What I said was, the—when I’m talking—I was talking about will and unity and the perception that we’re going to have around the world. The fact that friends and foes alike are looking to see what kind of a, of a, of a determination that we’re going to muster in, in dealing with this thing.

MR. RUSSERT: But you should not trivialize...

MR. THOMPSON: And I said...

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MR. RUSSERT: You shouldn’t trivialized as a bunch of kids.

MR. THOMPSON: ...and I said, and I said—well, let me finish. I said the United States of America could not be perceived as having been run out of Iraq with our tail between our legs because a bunch of kids on the border there making improvised explosive devices. The—as they’re going to recruit future al-Qaeda young men, they’re not going to get into the nuances of the various factions that are our enemy down there. They’re going to go say, “Look, you can do, you can do exactly what your brothers did. You can be a part of us. We brought them down. We brought the United States of America to its knees.” And, in large part, it is because of young people making—they call them improvised for a reason. I mean, they’re, they’re pretty low-tech kind of operations by people probably with not much education, and they can be taught to do this, and they’re causing great damage to us. And you go to places, Brook Army Medical Center and so forth, they don’t handle no one—nothing but burns and amputees, and you see what’s, what’s, what’s been done there. They’ve, they’ve, they’ve demoralized us in many respects. They’ve hurt us badly. There’s, there’s no question about that. It should not be minimized.

But the point being, these young people that I’ve talked to know what they’re doing, and they know that they’re doing something good for their country, and we need to understand that, too. And we cannot let the perception be, and the new potential recruits for al-Qaeda be convinced of the notion that these young people like this can bring us down.

MR. RUSSERT: You were in Iowa, and you’re talking about Saddam Hussein, and you said, it was, “He was certain former Iraqi leaders Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a point of contention in the four and a half years since the war began. ‘We can’t forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there, he clearly had’” “‘WMD. He clearly had,’the beginnings of a nuclear program,’ Thompson told the audience of about 60 at a Newton cafe.”

The Dulfer Commission, David Kay, all the weapons inspectors said they did not find any WMD. And yet you’re—you seem to be raising the whole herring again...

MR. THOMPSON: No, no, I’m not...

MR. RUSSERT: ...of chemical, biological and nuclear.

MR. THOMPSON: Not at all. Amazingly, they got that one a, a little bit wrong. I’ve been on this program in years past, and we’ve discussed these issues, and I’ve been on many others. What I was pointing out is that he had clearly, before, in years before the, the invasion, he had weapons of mass destruction. And he’d used them on his own people, the Kurds in the north and so forth. I mean, that’s beyond dispute. I have never claimed and didn’t claim in that statement there—and I explained to the reporter afterwards, when he specifically asked me about this, that he had weapons of mass destruction and we just went in there and invaded and missed them and couldn’t see them. No, he did not have them at the time. But what the Iraqi Survey Group said when they went in there later is that, in their opinion, he would—he had the capability and the desire to reconstitute what he’d had once before, and that is the beginnings of a nuclear program. That’s what the Israelis bombed in 1981, with Osirak reactor. He had the, the infrastructure; he had the expertise and so forth. And my...

MR. RUSSERT: But you do not believe, you do not believe that Saddam had WMD when we invaded in 2003?

MR. THOMPSON: No, no. Obviously not.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Osama bin Laden. In Iowa you told reporters, “Bin Laden is ‘more symbolism than anything else.’” To the people who died on September 11^th, Osama bin Laden is more than symbolism.

MR. THOMPSON: Well, again, let, let, let me make the point. I’ve never been accused of being soft on Osama bin Laden. What I think sometimes happens in this country is that we fixate on a personality. And even someone as, as, as, as evil as this man, we need to understand, if he goes—if he’s killed, someone will take his place. It’s almost like that—the focus is so much on him that we think our problem will pretty much go away if we get him. Getting him is important. It’s important because he’s the head of this operation right now. It’s important because of symbolism and lots of other reasons. No question about that. But the notion that, that, that our problems are pretty much going to be solved when he goes away—remember, al-Zarqawi in, in Iraq, when, when we killed him? It was, it was a important thing to do. Things got worse for us after that for a while. I mean, we, we can’t be fixated—it, it minimizes the nature of the problem. We’re in a global conflict now. We have been for some time. Iraq is a part of that conflict. And, unfortunately, regardless of what happens in Iraq, I believe it’s going to extend for some time to come, and we need to understand the severity of it. And that was my point.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the issue of torture. You were talking about it the other day. Here’s how the San Francisco Chronicle reported it: “Thompson noted the United States does not support torture and abides by international law, then indicated he would not be opposed to waterboarding if national security were at stake. ‘As a general proposition, I’ve always thought when you get right down to it, the measures have to meet the situation.’” “‘If our country is faced with an imminent loss of lives of innocent Americans, and we have someone—and we’re confident enough in our intelligence to be secure in the knowledge that this person has important information that could save the lives of innocent Americans—all I can say is that as president the measures will always meet the circumstances.’” “‘I will do what I think is in the best interest of my country.’” In a situation like that...

MR. THOMPSON: Now there, there I was quoted exactly right.

MR. RUSSERT: You would use torture if you thought it would get the information?

MR. THOMPSON: I never used, I never used the word torture. I think that...

MR. RUSSERT: Or the measures, the measures you would use?

MR. THOMPSON: The, the—well, what I, what I said is, is what I meant to say, and that is the measures must meet the circumstances, and if we’re facing the imminent loss of innocent American lives, if we’re confident enough in our intelligence—and that’s a big if; we got to do a lot better there for sure—to believe that the person that we have has information that, that would start the, in effect, ticking time bomb that we talk about sometimes, the measures have to meet those circumstances. And I’m not sure what it would take. You’re talking about techniques. We’re having a big public debate now on a technique which I know very little about. It sounds very gruesome to me. But the president of the United States has an obligation to do what I just said, and I can’t imagine anybody being president who wouldn’t make that decision.

MR. RUSSERT: So you would use techniques that you felt necessary?

MR. THOMPSON: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: And, and pay the consequences for using those if, in fact, they turned out to be torture?

MR. THOMPSON: I would pay the consequences, or, or I would, I would answer to whatever decision that I made. And I would do what was necessary, if necessary, to protect those who carried out my orders under those circumstances.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iran. Back in June, here was the question: “If it’s clear that Iran is getting close to getting a nuclear weapon, would it be your policy to support pre-emption as a means of taking out or wiping out those facilities?”

Thompson, “Yes, yes.”

“It would be?”

“Yes.”

So you would be in favor...

MR. THOMPSON: Sounds a little eager there, doesn’t it?

MR. RUSSERT: Well, my question: Do you believe, do you believe the United States should, in fact, be prepared to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran to eliminate their nuclear capability?

MR. THOMPSON: Yes, we should be prepared to do that. I think in many respects it would be a sign of the failure of other policies. I don’t think that that’s something that, that we should have to do. There are a lot of things going on inside Iran right now that I don’t think most Americans hear enough about. The, the people there are dissatisfied with their leadership. They’re dissatisfied with the kind of lives they live. The, the economy’s in shambles. There’re, there’re demonstrations that’re going on all the time. A lot of their student leaders and others, labor leaders and so forth, have been imprisoned or, or killed. There are a lot of people inside that country that—who are friendly to the United States of America.

CONTINUED

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