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.

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

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

. >> 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 co

. >> stephen: but we already did that by invading iraq and getting rid of saddam hussein. >> and that went so well. >> stephen: well, we won. we won there. we went in there. we got rid of the bad guy, unless you'd like saddam back. just go ahead and say it. you want saddam back. >> new york but... >> stephen: okay. good. then they should be thanking us. didn't we send a message to the arab world that this is how you change things, and they went, jesus, we could do that ourselves, except minus the jesus part. >> they actually did. >> stephen: did they really? >> no. in fact, they were rejecting the model we established in both iraq and afghanistan. it didn't workment ten years later we're still in both countries. ten years later there are more suicide bombers in iraq than we have ever suffered from. greater deaths in afghanistan last month than at any time since we went inch the extraordinary thing that's happening in the region is the muslims are taking proactive steps to challenge extremism to, challenge autocrats and create a whole different environment in the region. and that's som

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.

. >> 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.

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.

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

in retrospect, knowing what we know now does that change your opinion about saddam hussein, about iraq, about whether or not this was the right thing to do and whether or not the world is better off? >> it doesn't sean. partly because the sort of shorthand that says we didn't find any wmd. if you go back and look at the report of the iraq survey group that was put together by the experts that went in, surveyed, spend a couple of years looking at all the information that was available. while they didn't find stockpiles they did fan a government that had the capacity to go back that production of weapons of mass destruction. and the -- had the basic raw terms had the personnel and technical know how. there was every reason to believe that's what saddam hussein would do as soon as the sanctions were lifted that the international community tried time pose on him. the facts are, to say that there were no stockpiles, that's accurate. to say there was no wmd at all or no interest or threat from it is not accurate. there was a significant threat that existed. >> sean: i want to ask you one que

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

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 two if we all work hard an honorable lawyer and lived honorable lives and we could achieve the american dream of a comfortable lif

whatever it wanted with people that the united states enemies of the time he wanted to take out saddam hussein i mean the two hated each other. some of them one we guarded hussein is a corrupt secular arab dictator which he was right but of course osama bin laden is an evil islamicist terrorist but they hated each other right so they weren't colluding in iraq and there's no evidence to show that and it was kind of a farfetched thing in the in the media despite many neoconservatives trying to make these two links and i so i think you know there was clearly an attempt to go after iraq and use nine eleven to do so and of course the terrorism spiked the statistics spiked after us invaded iraq so of course that made the terrorism worse and that's not that's even if you exclude the terrorist attacks against u.s. forces in iraq so i'm talking about worldwide terrorist attacks i see other things i don't greatly oh i didn't step on your own your tongue but i just want to get this question in because now as we look at libya and syria is this a foreign policy that has continued by the united states the y

or at least in certain government circles it was damned because the united nations didn't make saddam hussein behave. the united nations is only as strong as the states who are part of it who decide to do something and the major powers have a bigger voice in the smaller powers that's the rules that's the way it's always operated that's the way it will always write. good enough truth is that good enough in the day and age of where everyone should have a voice and and have have legitimacy because they are right not just because they're powerful. well i certainly do agree with tom that the security council's regime at least makes major powers come to new york to talk about whether force should be used so if you think kind of moral intellectual engagements worth something the u.n. usually does fill that role fairly successfully but i would disagree with the assertion that that small powers are weak i have my own differences with how the general assembly operates it operates in clax and cliques and operates in groups that actually often decide the issue before they get to the general assembly but

wrote but the time was that the intelligence was clear there was no operational link between saddam hussein and al qaeda so this this was a war of choice that was conducted as a loss because of the. notion that if you knock down the biggest scariest kater saddam hussein positive change will follow everywhere you know you could make that argument but the bigger problem is that the united states proved incompetent in iraq and going in and stabilizing the country and achieving what it talked about so i think that's been a terrible terrible mistake with consequences that will allow us to stabilize the region as i look to europe spring i'm reminded that the story of what's happening to that part of the world is so much bigger it's just like canvas was dimensions we forget about and i've been writing about their world for thirty years now i will serve it up 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 or we're almost out of time john and i can i can almost i m