Zbig Brezezinski lays it out on CNN --- Transcript worth seeing

If you didn't catch it on CNN, there was a great face off between Henry the K and Zbignew Brezezinski on CNN late Edition. he pulled no punches. Worth reading the transcript. (And even though Kissinger was doing his usual, even HE was less than solid in endorsing the President's case on WMD's)

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0307/13/le.00.html

EXCERPT:


BLITZER: And I think, Dr. Brzezinski -- let me press you on this point, because it wasn't really U.S. intelligence and the president of the United States who argued that the Iraqis did have weapons of mass destruction flat, no nuanced statement there, but it was also the French and the Italians and the Germans and the U.N. They came down with the same point, even though they disagreed with the president on how to go about dealing with the issue.

BRZEZINSKI: Wolf, you could add to that list even me. I attended the same briefings that Henry attended. And I came to believe them, because I don't think that Colin Powell or Condi Rice or Don Rumsfeld would lie to me. So I came to believe that they had weapons of mass destruction too.

The fact nonetheless -- and we cannot evade it -- is, they did not. That is a basic fact...

BLITZER: They did not have weapons of mass destruction?

BRZEZINSKI: They did not. I mean, if they did, show them to me. They didn't use them. They weren't in their arsenals. We have been there for months, and we haven't found them.

And, therefore, there's an important issue at stake here. U.S. credibility is now very badly damaged. You say other countries' intelligence services said they have weapons of mass destruction. What you ignore is that most of them said that they had weapons of mass destruction because we had said so, and they trusted us. Our word has been pure; our word has been trusted around the world. It's now very badly damaged.

And our democracy depends on our people being able to trust their leaders. And therefore, the issue we have to establish is, why did our leaders come to believe that something existed that did not? Was it an intelligence failure, or was it a political hype?

I don't know which of the two it was. I prefer to think it was the former. But we have to find out for the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our security.

<snip>

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What you ignore is that most of them said that they had weapons of mass destruction because we had said so, and they trusted us. Our word has been pure; our word has been trusted around the world. It's now very badly damaged.

I have not had the time to research exactly what the intel agencies of other countries were saying before the blitzkeieg of Iraq, but have been (somewhat) troubled by the assertion that they agreed Saddam had WMD. However, Zbig has provided us the perfect rebuttal.

She uses that like a mantra. That must have been the agreed upon talking point given to them by Rove. ( I'm referring to Condi :puke: Rice...she was the firtst part of the transcript.)

she must have gotten pointers from Ari on how to lie effectively. I guess Colon Bowell wasn't up to completely erading his creds.

It's a must read. Ziggy laid it all out in the simple way it should be said.......We all could use his statements as "Talking Points" for questioning how Bush got us into Iraq.

I hope some of the media picked up on his statement: "We have to find out for the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our security."

:thumbsup: