Sayhey
Oct 19, 2003, 06:18 AM
If you haven't already read it this interview with Joseph Wilson is well worth the time. This is what he says at the end of the interview:
[Q]I don't know. Maybe it was redrawing the map of the Middle East, and maybe it was oil, and, you know, reverse dominoes.
[Wilson] If it was oil, or even if it was redrawing of the political map of the Middle East, we did not have that debate. That was not put forward to the U.S. Congress when the president asked for the blank check in October to do what he had to do. …
There is no more solemn decision that a society can make than sending its soldiers off to die and to kill for our country. It is the one time where you really have to get it right. People's lives, Americans' lives and foreigners' lives depend on your getting that decision right. It is worthy of having the facts, the best facts available upon which to make that decision. It is not worthy of a great democracy such as ours to go off and fight the right war for the wrong reasons. It is only worthy for the United States to fight the right war for the right reasons.
[Q]You think we got it wrong?
[Wilson] I know we got it wrong. There's no doubt in my mind, and I think you see that every day in Iraq. I think we're in for more of the same, only worse. I think that the occupation will become more and more difficult for the Iraqis to live with. They have been through this before. This is a country that remembers its history dating back millennia. They will outlive this occupation. They will make our lives difficult there. At the end of it, I think the chances are really very good that the consequences will be far graver to our own national security than they were going in.
At a minimum, we already have 150,000 targets for international terrorism as well as resistance forces there on the battlefield in Iraq. At a minimum, you run the very real risk that you unleash a two- or three-way civil war in Iraq between the Shi'a, the Sunni and the Kurds. At a minimum, everybody who does democratization knows that democracy is something that comes about as a consequence of evolution, not revolution. Revolutions breed as successor regimes the least exhausted in exhausted societies, hence, the most zealous. And that is really what we're looking at there.
Read the whole interview at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/wilson.html
[Q]I don't know. Maybe it was redrawing the map of the Middle East, and maybe it was oil, and, you know, reverse dominoes.
[Wilson] If it was oil, or even if it was redrawing of the political map of the Middle East, we did not have that debate. That was not put forward to the U.S. Congress when the president asked for the blank check in October to do what he had to do. …
There is no more solemn decision that a society can make than sending its soldiers off to die and to kill for our country. It is the one time where you really have to get it right. People's lives, Americans' lives and foreigners' lives depend on your getting that decision right. It is worthy of having the facts, the best facts available upon which to make that decision. It is not worthy of a great democracy such as ours to go off and fight the right war for the wrong reasons. It is only worthy for the United States to fight the right war for the right reasons.
[Q]You think we got it wrong?
[Wilson] I know we got it wrong. There's no doubt in my mind, and I think you see that every day in Iraq. I think we're in for more of the same, only worse. I think that the occupation will become more and more difficult for the Iraqis to live with. They have been through this before. This is a country that remembers its history dating back millennia. They will outlive this occupation. They will make our lives difficult there. At the end of it, I think the chances are really very good that the consequences will be far graver to our own national security than they were going in.
At a minimum, we already have 150,000 targets for international terrorism as well as resistance forces there on the battlefield in Iraq. At a minimum, you run the very real risk that you unleash a two- or three-way civil war in Iraq between the Shi'a, the Sunni and the Kurds. At a minimum, everybody who does democratization knows that democracy is something that comes about as a consequence of evolution, not revolution. Revolutions breed as successor regimes the least exhausted in exhausted societies, hence, the most zealous. And that is really what we're looking at there.
Read the whole interview at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/wilson.html
