An excellent interview with Daniel Ellsberg:
- So what exactly are the lies you say the press should be examining more deeply? The first lie is: Saddam represents the No. 1 danger to U.S. security in the world. To allow the president and Rumsfeld to make that statement over and over is akin to them saying without challenge from the press that they accept the flat-earth theory. To say Saddam is the No. 1 danger is being made without real challenge from the press, with few exceptions. More dangerous than al-Qaida? North Korea? Russian nukes loose in the world? An India-Pakistan nuclear war? I'm impressed by the testimony of Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's mediator in the Middle East, who said he'd place Saddam sixth or seventh on any list of dangers we face. The question is, are we helping our cause against threats one through five by going after number six or seven? Two: That we are reducing the threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction by attacking Iraq. This is one of the most dangerous assertions since all evidence is that we are increasing the threat of such terrorism by the attack, as CIA Director [George] Tenet said in his letter to Congress. Tenet said the danger is very low that Saddam will use weapons if not attacked and fairly high if he is attacked. Three: The reason we are singling Saddam out is that he cannot be contained or deterred, unlike other leaders in the world, and again this is largely unchallenged by the mainstream press. No one brings out the following point: This is a man who had weapons of mass destruction, including nerve gas, and missiles capable of hitting Israel and ready to go in the 1991 war -- which he does not now have -- and he kept his finger off the button. So how unreliable is he if not on the brink of being deposed or killed?
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