Donald Rumsfeld: "Credible Evidence of WMDs" // SiriusXM // Patriot — Transcript

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1. 0:04weapons of mass destruction
2. 0:06Mhm.
3. 0:06The intelligence basis for this was
4. 0:09pretty well across the board.
5. 0:11Democrats, Republicans, the coalition,
6. 0:14all the countries.
7. 0:15They all agreed with the with the
8. 0:17information.
9. 0:18Right. But the question always comes up.
10. 0:19The question is always asked
11. 0:22were there WMDs? Did the administration
12. 0:25mislead or lie about it in Iraq?
13. 0:27Yeah, it is inexcusably inaccurate to
14. 0:30suggest that anyone lied about it.
15. 0:33Um President Bush did not lie. Dick
16. 0:36Cheney did not. Colin Powell, who made
17. 0:38the presentation to the United Nations,
18. 0:40did not.
19. 0:42Um and and it's unfortunate that that
20. 0:45people for political reasons
21. 0:48uh began to contend that that was the
22. 0:51case. People who had seen the same
23. 0:54intelligence in the Senate, but when
24. 0:55they were running for president on the
25. 0:57Democratic side, uh decided that it
26. 1:00would be advantageous to use that issue
27. 1:02and they they did.
28. 1:04It it uh it was just a Now, you asked
29. 1:08the question,
30. 1:09uh what weapons of mass destruction
31. 1:11actually existed? Well, before the fact,
32. 1:14they existed in the sense that uh Saddam
33. 1:16Hussein had used chemical weapons
34. 1:18against Iran.
35. 1:20He had used chemical weapons against his
36. 1:21own people, the the Kurds.
37. 1:24right.
38. 1:24And um so and the United Nations
39. 1:27inspectors knew that he had stockpiles
40. 1:30of weapons of mass destruction at one
41. 1:32point.
42. 1:34After the invasion of Iraq,
43. 1:37the uh
44. 1:39reality is that something happened to
45. 1:42the stockpiles. Either they were buried
46. 1:44or they were moved out of the country
47. 1:46or he had destroyed them. But we do know
48. 1:49that they existed in this sense.
49. 1:52The people who made them, the the
50. 1:55competence, the
51. 1:57uh
52. 1:57clued of people who were capable of
53. 1:59doing this still existed and were still
54. 2:01together for chemical and and nuclear
55. 2:03and biological weapons. The precursors
56. 2:06needed to make those chemical and
57. 2:08biological weapons were there and
58. 2:10existed. And third, the dual-use
59. 2:13facilities that could be used for both
60. 2:16civilian and military purposes still
61. 2:19existed.
62. 2:20Now, there's a books have been written
63. 2:23by an Iraqi general contending that they
64. 2:25were physically moved out into another
65. 2:28country. I don't know that. I know that
66. 2:31Delfer, who did the official
67. 2:34uh, report on what happened, uh, said
68. 2:37what I just said, that the precursors
69. 2:39and the people and the facilities were
70. 2:41there. They could have ramped up within
71. 2:43a matter of weeks.
72. 2:45Uh, we also know that up in Kermal,
73. 2:47north of uh, Baghdad, we found ricin in
74. 2:50a facility
75. 2:52uh, where the Ansar al-Islam
76. 2:55people, which were connected with
77. 2:57Zarqawi,
78. 2:58uh, as I recall, actually had an
79. 3:00underground facility where our people
80. 3:03went in and found ricin and various
81. 3:05other um, chemical protective suits,
82. 3:09documents in Arabic as to how you make
83. 3:11chemical weapons. So,
84. 3:13the idea that they never existed or
85. 3:15didn't exist or that someone had lied is
86. 3:19is as I say inexcusably irresponsible.