MR. RUSSERT: But people are being asked to take your judgement on this, as we sit here this morning, and refer to previous judgements the administration made: weapons of mass destruction, there were none; we would be greeted as liberators, this is three years later; that it would not take hundreds of thousands of American troops to occupy Iraq. Tommy Franks, according to the book “Cobra II,” said we’d be down to 30,000 troops in November of ‘03. The cost of the war: the budget director of the White House said it’d be $50 billion dollars, it’s now over $350 billion dollars. Each judgement has proven to be wrong.
SEC’Y RICE: The judgement that has not proven to be wrong, Tim, is that the region is changing in fundamental ways and the region is better without Saddam Hussein. Yes, it is true that everyone thought he had weapons of mass destruction; he did not. It is, by the way, the case that the Iraqis are delighted to be rid of him. And some Iraqis, most Iraqis, in fact, are willing and want to keep coalition forces there until they can take care of this themselves. But we do have to keep things in historical perspective. These people are doing something that is quite unknown in the Middle East, and one has to ask, “What was the alternative?” Was the alternative to leave Saddam Hussein in power, continuing to threaten his neighbors, continuing with his windfall profits from the Oil for Food scandal, continuing to repress his people and build mass graves, continuing to use those Oil for Food profits to, again, build the infrastructure for his weapons of mass destruction?
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