For anyone who might want it

Stephen F. Hayes on TDS, 6-21-04


Jon: Welcome back to the program. My guest tonight is a senior writer for The Weekly Standard. His new book is The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussien Has Endangered America. Please welcome Stephen F. Hayes. Stephen!

Jon: Thanks for coming

Stephen: Good to be here.

J: So the book is called The Connection, let me get that out there. I do have one suggestion before we go on. If you're writing a book that is basically documenting the case for war, you wanna print it on the 8" by 11", makes it more impressive. Right now, when you present your case like this, "Eeeh".. You know what I’m sayin’, you wanna get yourself as big of paper and font size as you can.

S: I think the idea was actually to give people something that they could carry on an airplane. Because it’s such great airplane reading.

J: Really? Very interesting. Maybe just have it right here you can just pull it right out.

S: Exactly.

J: Okay. So, the basic premise of the book it seems to be is this sort of 16 page memo written by Douglas Feith. Who was…

S: The Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

J: Undersecretary of the Defense for Policy. Now he has compiled a list of connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

S: Right.

J: Now this was from the intelli-, did he work in intelligence?

S: No. He took a group of raw reports- he and a team of people at the Pentagon took a group of somewhat raw reports, some things from finished intelligence products, some things from open sources, and compiled them into a document and presented that to the..

J: Now, why do that when the intelligence community is also doing that?

S: Yeah, good question. I think basically the idea was-

J: Seriously, that’s a good question?

S: It is a good question. It’s a very good question. I think with the intelligence community it’s always valuable to have as many different analyses of various problems, various threats…

J: Now is that typical? Like do most administrations have a fella, an Undersecretary, who would start his own bureau to get intelligence?

S: I don’t know that it was its own bureau, I think basically they were-

J: Cabal.

S: Cabal, right. Right, yeah, that’s right. I figured that word would come up at some point.

J: No, is it an unusual arrangement?

S: I don’t think it’s necessarily an unusual arrangement. I think a lot of people often look for different kinds of analyses. Within the CIA in fact, they set up what they call the Red Cell Team to take a different look at the same set of issues.

J: I’ve played that game. It’s a Tom Clancy, I believe… So Douglas Feith, who apparently, some may consider is sort of close to these Iraqi National Congress fellas, puts together this document. It seems like in the book that the intelligence community doesn’t necessarily agree with him. Would that be fair?

S: Yeah, I think that George Tenet has said in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee that he didn’t agree with the characterization of the items in the book. I don’t think that he necessarily disputed many of the actual documents, as I understand it. But he didn’t agree with the way it was characterized.

J: Okay. So, here’s where I’m confused… It’s all very- even you write in there that ‘we’re not quite sure if that happened,’ and ‘yeah, that only came from one source’. Wouldn’t you say when you go to a, let’s say, war, and I only mean that in the sense of invading and bombing a country, that you would- wouldn’t they, because… It would seem like you would want to know more surely. Or am I being unreasonable?

S: No, I think that’s one argument. I think the other side of the argument is, given what we knew before September 11th, if we had had stronger hints about things that took place before September 11th, the planning, the meetings that had gone on, the contacts, the preparations. If we had known more of those, wouldn’t we have done everything in our power to have exhausted all possibilities to stop it? I think we would have.

J: No. No. Yeah, of course we would. But I guess my point is, and here’s where I think the argument gets really strange, because I think what’s happened is everybody’s lost sight of what’s really going on here. And that it seems like the left wants to refute the right, and the right just goes out to refute the left, and the rest of us sit in the country and go, "Uh, everyone?" It seems like Bush has started a new doctrine. The Bush Doctrine. And I’m a big fan of the doctrines, you can’t- don’t get me started on the Monroe Doctrine, I love it. I love doctrines. But it sets a standard for preemption. Now, the first time you exercise a new doctrine, wouldn’t you want to be, uh, very sure of yourself because that will set a standard?..No?

S: Well, look, I mean I think-

J: I mean I’m just sayin’.

S: I think, I think the idea behind the Bush Doctrine is that if you support or harbor terrorists, we are gonna come after you, we’ll consider you a hostile regime. I don’t think that, frankly, in the aftermath of September 11th, I really don’t think that’s an unreasonable doctrine.

