Below the fold, you’ll find my show notes on NBC’s Meet the Press. Condoleezza Rice was his guest, and she articulated some important points. You’ll need to think conceptually to grasp them, which most members of the MSM and Democrats seem incapable of doing, at least in this area.

Suffice it to say that terrorism cannot be defeatd by kiliing bin Laden, levelling Afghanistan, and leaving the Middle East as is, with despots and mad mullahs ruling and manipulating, preaching death in the name of their state or of their God.


RICE ON THE RUSSERT SHOW. Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet the Press began his interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza by quoting from “the papers, Saturday.” He said, “This is how it was captured in the paper.” He held a folded paper in the air, referring to it as “the paper” and quoted the first two paragraphs from “the paper.” Russert’s “paper” is the Washngton Post, and the story, including the first two paragraphs, can be found here.

Rice said we are trying to understand what the documents say before we confront the Russians. Russert told her that they were U.S. reports, thus she should believe them. (Interesting, coming from a man who has been hung up on “no WMD” then “no significant amount of WMD.”) Russert wanted to know if there would be an investigation as to who leaked the information to the Russians. and Rice said she does “not want to get ahead of this.” Russert asked if it might be “deliberate misinformation.” She doesn’t know. She said we had thousands of documents to review, this is serious, and we’ll raise it with the Russians.

Russert reminded her that “when we first went into Iraq,” the Fedayeen [Saddam] killed dozens Americans. This may have happened, he noted, because of the Russians. She didn’t want to go into hypotheticals. We need “to take a good, hard look at the documents.”

Russert brought up the President’s old “looked Vlad Putin in the eye” line and asked if the President still thought Putin to be “straightforward and honest.” Rice said it was too early to say that this originated in the Kremlin, and she suggested that the Russians themselves should be concerned that this happened.

Russert said that the source was the Russian Ambassador, Putin had to know, how could the President call Putin “straightforward and honest”? Rice said we still had to review the facts. She did not want to “jump out ahead” and make wild accusations. She counts on communicating honestly with the Russians about this.

Russert asked why the Russians aren’t helping us get sanctions against Iran in the UNSC. The secretary said that we haven’t yet reached that stage, and that we have the same objective as the Russians — to stop enrichment and reprocessing on Iranian soil — but there are “some tactical differences on how to get there.”

He asked her if it were U.S. policy that Iran not get a nuclear weapon. She answered that it was also international policy. Russert quoted from the New York Times’ WEEK IN REVIEW, which purported to quote “an administration official” (assistant to the deputy manager of janitorial supplies?) as saying that most administration officials believe that Iran will get a nuclear weapon “sooner or later.” The “administration official” cited by the paper says that we want to hold out ten to twenty years and hope for a better government in Iran. Rice, speaking for herself and the President, said that this was not the case.

She pointed out that Iran cannot withstand the kind of isolation from the global community which North Korea “endures by choice.”

She suggested a Chapter 7 resolution in the UNSC, compelling Iran to act according to the order or face consequences.

She would not speculate on whether the President would go to Congress if he wanted to invade Iran, answering another bizarre Russert question and pointing out that they wanted to rely on diplomacy. Russert suggested that the President did not go to Congress before invading Iraq, and Rice reminded the host that he did.

Russert listed the statistics for causalities in the war and asked Rice if she knew it would be this bad three years ago when the President decided to go to war. She said that we never know and each death is mourned in the Administration.

She talked about the need for a “different kind of Middle East.” Russert pointed out that Saddam did not fly airplanes into buildings on September 11, and she said that those who believe September 11 was about just that “have a very narrow view of what we faced on September 11.” She continued: “We faced the outcome of an ideology of hatred throughout the Middle East which had to be dealt with.” Saddam was part of that old Middle East, she said, and the new Iraq will be part of a new Middle East, and we will all be safer.

Russert, as conceptually challenged on this issue as any reporter, held up that WMD were the primary reason given for going to war. He pointed to a WashPost article indicating that Saddam’s last foreign minister, Naji Sabri, was a paid French spy who had told the French that Saddam had no nuclear program and was not stockpiling chem weapons. “That’s a far cry,” Russert challenged, “from what the American people were told.”

Rice explained that Sabri was “a single source among multiple sources.” She explained that Saddam was unwilling to account for his weapons programs. The UN team could not account for Iraq’s large stockpiles which we knew he once had.

Now that Saddam is gone, she said, Iraq can become a new Iraq. The Iraqis of various stripes were coming together for the first time politically, not through violence. A new Iraq will lead to a new Middle East. Russert told her that she cannot ask people to accept her word when the Administration has lied about WMD, being greeted as liberators, and that we had enough troops in Iraq. Tim Russert was spouting Democrat talking points. “Each judgment,” he said, “has proven to be wrong.”

Rice said that what has not proven to be wrong is that the region is changing. She said that everyone thought there were WMD and there are not. We are being treated as liberators, she pointed out, and most Iraqis want coalition forces there until they can control matters themselves. She said that “we do have to keep things in historical perspective.” The Iraqis are doing something uneard of in the region. The alternative was to leave Saddam and his constant threat in power. Oil for Food.

Russert argued that Saddam “was contained by the No Fly Zone. He was in a box.” Rice disagreed, pointing out that Saddam was using the Oil for Food program to further his desires to dominate the region. Without Saddam, she argued, you can see the promotion of democracy, a new Middle East. Authoritarian governments are cracking. (She could also have pointed out the folly of a No Fly Zone being kept in perpetuity, and that it’s very existence proved that Saddam was dangerous.)

She said that one cannot argue that the Middle East would have been fine and safe if we had left it alone, not touched Iraq. It was that Middle East, “the Middle East that we quote-unquote ‘disturbed,’ that led to the September 11 attacks.”