letter to paul wolfowitz. "harper's" magazine story.end of it, help us learn the lessons of iraq so we might extract something of iraq so that we might extract something of value in return for all the sacrifices made there. forgive me for saying so, but you owe it to your country. what do you think are the primary lessons of the war in iraq? >> i think there are important lessons and some still apply to what we face in that tragic part of the world today. i think it's important, many of your viewers were still in grade school, i imagine, when many of the events that led up to this took place. one has to go back to at least 1991 and the gulf war and the end of that war. i was with secretary baker on his first trip to saudi arabia right after that war when the rebellions were still taking place and i heard senior saudi officials plead with him to support these uprisings. they said the worst thing you can do is leave saddam in power. for complicated reasons we didn't respond to that request. the shia were slaughtered under the eyes of our

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in a 1998 letter to president clinton, paul wolfowitz, donald rumsfeld and either neoconservatives urge the president to take action to remove saddam's regime from power. the neocons align with an ex patriot. he head the iraqi congress, defectors lobbying to get rid of saddam. >> i say to you now that the opposition is united in its aim of getting rid of saddam and establishing democracy. >> he was a very impressive and effective spokesman for the iraqi opposition to saddam. >> very slick operator who was skillful enough, to contain the idea that he could step in as a new leader of iraq. but that was totally divorce from realities on the ground. >> i george walker bush to solemnly swear -- >> when george bush is sworn in in 2001, rukss feld, wolfowitz and fife take the r reigns of policy. vice president cheney switches course and supports regime change in iraq. motive awaits opportunity. for the bush administration, 9/11 provides it. hey, our salads. [ bop ] hey, ou [ bop ] you can do that all you want, i don't like v8 juice. [ male announcer ] how about v8 v-fusion. a full serving of v

. >> paul wolfowitz, bush's deputy secretary of defense has had saddam on his personal enemies list for two decades. >> every time he survives something he sends a message to his enemies, i outlast my enemies, and if you are on the wrong list when i'm still around, you'll be in trouble. >> paul wolfowitz had become convinced that if we looked strongly enough, if we looked closely enough, we'd find the hand of saddam hussein behind virtually every terrorist attack on the united states. >> even before 9/11, wolfowitz and undersecretary of defense douglas fife had been driving administration policy on iraq. >> some of us believed you will have a saddam hussein problem forever unless you get rid of him. >> meeting notes from the afternoon of 9/11 showed donald rumsfeld tasking a top aide to find the best info fast. good enough to hit saddam hussein. he asks the aide to get evidence from wolfowitz of a saddam connection with ubl, osama bin laden. >> we all looked at each other like, what are you talking about? who the hell -- saddam hussein? bin laden hates him. he's a her tick. there's no c

there's paul wolfowitz defending it over the weekend, and michael oh han lon.ars ago began the long difficult work of liberating 25 million iraqis, all who played a roll in history deserve our respect and appreciation. the nervous thing is that he has the gall to use the word history and saying it was all about liberating the iraqi people. they're trying to do it. they're using the tenth year anniversary of the war to make you believe it didn't happen the way it happened. to try to make you believe it was all about liberating the iraqi people from the tyrant. they want you to believe what they proposed to the american people ten, will he have enyears ago, go liberate them from a tyrant. the american said we should, and we went and were greeted as lib ray tors, we knew it would take eight and a half years and cost millions and lose many people. they say it was hard but that difficult liberate work is what we signed up for and has to be remembered as the history of that war. that's not the history of that war. there's not a memory hole deep enough or wide enough

paul wolfowitz didn't serve in vietnam. george bush didn't. better things to do during vietnam. he got four deferments. you had to send my generation's sons and daughters into war without the right equipment, without enough troops, and based on faulty intelligence. it's immoral, it's reckless, and it's wrong. >> the only thing i would say to that, of course, it wasn't just the bush administration making that determination, it was our allies in france, it was our allies in britain. we had a coalition of the willing who actually went over to iraq and said, this was the right war to fight at this time. i agree with you. i have serious reservations about whether we should have gone in there or not. and you are going to go into war, you have to damn well sure you have all the equipment that you need. were mistakes made? absolutely. but will this ultimately tarnish the gop? no. >> we'll have to leave it there. lots more coming up. congressman patrick murphy, republican strategist, ron christie, thanks to both of you, for being here. and folks, don't

