Guests: Paul Bremer, Madeleine Albright, Barry McCaffrey, Desmond Tutu, James Woolsey
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: President Bush marks the anniversary of the war in Iraq with a White House speech and a visit to wounded soldiers. Iraqi insurgents respond one year after with explosions that rock Baghdad.
A split-screen war, playing to a divided America. Let‘s play
HARDBALL.
I‘m Chris Matthews, and it‘s been one year since the American attack against Iraqi began. And today President Bush put forth a vigorous defense as to why we went to war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Who would prefer that Saddam‘s torture chambers still be open? Who would wish that more mass graves were still being filled? Who would begrudge the Iraqi people their long-awaited liberation?
One year after the armies of liberation arrived, every soldier who has fought, every aid worker who has served, every Iraqi who has joined in their country‘s defense can look with pride on a brave and historic achievement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: Tonight we‘ll get reaction from former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, General Barry McCaffrey, former CIA director James Woolsey and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
But first, Ambassador Paul Bremer, the administrator—the administrator of the coalition provisional authority in Iraq. HARDBALL correspondent David Shuster talked to Bremer today about the situation in Iraq one year after the war began.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID SHUSTER, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Ambassador Bremer, first of all, thank you for joining us from Baghdad.
PAUL BREMER, U.S. ADMINISTRATOR IN IRAQ: Good to be with you.
SHUSTER: Ambassador Bremer, the last couple of days, eight U.S. soldiers were wounded in a mortar attack in Fallujah, three people killed when a man fired at a bus carrying employees of a U.S. funded radio and television station, seven people killed in that bombing in the Mount Lebanon Hotel.
What‘s going on here?
BREMER: Well, we‘re seeing the continuation of the efforts by the people who are against the new democratic Iraq to kill people.
They want to kill coalition forces, and they want to kill innocent Iraqis. They have it in their mind that by doing this they‘re going to stop the progress towards the democratic freedoms here and they‘re wrong. It‘s not going to...
SHUSTER: But do you describe them as terrorists or just Iraqis that are humiliated by the fact that their country is being occupied?
BREMER: No. These are trained killers from the old Saddam regime,
the Fedayeen Saddam, the members of the intelligence services, some of the
· perhaps some of the people from the Army.
We also have a very serious problem here. The attack on the hotel you mentioned was a suicide attack, almost certainly not by an Iraqi, almost certainly by a trained terrorist from outside the country. And that‘s our second threat. And that‘s—that is a serious threat.
SHUSTER: I do want to ask you, though, about the description of some of these attacks on U.S. soldiers. On your coalition provisional authority web site and press releases and briefings, your staff consistently refers to these things as engagements. In other words, one web site describes 21 such engagements on Tuesday. Why not just describe these as attacks?
BREMER: No, because in at least half of the times—I don‘t know what the percentage was on Tuesday. But overall, in at least half or more of the occasions, we actually initiate the engagements. We go after somebody, where we‘ve got intelligence or some suspicions, and we go after them. They‘re not attacks on us.
SHUSTER: But the other half, though, are attacks on U.S. soldiers, aren‘t they?
BREMER: Well, you know, you‘d have to sit and look at the 20 engagements you‘re talking about to do a careful analysis of them. We do have people attacking our soldiers, yes. That‘s pretty obvious.
SHUSTER: OK. This week you talked about the problem with the borders, and you said that foreign terrorists are present in Iraq and in order to try to cut down on this you said that you‘re going to double equipment and staff on 20 major border crossing points.
But isn‘t it true, ambassador, that there are actually hundreds of minor border crossing points into Iraq?
BREMER: Well, sure there are. And is that a reason not to do anything at the major border crossing points?
SHUSTER: Well, I mean, I guess the question is if you can somehow shut down people from going through or have better security at these major border crossing points, I mean, is there nothing that can be done, then, about these minor border crossing points? In other words, is this just window dressing?
BREMER: Oh, no, it‘s not window dressing, no. It will have an effect. But here‘s something to keep in mind. The combined borders of Iraq are about as long as the border between the United States and Mexico, and topographically much more complicated, especially in the north, where it‘s very heavy mountains.
