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Monday, Jun 02, 2003
Dr. Paul hates to be misquoted! er, um, paraphrased!
June 2, 2003
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Initially, Wolfowitz did not characterize the paraphrase as a misquote, but sought to provide fuller context for his comments.
DefenseLINK transcript of May 28, 2003 interview of Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz with Karen DeYoung, Washington Post
DeYoung: As Kevin probably told you, I was initially calling to find out about this quote that's in the Vanity Fair article. I don't know if you've seen it or not. And Kevin gave me this sort of additional context to it, but I did want to ask... This quote where it says "for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue - weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." And I sort of have just kind of taken that apart to ask you what you meant by "bureaucratic reasons."
Wolfowitz: The truth is, we've always had all three of those reasons, and in fact, if you look at Powell's presentation, there have always been all three. There has been a tendency to emphasize the weapons of mass destruction issue. But, as I said in the fuller quote, the real thing that has concerned the President from the beginning and which I think is even the "axis" that's referred to in the "axis of evil" is the connection between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. So in a way, that's always been the main thing. But if you look at where the intelligence community tends to go, the issue about weapons of mass destruction has never been in controversy. Whereas there's been a lot of arguing back and forth about how much Iraq is involved in terrorism. At the end of the day, it's actually the connection between the two that was seen as completely different in the light of September 11th.
After various cynical interpretations were given to the quote (e.g. WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz, The Independent, May 30, 2003), Wolfowitz sought to characterterize the paraphrase as a misquote.
US Department of State transcript of May 31, 2003 interview of Wolfowitz with Cable News Network in Singapore
Q: There is a report in Vanity Fair today that just quoted you as saying that the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was just a bureaucratic reason. Can you respond to that?
Wolfowitz: No, it's a misquote. In fact, the full quote you can see on our website where the whole interview is there. What I was trying to explain there is a complicated situation. ...
And here's the DoD version of the original interview. Kellums is a DoD PR guy.
DefenseLINK transcript of the May 9, 2003 interview of Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz with Sam Tanenhaus, Vanity Fair
Tanenhaus: Was that one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into --
Wolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but -- hold on one second --
(Pause)
Kellems: Sam there may be some value in clarity on the point that it may take years to get post-Saddam Iraq right. It can be easily misconstrued, especially when it comes to --
Wolfowitz: -- there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. Sorry, hold on again.
Kellems: By the way, it's probably the longest uninterrupted phone conversation I've witnessed, so --
Tanenhaus: This is extraordinary.
Kellems: You had good timing.
Tanenhaus: I'm really grateful.
Wolfowitz: To wrap it up.
The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.
Commentary
To risk the wrath of Dr. Paul, let me paraphrase his comments on the "motive" question based on the text of the Vanity Fair interview transcript (linked above).
There were three main reasons: 1) WMD, 2) links to terrorism, and 3) Saddam was bad for Iraq. Number three didn't justify an invasion. Number two was weak. Number one was something we could get people to rally around.
Also, the hidden agenda was to remove a threat to the "friendly governments" in the region, and to satisfy bin Laden's demand that we vacate Saudi Arabia.
Click through to the comments page for Kristol's analysis of Tanenhaus' distortions, and my analysis of Kristol's distortions. And feel free to point out my distortions.
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