. >> that was paul wolfowitz.e now correspondent for the nbc correspondent, and the book "selling the iraq war." i want to play more of wolfowitz's response when he was asked if he would do it again. >> bottom line, would -- given what you know today, would you have done it again? >> might have -- i certainly would have done it differently, particularly with respect to counterinsurgency strategy. >> in an interview with the uk sunday time, wolfowitz went on to say that the war spiraled out of control. and the most consequential failure was to understand the tenacity. >> it's a remarkable piece of sound. in fact, if you listen closely, he started to say "might have" which would be an enormous concession on his part. first thing, we would have heard from any of the architects and let's be clear, paul wolfowitz was one of the most passionate and vigorous and influential advocates within the bush administration for the invasion of iraq. i think that qualifies him as being one of the architects of this war. but for him

paul wolfowitz did make the crime iraqi oil revenues would be able to pay for this conflict.nd not only would the selling the war point and the costs of the war, you know, in your last segment you made this great point about the media. it's even -- you can go even further than that. the media was complicit. the media took an active role in selling this war. they met with wolfowitz. there's one famous meeting where you had top columnists and pundits meeting with wolfowitz trying to figure out the best way to sell this thing. it's not a shock the facts we were getting weren't accurate either. >> opinion columnists on the right or mainstream reporters? >> mainstream reporters to opinion columnist. there's a famous scene in bob woodward's, his last book about the iraq war where paul wolfowitz brings in columnists from "the atlantic," one from what was formally "newsweek" and says i'm bringing you in as advisers to pitch the war to the american people. >> i'm with you. you're dead right. if anybody was there, they have to answer for it. lawrence lindsay, white house economic advis

reasonable question to look at the cost of your action afterwards, to see if it justifies it, and when paul wolfowitz says the only problem is the war went on after we reached baghdad, otherwise it had been great up to them, is almost like saying if we had an army of a million giant flying robots, things would have worked out better. it's denying reality. to ron's point, you asked him how could they think this way? they're not concerned with the real world with expertise, with better measuring costs and benefits because they think they're above it. they don't pay the costs. this is all a giant lab experiment for them, and they know better than the intelligence people. they know better than the foreign -- >> it's such a stupid answer. the admiral, not a bad guy, didn't want to attack us at pearl harbor. he would have said, you know, if it had stopped at pearl harbor, it would have been a pretty good war for us. what a stupid thing to say from the time we arrived in baghdad, the war was over. no, it just began. your last thought, ron? >> look, what david says is just right. they ran an experiment on th

there was paul wolfowitz and then .done rumsfeld said twenty billion maybe too much because of our program because of iraqi oil. iraq will be able to pay for reconstruction itself when more of the promises made to get still unpaid but out of almost sixty billion dollars that the u.s. did eventually spend on iraq reconstruction much was squandered the most recent study puts the total cost of the war at two trillion dollars that the u.s. the authors of the reports say the country will continue to pay and over the next four decades that cost could reach six trillion dollars yes to me accounts for both government expenses on training and compensating disabled veterans and the wars brought impact on the u.s. economy but on top of the human loss and dollars spent there's also been a political price to pay for american credibility and influence went down well iran's went up and we're still living with the consequences of this ten years later so law of unintended consequences are you know polar moment ended when i went into bag

tonight instead of taking responsibility, paul wolfowitz is criticizing the war he helped to create.oined now by eugene robinson, pulitzer prize winning columnist for the washington post. gene robinson, you're a wordsmith of the first order. was it a lie or a mistake? >> i have to go to lie. simply because, you know, if they say, well, we didn't know, know, know that he didn't have weapons of mass destruction, but they knew that the evidence they were supposedly relying on for wmd was shaky, because they were told that by the guy who went to gather the evidence. he said, this isn't really yellow cake uranium or what you said it was. >> right. >> and because it's clear that from day one of the bush administration, they had iraq on their minds, and they had getting rid of saddam hussein on their minds. the idea that they didn't know he would be tenacious? look, what this ten-year anniversary says to me is that they lied, they failed, whatever. we failed too, you know, and i'm speaking for journalism,ll

whatever the next war is going to be from their perspective, so there was no price to be paid, paul wolfowitzrse 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. >> an