J: But here’s the problem. It’s not unreasonable, but it’s not the point. The point is, I’ll list you four things: developing weapons of mass destruction, inflammatory rhetoric against the United States, supporting and harboring terrorism, uh, and…uh, oppression of their own people. Now here’s the problem with your doctrine: You can’t tell me what country I just named. And that’s a problem, when you’re talking about war.

S: That is a problem when you’re talking about war.

J: I mean that’s- that seems like the issue. Because you don’t know if I’m talking about Iraq, Iran, North Korea, or Sudan.

S: No, I think that’s a good point. On the other hand, I think that Iraq in this case presented a unique threat-

J: Why?

S: Because, precisely because of its weapons of mass destruction, because of its demonstrated use of weapons of mass destruction-

J: Iran has done the same.

S: They’ve used weapons of mass destruction.

J: Yes.

S: When have they used weapons of mass destruction?

J: In the Iran-Iraq war. They both were mustard gassin’ back and forth.

S: Well, yeah, that’s one theory. I don’t think that that’s been shown. But in any-

J: Well you’re no one to talk about what’s been shown… No no no, I hear ya. And it’s very frustrating to sit on the outside and watch partisans go back and forth with what appears to be something that the rest of us end up paying for. But we’ll be right back with more of Stephen Hayes in a minute.

J: We’re back with Stephen Hayes, and we’re talking about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection. I guess the issue is credibility. Do you feel like this administration is credible?

S: Well I think in some cases it’s credible, and in some cases it’s not. I mean clearly, when you’re talking about weapons of mass destruction, the entire world thought Saddam had these stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The French Foreign Minister, the Germans, the U.N., you name it. People, you know, friend and foe thought he had these weapons of mass destruction. So I think, clearly we have to look again at what kind of intelligence gathering methods we used. But I think on something like this, I think they do have credibility.

J: Let’s say I’m a despot. A tyrant..dictator..czar. How do I know not to get America to attack me, when I’m not sure what the standard of the preemption would be?

S: Well hopefully-

J: Now remember, I’m a despot.

S: Hopefully- so I’ve got to be nice in my response to you?

J: That’s what I’m saying.

S: Hopefully, this will have helped send a message. That if you support terrorists, if you finance terrorists, if you arm terrorists-

J: Let me ask you this. Does Iran support terrorists?

S: Iran does support terrorists.

J: Does Saudi Arabia support terrorists?

S: Yes.

J: Does Sudan support terrorists?

S: Uh, yes.

J: So we’re gonna be busy little bees.

S: No, not necessarily. I don’t think you need to- I think there are various ways of-

J: Is the idea that by invading Iraq, and then we don’t have to invade the others because everyone else will go, "Ooh, these guys mean business." Is that sort of the idea?

S: I do think there was some of that. And I think we saw some of the results with Libya, to a certain extent. Of course, Kadafi was then funding terrorist plots against the Saudi leader…It’s why the Bush administration isn’t talking about him as much anymore.

J: I- I don’t know, it just, it strikes me as- I’m no pacifist and I’m no partisan, but this thing strikes me as a big clusterfuck. And I say that with all due respect to all the people that believe otherwise, but every time I read a book like this that shows me the evidence between al Qaeda and Saddam, it shows me so much more of the evidence between all those other countries.

S: Let me just ask you this one question.

J: Sagittarius. Oh. I’m sorry, no no no, go ahead.

S: Don’t you think the same people who are being the most critical right now, if God forbid we would’ve had an attack in 2005 after President Bush was reelected, it came with chemical weapons that we could trace to Iraqi sources and it came via al Qaeda, just as a 1999 Congressional research service study predicted, don’t you think the same people would be ripping the Bush Administration and calling to impeach the president because he didn’t do so much given all of this information?

J: But we had an attack with 15 Saudis and we haven’t really done anything to them, so I mean that…

S: We could do more to Saudis, I’m with you.

J: I'm just sayin’. So I don’t, you know what- it’s all speculation, but I think that in terms of the world credibility, we have to do a better job of making our case because we are, if I may say so, number 1. The Connection is on bookshelves now, it’s Stephen Hayes.