saddam hussein had killed him with his wmd.the target we had to be focussed on if we avoided a situation where we ended up having to deal with a terrorist organization equipped with that deadly capabilities. saddam provided to the terrorists, he was making payments to the families of suicide. >> a lot were doing that as well. >> not making the $25,000 payments. you couldn't go after everybody at once. we went after the ones afghanistan first and iraq that we thought represented the biggest threat to the united states. it was the right call >> we will have more on the interview and let's discuss what we heard from the former vice president. joining us is analyst gloria gorger and analyst peter berg. he wrote at length about the debunked connection with the longest war. you are an expert on all of this. did the former vice president give us the picture between intelligence connecting iraq supposedly and 9/11 >> he uses interesting construction and we never confirmed he was involved in 9/11. that was a strange thing to say given t

which means we can't be more than five years away from finding saddam's wmds. [laughter] since that tragic day, the american government has done whatever is necessary to safeguard the home hasn't from enhanced interrogation to inventing the phrase "the homeland." [laughter] we even tried to find common ground with muslim extremists but electing one of them president. [laughter] over and over... over an over this man has proven that he is not serious about keeping us safe. which brings us to my new segment "this week in national sec-oward-ty. folks, whenever the terrorists have come up with a new way to attack aair travel, the tsa has found new and innovative ways to overreact, so travelers can then relax and enjoy their two-foot by two-foot space next to a crying baby in a pressureized tube hurdling 40,000 feet in the air. but all this security is about to disappear thanks to homeland security chief janet napolitano. >> we hope that we will be able to make it easier for travelers. you won't have to take off so much, your shoes, your bell, everything as you go t

when we went in and we took down saddam hussein and we eliminated one of the guys that had been a prime source of weapons of mass destruction previously and produced the equipment on the stockpiles of the time that went and he clearly was a proofreader, potential proliferators in that kind of capability but we got rid of saddam hussein as a threat and five days after we went in and captured sunnistan the press announcement he was surrendering his material for enriching uranium and the stocks and the weapons design he surrender all of those and now they are in our possession so we took him out of the nuclear business. pretty good given what has happened since in libya would not have been good as difficult as it had been over there if marked off the had the nuclear weapons.

would have you talked to saddam?ll: no, i would have gone bush the other way, the president's father and i would have strangled them with a blockade. i would have no-fly zoned it as they would have done and then when the drones were developed -- >> you have to look at the reports that were done by the iraq survey group, for example, it was clear when we come came into office in 2000 that saddam was a threat. he had between the time of the first bush administration and this bush administration completely ignored 16 u.n. security council resolutions, that the sanctions regime was crumbling. so it's just not accurate to say he was in a box. we could have strangled him. and after 9/11, couldn't run the risk -- that saddam was going to share technology about wmd. >> bill: i don't expect you and your father to agree with me, ok? but the treasury of the united states has spent in iraq has come back into our country in a very negative way. >> we need more time and i feel confident that i could convince you of my position. >>

. >> narrator: the president needed a convincing reason for war with saddam hussein. george tenet and the cia said they had no evidence saddam had helped al qaeda, but secretary rumsfeld did. a secret unit at the pentagon claimed it had found a connection. >> goodman: they needed an office that would produce the intelligence that the cia wouldn't produce. rumsfeld said, "i can solve your problem," and they created the office of special plans. >> benjamin: so they're going to do their own analysis. they're going to show what the cia's been missing all along about the true relationship between saddam and al qaeda. >> narrator: they worked in a vault deep inside the pentagon. they had what is known as "all source clearances"-- total access to intelligence information. >> maloof: i went into the system, our classified system, to see what did we know about terrorist groups and their relationships, as well as their connection, associations with not only al qaeda but also with state sponsors. >> narrator: the information was rarely vetted. instead, it moved up the chain of c

so we got rid of saddam hussein as a threat. five days after we went in and captured saddam, wal-mart dokki at a price announces that he was surrendering his nuclear materials. he had centrifuges, uranium feedstock, a weapons design and he surrendered all of those and they are not in the possession of the united states. so we took him out of the nuclear business. pretty good given what i've been libya since. it would not do good to have the difficulties they had over there if moammar gadhafi. we also took down the khan network. the mastermind of the pakistani nuclear program. then he went into business for himself like moammar gadhafi, selling nuclear vitelli rails. his biggest customer is libya, but he was always dealing with north korea and china on trade to some extent with iraq because saddam, but market off the a.q. khan alternative business from the standpoint of having to worry about than producing and or proliferating in using those materials. and we didn't get a handle on with north korea. in the chapter we were or two

