dennet five these people and to put them in jail or remove them from does the only person saddam was a threat to at this point as we saw when the army collapsed was to iraq he didn't have weapons of mass destruction he wasn't scaring anybody certainly wasn't scaring the iranians or the turks or the saudis or anybody else it was

a state that was on the verge of failure now it is a failed state failed states because terrorism you know you can name afghanistan lebannon somalia any time you you create a vacuum it's where people flock to discontented to fight wars who some of bin ladin had been saying for years america wants to invade an arab country occupy an oil rich arab country. even saying this is part of his propaganda so what did we do after nine eleven we invade and oil rich and occupy an oil rich arab country which was doing nothing to threaten us the only real connection is that having invaded iraq. we are very likely to make it a focus of terrorism we're likely to produce what the president has said iraq represents namely the central battlefield in the war on terrorism why because we've sent a lot of americans into

a place where they're sitting ducks for people who think the only good american is a dead one. in the. iraq cannot be governed by americans i don't care what the intention is i don't care if . we truly want to build a democracy that it cannot be ruled by a foreign power the only tool in the tool box of the bush administration is military force military force is a very blunt instrument it just doesn't work we've created more terrorists in iraq and we haven't even solve the problem in afghanistan one of the more ironic effects of the attack on iraq was. to buttress other countries in the conviction of the famous remark by an indian general after the first gulf war when he said the lesson

of this war is that if you if you have to fight the united states you better have nuclear weapons you don't want your president to be seen as a hot dog and when when your president gets up to a job soon gets in the back of a jet and lands on an aircraft carrier and then waddles out with this little straps between his legs and that's not when you want a sign of out of maturity and not testosterone blasting through when you're talking about. things so fundamentally important as sending a nation to war and sending young men and women to their deaths there is a sense in washington now that you can't raise. objections to this because you're not supporting the troops in the field i would i would rapidly point out that the unlike almost anybody i know that holds office in this country i've had two sons in uniform both of whom have been in combat and so i don't have to take any nonsense

from anybody nor will i mark twain's definition of patriotism his patriotism is supporting your country all the time. and your government when it deserves it well i don't think it's patriotic to stand by and remain silent while your country stumbles into a disaster of patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels and i think these are scoundrels they have no argument now they have no defense for what they did the country is in a. terrible international security situation but i think it's perilous so they're attacking the patriotism of others having insider i know that the insiders don't have it all right make mistakes it's more likely to be mistakes and it's more likely to be misjudgment if there is no criticism they was jefferson who said that that are kind of government is not based on trust it's based on the in fact suspicion to suggest that if you have a different viewpoint than any given an administration and or if you are not

supporting the president and policies that may be highly erroneous i don't see that as patriotism at all in fact i would argue that. any patriot with integrity is going to speak out if he or she feels that that we're on the wrong course it's not unpatriotic to demand that congress uphold its constitutional responsibilities regarding the declaration of war it's not unpatriotic to be very upset vocally upset when congress abrogates this constitutional responsibility by transferring war powers authority to the president ited states as they did in october of two thousand and two thousand when you guys were work at nasa deck of a dot com i was out in iraq trying to get rid of saddam and almost got killed for it and besides i was going to jail so it doesn't take a whole lot of courage for me to come out against the war and i did at the beginning but i was studiously ignored when we did the first gulf war when i came out of baghdad in one thousand nine hundred one i met with president ited states i

met with the senior leadership of both parties in the one thing that sticks with me to this day is the extent to which each one of them. explained to me in very emotional terms the extent to which they had had to plan their consciences. to come to a decision on how to vote on the use of force authorization it had been a moral decision on their part it had been one that had kept them. up at night is a thought their way through this we owe our soldiers our sailors our airmen and our marines nothing less before we send them to battle sometimes the true patriot takes the unpopular course but helps their country avoid mistakes and even if they can't persuade at least they tried for me america is this amazing land of opportunity of beauty of of idealism of hope it is a beacon to the world it's a place of fantastic people and what infuriates me more than anything

else is that this is ministration has systematically slandered why all the black and the image of america to our friends and allies around the world having the authority and the ability to go and wage war is a very very solemn thing and it needs to be done with care and with deliberation and with genuine forethought and i think that none of that was present in the lead up to this entire debacle that we now call enduring freedom and when you get perhaps no clothes you have to have the presence of mind and the courage to stand up and say emperor has no clothes.

regime is seeking a nuclear bomb. these attempted to push aside strengthen to use sunni friendly weapons production. material sufficient is more than thirty eight thousand liters. but you mean times. saddam hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program. the british government has learned saddam hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from africa.

and. looming use. six six. six. zero and

past. in taiwan and ulti is available in hotels friends to convince myself to tell by the onion trees going come i know my hotel been cold sweats or tell a cold cold ground a big joke to tell my knowledge comes from a god so it sounds like hotel princess in bangkok run to some hotels and call a dream hotel in bangkok so if you tell some tara grant a phone call comes to civic hotel bangkok remember and hotel bank on clothes i haven't even called a roll in the indian. for

the full story we've got. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers. stories so that we see financial crime. debt crises can

save us from a shop credit downgrade as we reported. last week in over two years with problems in europe also a crisis point the markets are bracing for monday. plus egypt's toppled president goes on trial on charges of mass murder and corrupt should people feel the revolutionary regime the play station is little better. and in neighboring israel hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in another president a nationwide rally to modeling the government living costs go. hello this is a see you're watching the weekly our roundup of the top stories in the past seven days with me kevin oh into night it's.