We know how difficult it has been to close off our border with Mexico. There is no magic solution to this. You just have to start. You start by working with the major border crossings. You put sensors and other kinds of intelligence-gathering equipment between the borders, and you try to do the best you can.
But just as we‘ve had trouble sealing off our 5,000-kilometer border in the United States, it‘s going to be difficult here.
SHUSTER: And you may have trouble with folks like Ahmed Chalabi, right? Because after June 30, this isn‘t even your decision. He‘s been quoted as saying that he‘s inclined to roll back your border changes and reopen the major border crossings after June 30.
BREMER: Well, after June 30 we‘ll have an interim government here. It will be a different government than what is there now, because by the terms of the interim constitution that was signed 10 days ago, the governing council on which Mr. Chalabi serves will be dissolved.
So there will be a different government here. They will be sovereign. They will, however, be cooperating, I think, very strongly with the coalition forces that are still here about security. I don‘t think their attention to security is likely to drop at all after June 30.
SHUSTER: Speaking of June 30, you were quoted in “The New York Times” as warning Iraqi leaders that they risk isolating themselves if they snubbed the United Nations.
Are we now to believe that you personally believe it was wrong for the United States to snub the United Nations and go into Iraq alone?
BREMER: No. There‘s no comparable ability whatsoever, and we didn‘t snub the United Nations. On the contrary, it was Saddam Hussein who snubbed the United Nations.
SHUSTER: But we snubbed the United Nations by going in...
BREMER: Excuse me, excuse me. Excuse me. Let me finish my answer.
Saddam Hussein snubbed the United Nations by ignoring 17 consecutive Security Council resolutions. President Bush went to the United Nations. He didn‘t snub them.
He gave a speech on September 12 where he said, “I‘m willing to go back to the United Nations and seek a resolution.” He got a unanimous resolution, a unanimous resolution, 1441. All 15 members of the Security Council approved it. We did not snub the United Nations.
SHUSTER: Would the United States support an Islamic state, if that is in fact what the Iraqis decide they want?
BREMER: I think it‘s a very hypothetical question and extremely unlikely. I‘ve been looking at polls now since September, when we first started polling, and we‘re polling very frequently now, more than every—more than twice a month.
And I‘ve seen no poll, no reliable poll that puts the support for an Islamic theocracy at higher than 10 percent. I think it‘s very unlikely to happen.
SHUSTER: So it‘s your expectation, then, that it will be a democracy of some fashion?
BREMER: The Iraqi people, who are delighted that we freed them, are now thirsting for democracy. We see it all over this country every day.
We have held literally hundreds of town hall meetings in the last 60 days. We‘ve had focus group meetings. We‘ve had meetings of lawyers‘ associations, women‘s associations all across the country. And the one thing that they all agree on is they want democracy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTHEWS: That was David Shuster interviewing Paul Bremer. Former Clinton secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, chaired the group that worked on that poll. We‘re going to talk about that poll in a moment.
Thank you for joining us, Madam Secretary.
Did you learn anything from that—that‘s kind of a feisty interview between David Shuster and Paul Bremer. He doesn‘t seem to like tough questioning that much.
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, he‘s in a very hard position, because things are not working out the way that everybody predicted in Iraq.
It is a chaotic situation, and there have been people that have been dying in explosions. And our troops have -- 524 of our troops have died. Many have been injured.
So things are not working out the way that the administration planned.
MATTHEWS: Did they have a plan? I mean, they had a hope that it would be what Howard Fineman of “Newsweek” calls the happy Iraqi scenario, where they were just thrilled at our arrival and they‘d quickly pick Chalabi as their leader and moved on in a pro-American direction. How much of that was pipe dreaming by the United States?
ALBRIGHT: Well, I think there were a lot of people talking to each other that had the same kind of group thinking and not enough of a reality check on what Iraq was really like.
And I think we decided that—or the American government decided that basically we had to run everything and talked ourselves into it.
MATTHEWS: I was about to mention that poll. I‘m going to do it right now. A new Pew research poll found that anti-American sentiment is on the rise throughout the world.
When asked whether the United States could be trusted, 78 percent of the people in France and 82 percent of Germans said they have less confidence in the United States trustworthiness.