your suggestion implies that the world's not better off with saddam hussein gone. >> no, no. i think the world is better off having the iraqi people, an important country, with a constitution they drafted, with a government that's respectful of the various diverse elements in that country. is it perfect? no. are people still going to be killing each other from time to time in that part of the world? you bet. and -- but it is, i think, a situation that is better today than it was then. now, it's taken time. it's taken money. it's taken lives. and that is always not predictable. i've watched your migration on the issue. and it is -- it's an understandable migration. >> i just think the costs have -- everything in life is a cost-benefit analysis. you can't pretend otherwise. >> mm-hmm. >> and at some point the costs overwhelm any potential benefits. and it just seems as though in terms of the energy we have devoted, if you look back, and what we got out of it, it's tough to make the case that you would do it again. >> there are unintended benefits and unintended consequences, as

like saddam hussein. guest: jack did not believe the second iraq war that began in 2003 was a particularly good idea, and he did not think the iraq war that began in 1991, as a result of saddam's invasion of kuwait, was a good idea either. he describes how he was involved in the diplomatic maneuvering after saddam's invasion of kuwait that was part of an attempt to get saddam to withdraw from kuwait. he described how saddam indicated he was willing to do so. quickly, the interest in negotiating a withdrawal was changed. the country became fixed on some -- on extracting saddam by force. host: kane bassein of jordan -- king hussein of jordan was "a survivor." how? guest: he was an honest broker. he would talk to anybody in hi s quest to try to bring about a comprehensive peace settlement in the middle east. he secretly negotiated for years with the us release -- the israelis to settle the differences -- their differences. this called for an end from the hositlit -- hostilities via the return of the west ban

very warm welcome to his home here in moscow of letterman from saddam to a low popularity and make him a perfect presidential candidate says president little bed and he refused to run a second time. to the green separate themselves to get the riots the special times deadline made today hot on the heels of a german parliament vote to drastically expound the power and the reach of the e.u. bailout. and subs refuse to dismantle their barricades on the south if possible hold a fight naysaying them or treat the area. next the debate says takes off his guest discuss the case of the use of the un. live. live. in the story. below and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the united nations the global body in search of a mission often derided as incompetent and ineffective the u.n. is also accused of being a fig leaf protecting and extending the interests of the rich powerful west well few call for its demise most see the need for drastic preform at the u.n. to serve the interests of all the slim can. cross the united nations i'm joined by ruth wedgwood in washington she's director of interna

hussein. >> we have saddam hussein. 18 months, for the life or death of this country. >> now, a koch spokesman denied the abc news that mr. koch was not referring to president obama. they're denying he was refer to president obama. quote, they say, charles koch was not referring to president obama in his remarks. the mother of all wars is a common phrase frequently attributed to saddam hussein on the eve of the persian gulf war, amid record unemployment, and loss of liberty, the u.s. has been plunged into its own mother of all wars. even though, the mother of all wars is about the coming election. do the koch brothers think they're at war? charles and his brother david have thrown more than $100 million behind a slew of right-wing causes, funding everything from voter i.d. laws to anticlimate change, research in that area, supporting tea party initiatives, fighting to repeal president obama's affordable care, and they're showing no signs of stopping. listen to how charles worked up donors on the last day of the seminar.

so we got rid of saddam hussein as a threat. we, five days after we went in and captured saddam, moammar gadhafi held a press announcement that he was surrendering all of his nuclear materials. he had centrifuges for enriching uranium, he had uranium feed stock, he had a weapons design, and he surrendered all of those, and they're now in our possession, the unite has them. so we took him out of the nuclear business. pretty good given what's happened since in libya, it would not have been good to have the difficulties they'd had over there if moammar gadhafi had had nuclear weapons. we also took down the aq khan network. khan was the mastermind of the pakistani nuclear program. then he went into business for himself, black market operation selling nuclear materials. his biggest customer was libya, but he also was dealing with north korea and to some ec tent with iraq -- extent with iraq. so saddam, moammar gadhafi, aq khan all put out of business from the standpoint of having to worry about them producing and/or proliferating or

saddam did had representatives that went to niger seeking yellow cake from their government.blem was u once awe apologize for it, which is what happened in this case, it started a feeding frenzy. the press went wild. then there was the great manhunt to find who was responsible for putting those lines in the president's speech as though it was not true. it became part of the notion that somehow the president lied about what we found with respect to iraq. because that statement was in his state of the union speech. it was a true, accurate statement. >> sean: still to this day confirmed by british intelligence. >> never changed. in fed into the effort to -- this fed into the effort to claim that my office and/or others karl rove for example, scooter libby was my top guy who they had been involved, or charged in effect unfairly, as having leaked information about joe wilson's wife. it turned out the leak was rich armitage at the state department deputy secretary of defense. it lead to a long two year investigation that was enormously pain tpourl a lot of people. >> condi said we

