Transcript for Sept. 10

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I disagree. There were narcotics being produced, heroin being grown in, in Afghanistan for centuries. It’s been the major source of supply because of the nature of the, the area for heroin going to Europe long before the United States got involved in Afghanistan, or long before we got involved in Iraq. That’s not a new development. The fact is that we have made major progress in Afghanistan. We’ve still got a lot to do.

You start with a country that is one of the poorest in the world, that’s been racked by decades of civil war and conflict—it was occupied by the Soviets, and then fought over by the Soviets and the mujahideen for years—that badly needed what we have, in fact, provided. We took down the Taliban regime, liberated 25 million people, created a democratic government with a president and a constitution and a new parliament. I was there for the swearing in of, of the Karzai administration, as well as for the new parliament. It is major progress. Is it over? No, it’s not over. Is it easy? Of course it’s not easy. It’s always going to be difficult in that part of the world.

The key here, and, and this is the key in, in a lot of what we do in that part of the world, is to get the locals into the fight. And we’ve done that, I think, very effectively in Afghanistan. And the U.S. will continue to be involved there, but we’ve also got great support from our allies. NATO’s very heavily engaged now in Afghanistan, in the fight against the Taliban, to secure that nation for its people.

MR. RUSSERT: It is Iraq, however, that the president has said is the central front in the war on terror. This is what he said...

VICE PRES. CHENEY: It is now.

MR. RUSSERT: This is what he said on August 31, 2006. Let’s watch it for the record.

(Videotape, August 31, 2006):

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: Iraq is the central front in the war on terror.

(End of videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: And yet if you ask the American people, is the war in Iraq a part of the war on terror, this is what they now say: 46 yes, 53 percent, a majority, say it is not part of the war on terror.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I beg to differ. Let’s walk through it. Look at where we are in Iraq today. I do think we’ve made major progress. Five years ago, Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq. Iraq was a major state sponsor of terror. Saddam Hussein was providing payments, bonuses to the families of suicide bombers. He had a history of starting two wars, he had produced and used weapons of mass destruction. It was one of the worst regimes in modern times. We moved aggressively against Saddam Hussein.

Today, you’ve got Saddam in jail, where he’s being prosecuted for having butchered thousands of people; you’ve got a democratically elected government; there have been three nationwide elections; there has been a new constitution written; we’ve got almost 300,000 Iraqis now trained and equipped in the security forces. And we are—that’s significant progress by anybody’s standards. It’s still difficult, it’s still, obviously, major, major work to do ahead of us. But the fact is, the world is much better off today with Saddam Hussein out of power.

Think where we’d be if he was still there. He’d be sitting on top of a big pile of cash, because he’d have 65 and $70 oil; he would by now have taken down the sanctions because he had already, with the corrupted Oil for Food program, nearly destroyed them when he was still in power; he would be a major state sponsor of terror. We also would have a situation where he would have resumed his WMD programs. That was one of the conclusions of the Duelfer Report. So to suggest that somehow the world’s not better off by having Saddam in jail, I mean, is just dead wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: But Mr. Vice President, the primary rationale giving—given for the war in Iraq was Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. You—on August of 2002, this is what you told the VFW. Let’s just watch it.

(Videotape, August 26, 2002):

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

(End of videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: In fact, there is grave doubt, because they did not exist along the lines that you described, the president described, and others described.  Based on what you know now, that Saddam did not have the weapons of mass destruction that were described, would you still have gone into Iraq?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yes, Tim, because what the reports also showed, while he did not have stockpiles—clearly the intelligence that said he did was wrong.  That was the intelligence all of us saw, that was the intelligence all of us believed, it was—when, when George Tenet sat in the Oval Office and the president of the United States asked him directly, he said, “George, how good is the case against Saddam on weapons of mass destruction?” the director of the CIA said, “It’s a slam dunk, Mr. President, it’s a slam dunk.” That was the intelligence that was provided to us at the time, and based upon which we made a choice.

MR. RUSSERT: So if the CIA said to you at that time, “Saddam does not have weapons of mass destruction, his chemical and biological have been degraded, he has no nuclear program under way,” you’d still invade Iraq?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Because, again, look at the Duelfer Report and what it said. No stockpiles, but they also said he has the capability. He’d done it before. He had produced chemical weapons before and used them. He had produced biological weapons. He had a robust nuclear program in ‘91. All of this is true, said by Duelfer, facts. Also said that as soon as the sanctions are lifted, they expect Saddam to be back in business.

MR. RUSSERT: But the rationale was he had it. A growing threat. All the while, North Korea, which had one or two potential bombs in 2000 when you came into office, now has double or triple that amount. So again, you took your eye off of North Korea to focus on Iraq.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Let’s, let’s, let’s go back to the beginning here. Five years ago, Tim, you and I did this show, the Sunday after 9/11. And we learned a lot from 9/11. We saw, in spite of the hundreds of billions of dollars we’d spent on national security in the years up to 9/11, on that morning, 19 men with box cutters and airline tickets came into the country and killed 3,000 people. We had to take that and, and also the fact of their interest of weapons of mass destruction and recognize, at that time, it was the threat then and it’s the threat today that drives much of our thinking, that the real threat is the possibility of a cell of al-Qaeda in the midst of one of our own cities with a nuclear weapon, or a biological agent. In that case, you’d be dealing—for example, if on 9/11 they’d had a nuke instead of an airplane, you’d have been looking at a casualty toll that would rival all the deaths in all the wars fought by Americans in 230 years. That’s the threat we have to deal with, and that drove our thinking in the aftermath of 9/11 and does today.

Now, what Saddam represented was somebody who had for 12 years defied the international community, violated 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, started two wars, produced and used weapons of mass destruction and was deemed by the intelligence community to have resumed his WMD programs when he kicked out the inspectors. Everybody believed it. Bill Clinton believed it, the CIA clearly believed it. And without question, it was a major proposition. But I also emphasize while they found no stockpiles, there was no question in the minds of Mr. Duelfer and others in that survey group that Saddam did in fact have the capability and that as soon as the sanctions were ended—and they were badly eroded—he would be back in business again.

MR. RUSSERT: But let’s look at what you told me on that morning of September 16, 2001, when I asked you about Saddam Hussein. Let’s watch.

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