In addition, 70 percent of Jordanians and 66 percent of Moroccans think suicide bombings against Americans and Westerners in Iraq are justifiable.
This is the second or third night I‘ve mentioned that. It‘s a stunning number, isn‘t it?
ALBRIGHT: Well, this is...
MATTHEWS: These are moderate countries, Morocco and Jordan.
ALBRIGHT: That is the very bad part about this. And I think the poll also shows a great chasm between the Muslim world and the rest of the world.
And what we need ,in order to deal with how to deal with terrorism and how to deal generally with problems in the Muslim world is unity with the west.
So if you put those two numbers together, that‘s where the real issue comes, is lack of unity among the western countries when what we need to do is to act together against a very long-term educational process and try to figure out how to get the moderate Muslim countries to help with the extremists.
MATTHEWS: Was part of it the simple, obvious fact that say—pretend, just imagine that the Arab world right now, the Muslim world is a tough neighborhood.
And the only time we go in there is as police. And the only time we go in there is when we have somebody in that community we don‘t like, and we take them out. The rest of the time we take sides against them.
Our attitude toward the Arab world is we don‘t really like you that much, but if you have a bad guy among you, we‘ll come in and get him and take over that country. Isn‘t that a reasonable Arab view of the United States policy in the Middle East?
ALBRIGHT: Well, it puts us in an impossible situation, because we‘re viewed as occupiers.
MATTHEWS: Right.
ALBRIGHT: And even though we can talk ourselves into thinking we‘re liberators, I think that the Arab world doesn‘t see it that way.
MATTHEWS: Why should the Arab world ever see us as liberators? We always take the other side in every fight.
ALBRIGHT: Well, because I happen to think that the Arab world in this case, not seeing us as liberators is understandable.
What is interesting is the polls actually show that the Iraqis—people are quite pleased with what‘s going on. Much better than the outside of the Arab world, which I find a very interesting dichotomy.
MATTHEWS: I want to talk to you about the long pursuit of bin Laden and al-Zawahiri and why it‘s taking so long and whether you trust the Pakistani government, our new friends, to catch him.
We‘ll be back with Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state.
The war began, by the way, at this time last year. President Bush met with his advisers shortly after giving the go-ahead to the first round of the attack against Baghdad.
For more on the Iraq war one year later, check out our web site at Iraq.MSNBC.com.
We‘re coming back with more with the former secretary of state, as I said, Madeleine Albright. And later, James Woolsey, General Barry McCaffrey and Archbishop Desmond Tutu will be here on their thoughts on the war in Iraq one year later. And it is one year later tomorrow.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Coming up, General Barry McCaffrey, former CIA director James Woolsey and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa on whether America can win the peace in Iraq. HARDBALL, back in a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. It‘s 15 minutes past the hour.
And one year ago right now U.S. fighter planes and warships launched the first round of strikes against targets inside Iraq as the war began. Take a look.
We‘re back with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In the pages of history, and you‘re a student of history, as well as a professor, how will this war be judged by historians, our going to Iraq?
Will it be seen as a blemish on U.S. history or looked at as consistent with U.S. history or as a necessary attack on another country?
ALBRIGHT: I think that it will be viewed as an aberration, because this was a war of choice, not of necessity. We did not do what was said was the reason for the war.
The reason, as we were told, was to get weapons of mass destruction, which apparently are not there. And it has caused incredible chaos.
So I hope this comes out well, because I think we all need to have peace, whereas peace is a necessity, not a choice. But I think it‘s an aberration in American history.
MATTHEWS: The first reaction of Americans, as well, as the president‘s was to get even for those who attacked us on 9/11. Only now is the Pakistani government, our ally, pursuing the top leaders of al Qaeda.
Why does it take so long to get from A to B? B should have been dealing with the people who attacked us and then at some point deal with perhaps some distant or immediate threat from Iraq.
Let‘s get back to the original goal, dealing with 9/11. Why do you think it‘s taken now until the spring of 2004 to deal with a problem—a crime that was committed in the fall of 2001?
ALBRIGHT: Well, let me say I thought that President Bush reacted completely appropriately after 9/11 by attacking Afghanistan. But I think the reason it is taking so long, as you‘ve pointed out, I think he took his eye off the ball.