reasonable question to look at the cost of your action afterward to see if it justifies it and when paul wolfowitze only problem is that, you know, the war went on after we reached baghdad otherwise it had been great up until then is almost like saying if we had an arm of a million giant flying robots things would have turned out better. it's denying reality and to ron's point, you ask them how can they think this way, they're not concerned with the real world, with expertise, with measuring cost and benefits because they think they're above it. they don't pay the costs. this is all a giant lab experiment for them and they know better than the intelligence people, they know better than the -- >> it's a stupid answer, though. because admiral yamamoto who is not a bad guy, he didn't want to attack us at pearl harbor, he'die he would have said if it had stopped at pearl harbor it would have been a good war for us. from the time we arrived in baghdad, the war was over. no, it just began! >> your last thought, ryan. >> they ran an experiment on the whole globe and it failed and at this point that's why

everybody from paul wolfowitz, my buddy, to jon huntsman, to clint eastwood, to the romney for president campaign manager, to the secretary of the new hampshire young republicans. more than 130 republican officials and former officials. but even with that brief, and even if you go beyond just that brief to consider pro gay rights republicans who didn't sign on to that, but we still know their position, even with all of that, it is still a stretch to even say that there is a split in the republican party on this issue. i mean, of the 232 republicans in the house, precisely two are on record as pro equal rights for gay people. two out of 232. that is less than 1% of elected republicans in the house. in the senate, there are 45 republicans, precisely one of them is on record as pro equal rights for gay people. and that's brand-new for him. that's rob portman who just came out with that position two weeks ago, after saying that his son is gay. so one senator out of 45 and two representatives out of more than 200. that's not a split in the party, that's like a sliver of the party. that's mayb

there's a famous scene in bob woodward's, his last book about the iraq war where paul wolfowitz bringsn columnists from "the atlantic," one from what was formally "newsweek" and basically says to them, look, i'm bringing you guys in as advisers. help us figure out a way to pitch this war to the american people. none of those journalists disclosed that in their future columns to promote the war. >> i'm with you. you're dead right. if anybody was there, they have to answer for it. lawrence lindsay, white house economic adviser at the time, made war with iraq make it sound like it wouldn't cause a dent in the u.s. economy. a washington times interview quotes him saying, "the likely economic effects would be relatively small. if the united states goes to war in iraq to depose saddam hussein." he went on to praise the war's upside. "the key issue is oil and a regime change in iraq would facilitate an increase in world oil which would tend to lower oil prices here." in 2002 -- there's more of this. >> oil prices went up. the number i always used to say when i talk about iraq often and paul a

paul wolfowitz was in the first administration.e people believed they made a mistake, a.m. although they are loathed to admit they made a mistake about anything. and also they had made a political mistake over the clinton years that the clinton administration was soft on national security and iraq and saddam hussein was also put on displace and they were determined to be muscular and to prove a point. so they, the architects of the iraq war were very savvy political and military -- getting rid of saddam hussein invading iraq was one of them. >> what was it that inspired you to write this movie and to do the documentary afterwards? was it one of these unanswered questions and one of the great mysteries that still remain? >> i often think that the story in it's totality is so stunning that it's such a moment in american history it really deserves to be told and retold and it deserves to continued excavation. the people in this documentary who we personal spoke to who gave his personal opinion on this who was sitting on the stage of t

and you have got people like paul wolfowitz and all of these people to come on and do repainings to try it -- >> and the justification they used. >> hal: yeah never mind the amount of bad people we allow to control large areas of land in africa, but saddam hussein we needed to go after even though he was our buddy, and the chemical weapons that we used on the kurds, for example, were ones he bought from the pharmaceutical companies back in the '80s and the argument from these guys largely is we just didn't finish it off at the time. and we need a huge base there so we can keep everyone in that region in order, until we drain the area of oil. >> how much money did haliburton make off of the war? >> hal: i don't know. i think they are still making money off of it. let's first go to jennifer in delaware. >> caller: hi, hal hi, jacki. >> good morning. >> caller: can you hear me? >> hal: yes, absolutely. >> caller: well, both myself and my two littlest ones we love you. i have a little crush on you but my husband doesn't know about that. >> hal: and i hope they are enjoying lab rats. >> how