i had been trying to get comment from them for days on that saddam hussein line over and over again.it got out, they were embarrassed by it, i had to ask them specifically. if they want to change the goal post now and say, we weren't comparing obama to saddam hussein, we were actually appreciatively quoting saddam hussein, well, you know, we have the audio in full at bradblog.com, the story's at motherjones.com. we are transparent about what we do, and i think folks can take a look at that information and decide for themselves what charles koch was really saying in those remarks. >> match up the nominee? >> it's perfect for them, rick perry's the one who's going to make regulations disappear more. no laws, no regulations for industries like the koch industry. perry is perfect for that. he's perfect for theinheritance taxes. this is a guy that wants unions to disappear, labor to take us to a side paying kind of america. >> they'll take perry over romney? >> absolutely.

seen the massacres that saddam left in his wake.there will always be people that disagree with what you want to do when you're in government. and i thought, well, if that's the attitude of the gadhafi family, then it must be a pretty scary place to live. >> reporter: when nato started bombing in the spring, aisha ditched the bottled blond look, switched to eva peron mood, defiant on the balcony of casa gadhafi. she said to nato, when you leave, take your tails with you. the tames of shame and filth. but aisha just fled by limo to algeria, where, apparently, she gave birth and apparently, she just called an arab news agency to say her dad's

five days after we went in and captured saddam, moammar gadhafi had a press announcement that he was surrendering all of his nuclear materials. he had uranium stocks, weapons design, and he surrendered those and they're in the possession of the united states. so we took him out of the nuclear business. pretty good with what went on in libya. would not have been good if gadhafi had nuclear weapons. we took down the master mind of the pakistan nuclear materials, and was dealing with north korea and iraq. so saddam, gadhafi, khan put out of business from the standpoint of worrying about them producing and or proliferating, using, those materials. the one we didn't get a happen on was north korea. and what the chapter you referred to, that i call "set back" is the story of how we did not deal effectively with north korean threat. so i think if you're keeping score, three out of four is not bad. but the problem is that threat is very real, and north korea is especially dangerous because they now tested two weapons. they have -- we caught them red-handed with respect to their providing a p

many of the senior officials of the bush administration believed that we left iraq and saddam hussein as an unresolved problem after the first gulf war. i don't think in the ends that the country would have accepted it. but the same arguments about weapons of mass destruction, which are arguments that proved to be false but were widely believed, would have existed with or without september 11. so it's possible that very costly war moit have happened anyway. chris: that's news to me n a way it meets some of the my scepticism about the case, way for war. you were wounded badly in 2006 covering for cbs. your thauts on the way all of this tumbled out of 9/11, including the war in which you got hurt. >> well, one of the initial things the attacks of 9/11 did for the united states was bring the war against terrorism home for all of us. we lost 3,000 people thatdy. -- that day. later we lost twice that number in u.s. service americans including 30 members in the recent cha nook crash. what i worry is the initial pull-together of our society has broken down. that increasingly we are divided.

the shock and awe, surgical strike getting rid of saddam, but no intention to remake domestic institutions in iraq in the beginning. the ideas that we're going to take off the head, but leave the body in place, and the institutions are going to hold. it's, of course, later on when paul brenner arrives, there's a much more transformative goal and the goal of rebuilding iraq from the ground up becomes u.s. policy, but the fact that's not the way the united states went in has profound consequences for the next couple of years as the u.s. struggles to catch up with the new policy and build the resources to do it. it's not until 2006 that we get a real strategy for clear hold and build and so forth in iraq. obama is a tricky case. you might think that someone who spent a lot of time doing community organizing would be an institution builder abroad, but i actually, you know, from what evidence we've seen, i think the more useful pieces of information from his previous background is his opposition to the iraq war which is what he's perhaps most famous for on the foreign policy front before his el

once already please come up if you have twelve years of that which is what we had with saddam hussein and you then come to the point where you say this is your final chance and he still does not comply then it's important that you take the ultimate sanction after that what about what happened afterwards there in both iraq and afghanistan the real violence began after the dictatorships were toppled do you see that happening in libya i think there is a danger of this and what you saw was certainly in iraq was a complete failure of the occupying powers then to stabilize the situation and they let the the iraqi army keep their weapons but they disbanded the army and they said you must go back to your villages but you can keep your weapons this was insanity absolutely insanity and we must not be in a position of what we've done is created greater instability in libya that is absolutely clear. but nonetheless we equally must avoid is becoming an occupation force i think afghanistan is a very good example russia has a very bitter experience of afghanistan as does britain of being an occupyin

