Matthews asks Rice about Downing St. on Hardball

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Tue Jun-14-05 09:18 AM
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Matthews asks Rice about Downing St. on Hardball

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http://www.noticias.info/asp/aspComunicados.asp?nid=74442&src=0

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Interview With Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball
Secretary Condoleezza Rice Washington, DC June 13, 2005

/noticias.info/
QUESTION: Madame Secretary, there's a lot of concern in this country, as you know, about the strength and the violence of the insurgency. We just got these two memos in the last couple of weeks that — they're called the "Downing Street Memos" — one of them is a memo from now British Ambassador to the United States David Manning, in his capacity as advisor to British Prime Minister Blair, where he said that in March of 2002 he met with you and among the big questions that were still out there, in your mind, was having to do with what we're going to be like — what's it going to be like in Iraq the morning after. Do you recall those meetings?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, of course David Manning is a fine public servant, and an extraordinary foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Blair, and we had a number of conversations — I don't remember this one in particular — but I would just note, Chris, that was a year before the actual invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime. We had not yet gone to the United Nations to try and resolve the issue through diplomatic means. But a lot of planning went on between March of 2002 and March 2003.

QUESTION: When the President made the decision or began to make the decision to topple Saddam Hussein, whatever it took, whatever means, whether it be multilateral — basically, the coalition forces. Was he calculating then the strength and violence of the current insurgency? Did you have a fix then on the size of this opposition we've faced at this point?

SECRETARY RICE: I think it's fair to say that we knew that there were a lot of unknowables about Iraq. The strength of the institutions — we were concerned, for instance that whether or not the ministries would be strong enough to stand up once you had taken away the kind of Baathist leadership that was supporting Saddam Hussein. We were certainly concerned about what to do about the armed forces, but it was our view — we thought at the time that the army would stand and fight. You could then demobilize that part of the army that was associated with Saddam Hussein and the remainder of the army could be brought for a transitional government in Iraq. But we were looking at all of these imponderables, all of these unknowns, in that period of time. I think we had, when we went to war, having tried everything diplomatically to avoid war, I think when we went to war, we had a plan for how to deal with the aftermath. There were a number of things that surprised us, including the fact that the army, in a sense, kind of melted away in those last days after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

QUESTION: Were you surprised that the army was able to slink away into the cities of Iraq and still maintain the power of its ordinance and its fighting ability?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it's not clear, to this day, the degree to which this is the structure of the old army. There are clearly a number of old Baathists, people who want to return the Saddam Hussein-like forces to power. There's also a significant number of people who've come in as foreign terrorists, who recognize the importance of Iraq to the war on terrorism. Therefore, fighting as if this is, in a sense, their last stand to make certain that democracy can't take hold in the Middle East. So I would never claim that the exact nature of this insurgency was understood at the time that we went to war. But that there might be forces after Saddam Hussein was overthrown — yes, that was understood.

QUESTION: Before we go on, that second memorandum that has been talked about, the one that was originally dubbed the "Downing Street Memo," said that the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy. What do you make of that word "fixed"? Is that an assertion that we were "fixing" the argument, making a case for intel that said there was a connection with al-Qaida, a connection with WMD, just to get the war started?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't understand. I can't go back and judge what was said.

QUESTION: What happened with that word "fixed", which is like "fix the World – fix the World Series"—

SECRETARY RICE: Right.

QUESTION: There's a British sense, which means just put things together.

SECRETARY RICE: Put things together. And I know the people who were involved in this. And someone like the head at that time of the British Intelligence Services was very much involved in the discussions we were having on intelligence. A lot of the intelligence was from Great Britain — from British sources. And the entire world thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. I think if the world had not thought that he had weapons of mass destruction, we wouldn't have had him under sanctions for 12 years, trying to deal with his weapons of mass destruction. And there's good reason to have thought that he did, given that he used them before, that in 1991, he had been much closer to a nuclear weapon that anyone thought. The important thing is that I think we've all taken a look at the intelligence problems of the time. We've made steps to try and improve the capability of the United States. And I think the British have, too, for intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. It's always going to be hard when you're dealing with very secretive regimes, when you're dealing with the dual-use capabilities that are usually involved in weapons of mass destruction. You know, Chris, the same chlorine that can be used in a swimming pool can be used in chemical weapons development. And so it's not easy, but the improvements that we've made to intelligence — the creation of a new Director of National Intelligence, the sharing of information, the changes in the way that sourcing is reported to policymakers — I think those are all things that we’ll — we've learned those lessons from the Iraq experience.

QUESTION: The interesting contradiction you just point to is the fact that the President in his State of the Union in 2003, used that reference to British Intelligence about the African — turned out not to be the case, apparently, or that's still murky — the purchase of the uranium from Niger, right?

SECRETARY RICE: Right.

QUESTION: And at the same time, British Intelligence is saying, "well, we don't have our act together." And yet we're trusting them.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, in fact, the British Intelligence Services are fine services. I don't think there's anyone in the world who would say they aren't one of the best services in the world. But the nature of the intelligence around Iraq was always hard. We were focused on a long pattern of engagement with weapons of mass destruction of Saddam Hussein. And, it's interesting, the report that Charles Duelfer did at the end, when the Iraq survey group reported, showed that this was somebody who was never going to lose his connection to weapons of mass destruction, who continued to harbor ambitions, continued to try to keep certain capabilities in place. Sooner or later, it was going to be necessary to deal with the unique circumstances of Iraq. A state that was linked to weapons of mass destruction, so linked that there had been 17 Security Council resolutions against him; who had used weapons of mass destruction before; who had invaded his neighbors twice; who had caused massive deaths of his own people, somewhere in the nature of 300,000 or more, people found in mass graves; and who was, by the way, still in a state of suspended war with the United States and with Great Britain. As we tried to fly these no-fly zones, to try to keep his forces under control, he’s shooting as us. So this is a pretty unique set of circumstances that led to war against Iraq. And that — we had to, sooner or later, deal with this terrible tyrant in the middle of the Middle East.

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