Interview: Medea Benjamin hammering Richard Perle on Jim Lehrer

[Wetzelbill]

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the funding request and how to spend the money, we get two perspectives. Richard Perle serves on the Defense Policy Board, which advises the secretary of defense, and was assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan.

Medea Benjamin is founding director of Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights organization. She recently visited Iraq with human rights organizations tracking the reconstruction.

Medea Benjamin, we all just heard Paul Bremer lay out the spending plan and the priorities for the Iraq reconstruction. Is it the right plan, and is it the right amount of money?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: No, it's not the right plan. Bremer doesn't have an idea what he's doing. I just came back from Iraq, it's a disaster, people don't have electricity, water, garbage collection, sewage collection, jobs. They're angry, they're bitter. They say the United States money is not getting down to the people, it's going to Halliburton, it's going to Bechtel. We should not approve this $87 billion, instead there should be immediate transition over to the United Nations and as soon as possible to Iraqi self rule

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec03/funding_9-22.html

[Doug Decker]

1. I happened to catch that on TV last night...

it was great. Medea tore Perle up. Perle was totally clueless.

[buckfush2]

2. hmm not the same show I saw

the benjamin chick was horrible- jumping in , cutting off BOTH Suarez and Perle, raising her voice to a shrill level.

Altho I agree 100% with what she was saying, I think she did more harm than good.

It was probly a setup, to make Perle seem more reasonable, just like PBS did during the war with pro voices always assured and in control, and the antis looking and sounding silly.

VRWC continues

[aquart]

3. Someone named a girl baby Medea? MEDEA???

I have to take that in before I absorb anything else.

[buckfush2]

4. yup

and she looked just like you'd expect-

hippyish, long blond hair, peasant type dress- clearly designed to sway voters to Perle's points

[mistertrickster]

5. I read the transcript . . . she sounded righteously indignant to me.

And frankly I think it's about time the passion starts flowing in the veins of activists again.

Our country's going down the tubes here folks, now is not the time for cold fish analysis--we've got to whip up some response in the distracted multitudes.

[Wetzelbill]

6. Exactly

She comes off shrill, however, she showed some sand and got after Perle pretty good. Personally, I thought she made an ass of him by challenging him to go around Baghad with her and take to the streets without bodyguards. Her "you know better sitting in Washington, DC?" line was classic.

I thought Perle didn't look rational at all. He looked like a guy who had no real answers and was giving a stump assessment.

[Gin]

7. Her voice wasn't shrill.....and...men interrupt all the time...

she kept making her point and it was a good one. The Iraq Perle sees, with armed protection in a small confined space, is not the general living situation for the rest of the people.

Perle was ticked and all he could say was " I guess you don't care about the Iraqi people"

What a sorry, cowardly loser he is. When we give it right back at them...them stutter...stammer...and then say..."You don't care about the Iraqi people."

Medea has more courage than any man, or woman I know! Way to go Medea!

[Wetzelbill]

8. definitely courageous

I was proud that she laid into him like that. Perle is a coward. A big one.