Chris Wallace Grills Condi on FNS (VIDEO)

September 11, 2006 Fox News, Politics In General, Video, War in Iraq, War on Terror View Comments

Condoleeza Rice was on Fox News Sunday today with Chris Wallace, and for those of you out there who think Fox News is all soft and fuzzy with Conservatives, this segment proves you wrong. Chris really takes Condoleeza to task about the status of the country today in regards to security. Here is a partial transcript, with full transcript available here.

WALLACE: And in March 2003, just before the invasion, you said, talking about Iraq, “and a very strong link to training Al Qaida in chemical and biological techniques.”

But, Secretary Rice, a Senate committee has just revealed that in February of 2002, months before the president spoke, more than a year, 13 months, before you spoke, that the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded this — and let’s put it up on the screen.

“Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful CB” — that’s chemical or biological — “knowledge or assistance.”

Didn’t you and the president ignore intelligence that contradicted your case?

RICE: What the president and I and other administration officials relied on — and you simply rely on the central intelligence. The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, gave that very testimony, that, in fact, there were ties going on between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein’s regime going back for a decade. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission talked about contacts between the two. We know that Zarqawi was running a poisons network in Iraq. We know that Zarqawi ordered the killing of an American diplomat in Jordan from Iraq. There were ties between Iraq and Al Qaida.

Now, are we learning more now that we have access to people like Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services? Of course we’re going to learn more. But clearly…

WALLACE: But, Secretary Rice, this report, if I may, this report wasn’t now. This isn’t after the fact. This was a Defense Intelligence Agency report in 2002.

Two questions: First of all, did you know about that report before you made your statement?

RICE: Chris, we relied on the reports of the National Intelligence Office, the NIO, and of the DCI. That’s what the president and his central decision-makers rely on. There are…

WALLACE: Did you know about this report?

RICE: … intelligence reports and conflicting intelligence reports all the time. That’s why we have an intelligence system that brings those together into a unified assessment by the intelligence community of what we’re looking at.

That particular report I don’t remember seeing. But there are often conflicting intelligence reports.

I just want to refer you, though, to the testimony of the DCI at the time about the activities…

WALLACE: That’s the head of central intelligence.

RICE: Yes, head of central intelligence — that were going on between Al Qaida and between Iraq.

But let me make a broader point. The notion, somehow — and I’ve heard this — the notion, somehow, that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power seems to me quite ludicrous.

Saddam Hussein had gone to war against his neighbors twice, causing more than a million deaths. He had dragged us into a war in 1991 because he invaded his neighbor Kuwait. We were still at war with him in 1998 when we used American forces to try and disable his weapons of mass destruction. We went to war again with him, day in and day out, as he shot at our aircraft trying to patrol no-fly zones. This was a mass murderer of more than 300,000 of his own people, using weapons of mass destruction.

The United States and a coalition of allies finally brought down one of the most brutal dictators in the Middle East and one of the most dangerous dictators in the Middle East, and we’re better off for it.

Condoleeza, in my mind, can hold her own against anyone. Chris really tried to pin her down, but she’s infallible in making her points. I believe that she’s one of the most brilliant political minds of our time.

Watch the video of Condoleeza Rice here.