. >> reporter: the wars in iraq and afghanistan toppled from power the taliban and saddam hussein.>> before september 11th, 2001, you had two regimes, one in afghanistan, the taliban, and in iraq saddam hussein's regime, which were counterweights to iranian influence, which were adversaries to the iranian government. >> not only are those enemies gone but the fact of the matter is iran has far greater influrns in both iraq and afghanistan. >> reporter: today iran has strengthened economic ties with iraq and afghanistan with hundreds of billions of dollars in trade and building projects. as washington begins drawing down troops in afghanistan, tehran has bolstered political ties with kabul. the islamic republic is already a staunch supporter of iraq's shia-led government. >> i think what the u.s. didn't anticipate is that by replacing saddam hussein with a shiite-led political order in iraq, we were giving iran, which is also a majority shiite country, tremendous influence over a big chunk of the iraqi population. >> reporter: u.s. officials downplay iran's post-9/11 influence, citi

battlefield takes place tremendous amounts of damage done by aerial bombs by napalm boy chemical saddam's whether it's a sonic boom six factory marine mammals or it's the burning oil fields here in iraq or it's destroyed coral reefs in the pacific for women purposes the list just goes on and on the geneva conventions of nineteen forty nine states that they are shall be taken in the war to protect involved against widespread long term and severe damage the united states although it is accepted almost all of the provisions political one has taken exception to that. it would be much brighter if you knew no bounds from phones to impression been so. nice for instance on t.v. don't comb. welcome back you're watching r t here is a reminder of the top stories and is the international calls on all sides in the union civil war to brand human rights violations what sort of lived jubilation after the fall of gadhafi some libyans say they're now being abused by those who fought for their freedom. at a time when the u.s. is tightening its fiscal belt the floor showing private jail seek more revenue fro

from ground experience in or the confrontation with the islamists or the extremists or my level of saddam has pushed to click. of the past in or two or three months has shown that actually and the unit which had been trained by the americans did not take part in confronting those islamists it was the defected army and the people who have every confidence actually confronted the islamists in abyan you know ali abdullah saleh has got some units around nearly five to ten thousand and they're never at all confronted the extremists and again so from from experience underground it shows that the people who are going to come these you also on the on the ground now they're democrats they're people asking for a civilian government and for democracy they're not going to be siding with our padda that's one of the mistakes which our friends in and as i said are. welcoming in the people who are going to come there will never poll be siding with a paddle of the islamists it is it is one of those fallacies which i think our friends in the states now realize that the point is to make here is that our peo

notion that if you knocked down the biggest scariest arab dictator saddam hussein positive change would follow everywhere you know you could make that argument but the bigger problem is that the united states proved incompetent in iraq in stabilizing the country and achieving what it talked about so i think that's been a terrible terrible mistake with consequences that will will last destabilize the region as i look at the arab spring i'm reminded that the story of what's happening to that part of the world is so much bigger it's just on a canvas whose dimensions we forget about and i've been writing about the arab world for thirty years now and i was surveyed of the story is going to have a happy ending it may not have a happy ending the next ten years it certainly hasn't in the last ten years but it's a process that i think people could take right we're almost out of time john i'd like to i've been almost out of time and i want to ask john john do you think the united states will go to war out of choice again in the name of fighting terrorism no. no i think when i disagree with some o

saddam hussein had refused to reveal as he was obliged to under the chapter seven of the united nations resolution whether or not he had got rid of the nuclear chemical and. biological weapons that we knew he had previously had but he refused to do and even as late as every hans blix was saying we do not know whether he still has these he listed a whole load of v.x. nerve gas mustard gas different agents chemical agents so we didn't know and he was not willing to allow. other countries to come to interview the scientists to see the order trails to know whether he got rid of them or not in that situation it would have been ludicrous to have had a million strong army but was on the doorstep of iraq simply go away when the resolution four hundred forty one had given iraq given him a final opportunity to comply with its obligations how the world done it then what would have happened if he would have simply rebuilt those programs with impunity knowing that he was absolutely untouchable and the world would not do anything against him we would have then been precipitated to a far more major co

only garbs behind a mother of all wars to be waged against president obama who koch refers to as saddam hussein take a listen. again that was billionaire charles coke calling president obama saddam hussein and urging his rich buddies to prepare for the mother of all wars later coco's on to tell his troops to shell out a million millions of bucks towards that we're effort pocket change to most of the oligarchy in the room what charles koch is referring to is the billionaires war against working people and it's this very same war the james hoffa spoke of yesterday and on my radio show today. there is a war on workers and anybody that doesn't know about the what our primary day started the war and i'm straight ok with somebody who's going to be a loser at a winner and we're going to be the winners big got they got that money we got the book we got the votes the battle lines are being drawn the billionaires are arming up at hoffa was urging working people to wake up and realize that it's a war against the new deal against the contract that our government made with all of us after world war