Ex-CIA Chief Discusses U.S. Reasons for War
W A S H I N G T O N, April 22, 2003 -- Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator with weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism, U.S. officials said. But to what extent was the war in Iraq really about making an example of Saddam? Following is a transcript of Ted Koppel and former CIA director James Woolsey's discussion of American motivations.
TED KOPPEL: Reports continue to circulate that James Woolsey will be tapped for a major position in post-Saddam Iraq. The former director of Central Intelligence, who was a strong proponent of the war against Iraq, joins us now from Omaha. If tapped, will you serve?
JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Ted, in 35 years any time the US government's asked me to do anything, I've always done it. But I'm not looking for a job and I don't know whether they want me to or not. They've had some exploratory, original discussions with me, but that's it.
TED KOPPEL:
All right. This is sort of late-coming. But in this, in this post-war justification for the war, there this new argument, I mean, it's not totally new. We've heard intimations of it before. Why wasn't more of that made before? In other words, if the idea was to made an object lesson of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, to, to frighten some of the other powers in the region that might present similar problems, why not use that as an argument? Sounds like a good one.
JAMES WOOLSEY:
Well, I think the heart of the matter was really in the strategy statement that the Administration put out late last summer/early fall, which essentially said that it's the nexus of the brutality of a dictatorship, the relationship to weapons of mass destruction that it has or is working on, and its support for terrorism, that leads to the necessity, sometimes, to preempt or to take action before there is a smoking gun. How many countries in the world have chemical weapons?
Well, it's probably a couple of dozen. And you're not going to go attack all of them. That's not entirely right. State craft is a matter of judgment. It's not a matter of litmus tests. And I think the Administration, although different parts of it have emphasized different aspects of this from time to time, I think it's those three things together. Brutal dictatorships, rogue states, weapons of mass destruction, and ties of one kind or another to terrorist groups.
TED KOPPEL:
There seems to be a certain convenience factor, however, to the fact that as we no longer are able to make quite as much of a case for the weapons of mass destruction, they haven't been found yet, maybe they still will be, this new argument now is surfacing. Why not make that argument before? If this was to be an object lesson, and again, I stress that. Why couldn't you make that argument beforehand? Saying, we're not just going against Iraq. What we're doing here is we're going to make an example of Saddam Hussein and his regime. What's wrong with that as an argument?
JAMES WOOLSEY:
I don't think you should go to war to set examples or send messages. Saddam really was a serious threat. And I think the other rogue regimes of the Middle East, to different degrees and in different ways, Syria, Iran, Sudan and Libya, are threats and are serious problems. And we need to look at how to change either those regimes' behavior fundamentally, or in some fashion, the regimes.
But it may well not be by force of arms. In the Cold War, we only freed a handful of states by American force of arms, South Korea, Grenada, one or two others. But we freed indirectly, with our allies and with (INAUDIBLE), and solidarity, we freed a lot of countries by deterrents, by pressure, by the example we set, by the ideological war that we fought and won against Communism. So this is, I think, gonna be a long operation we're engaged in here. It could well last for decades. But I think, much of it may not be done the way we did Iraq.
TED KOPPEL:
The only problem I have with the, the nexus among those, those three categories that you cite is that one of the categories, which would seem to be the most important one, the weapons of mass destruction, hasn't yet materialized.
JAMES WOOLSEY:
Well, I think we have to realize that the weapons of mass destruction that they find could be a few petri dishes. We've never been looking in this case for things, big things like nuclear reactors. It's all canisters of VX nerve gas or vials of anthrax. And the only way we're ever going to find this, since most of anything that's left is almost certainly buried
very secretly, is by what we tried to get Hans Blix to do and he never did, question people who were engaged in the program, the weapons programs.
TED KOPPEL:
When you talk, Mr. Woolsey, as you do, about the odd petri dish here or there, that's not quite consistent with that compelling argument that the Secretary of State made before the UN Security Council where, indeed, he was talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of tons of this material that was out there. Where is it?
JAMES WOOLSEY:
Well, that was all indicated by the inspectors in 1998. Because, they had evidence based on Saddam's, on the biological weapons program, Saddam's son-in-law's defection, the son-in-law that he eventually killed, of manufacture of thousands of liters of anthrax and other, weapons.
TED KOPPEL:
But as you remember, the Secretary of State was making a compelling argument that this wasn't just based on old information, that we had fresh information that indicated that that material existed. Where is it?
JAMES WOOLSEY:
We had current evidence of several French trucks that had been turned into biological weapons laboratories. Much of this may have been destroyed in the days, at the beginning of the war. That one can't change history but one probably can find evidence of what still exists, which I imagine is some of the weapons and what they destroyed and how they destroyed it. I think this will come out as we get access to more and more of these scientists and technicians who were part of the program.
TED KOPPEL:
If indeed it turns out that the weapons either did not exist or were destroyed before the war began, should there be a trace of embarrassment? Or does the new justification serve anyway?
JAMES WOOLSEY:
Not at all. I think there will be evidence that there were substantial biological and chemical weapons stocks, some after '98 and before the war. And exactly when they were destroyed, possibly right at the beginning of the war, I think shouldn't affect this at all. I think that it is, I think the Administration deserves credit in this for being pretty careful about what they said. And the Secretary of State's presentation before the Security Council was a careful presentation. If the Iraqis destroyed much of that in the opening days of the war, so be it. We'll find some evidence to that effect.
TED KOPPEL:
Final question. If the world was reluctant to accept our justifications for going to war, given, based on what we said, what our Administration said before the war, and it now turns out that they're going to put forth another argument altogether, which does not depend on the existence of weapons of mass destruction, do you think we can expect the
world to take us more or less seriously?
JAMES WOOLSEY:
Well, some of the world, the French government, the German government, the Russian government, will find fault with whatever we say and do in these circumstances. But I think there'll be enough evidence that the Iraqis had chemical and bacteriological weapons after '98 and before, well, now, that this nexus of, of relations, this relationship between support for terrorist groups, brutal dictatorships and such weapons will stick. And I think that nexus exists with respect to these other four rogue states of the Middle East. And if I were an adviser to the Syrian or Iranian governments, or for that matter, Sudanese or Libyan, I would start to change the way I am doing things because I think they are, would really be well-advised to pay attention to what happened to Iraq.
TED KOPPEL:
Mr. Woolsey, good to have you with us. Thanks very much.
JAMES WOOLSEY:
Good to be with you, Ted.