Because their initial reason was to go into Iraq. And this was something that I think some people had thought about before they even came into office. And I think that we really did not—that we diverted resources from Afghanistan, and there are various allegations about the fact that Osama bin Laden was allowed to slip over the border.
But I don‘t—I can tell you it is hard to find Osama bin Laden. And, therefore, I hope very much that the Pakistanis are able to accomplish what they‘re supposed to in finding the No. 2, and then moving to find Osama bin Laden.
MATTHEWS: What do you make of this new evidence, this new aerial, Lisa Myers broke it on NBC the other day, this new aerial photography that showed that we had bin Laden in our sights back in the Clinton administration?
ALBRIGHT: Well, my real recollection of this is that we never had actionable intelligence. You know, we did at one stage hit...
MATTHEWS: Well, there‘s a picture of this big tall guy in flowing robes. Apparently, the head of this operation over there.
ALBRIGHT: Well, as far as I remember this, we did not—we were not able to get action fast enough. This was an airplane, a Predator that was not armed, and so I don‘t think we had actionable intelligence in time to do something about it.
MATTHEWS: Do you think that John Kerry has the judgment to lead the war against terrorism?
ALBRIGHT: I do.
MATTHEWS: Well, why did he make a clear-cut judgment with regard to arming our reconstruction effort and protecting our troops in Iraq? He voted against the $87 billion bill.
ALBRIGHT: I think there should be no doubt about John Kerry‘s support for the military and for arming them properly and continuing what needs to be done. I think his concern was how this was going to be paid for.
But I have no doubt about his strong support for using force when it‘s appropriate, for defending our country, and for supporting a strong defense.
MATTHEWS: Howard Dean got in trouble this week for saying that he thought that at least part of the reason for the attack on Spain by al Qaeda was our attack on Iraq.
Is that fair to attack him for saying that part of the reason was that al Qaeda hit Spain, was to hit us for going into Iraq?
ALBRIGHT: I think we don‘t know what happened in Spain. And I think one of the issues that I‘ve heard is that actually the Spanish people were irritated at their government for spinning information as to the fact that they said the Basques had done it, when in fact they already knew that al Qaeda had done it.
But I don‘t think we have any way of knowing exactly what motivated the Spanish people.
MATTHEWS: It‘s great having you on, Madam Albright. What‘s the name of that book you came out with recently?
ALBRIGHT: Thank you. “Madam Secretary.”
MATTHEWS: I think it‘s a hell of a book. “Madam Secretary,” Madeleine Albright. Great book, great person.
Coming up, General Barry McCaffrey and former CIA director James Woolsey join us with their thoughts one year after the beginning of the war in Iraq. Both pros coming on.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.
General Barry McCaffrey is retired from the United States Army. He‘s now an MSNBC military analyst.
General McCaffrey, you‘ve been over there to Iraq. What is it like for the troops? Is it safe? How would you describe their life over there right now?
MCCAFFREY: Well, of course, Chris, to some extent I suppose it depends on what kind of unit you‘re in. But it‘s an extremely demanding life.
And one of these entry units, aviation units, they work long hours. They move a lot. They‘re in constant danger when they‘re outside their base area from these IED‘s, improvised explosive devices. They‘re subject to attack by rockets or mortars in their base camp.
Now the other part of it, though, is they‘re in pretty good morale. They‘ve got terrific leadership, great equipment. The Army is taking care of them. They‘re getting, you know, regular food and a lot of them are in a heated or air conditioned sleeping billets when they‘re not out on patrol. Pretty good operation.
MATTHEWS: So is it a combination of life where part of the time you‘re facing anything could happen and the rest of the time you‘re in these safer billets inside these compounds?
MCCAFFREY: Well, you know, basically if you‘re a sharp soldier, and that‘s what we‘ve got over there and the Marines now thankfully joining us, you‘re not safe until you‘re back in Kuwait.
So you know, they‘re subject to attack by 120-millimeter mortars in their base camp getting killed or injured. They wear body armor most of the time and helmets. They‘re armed.
And when they move outside the base area, they‘re extremely cautious. Every one of these entrances in and out of a U.S.-defended area, they‘re on hair-trigger alert trying to look for truck bombs. It‘s a demanding environment and they‘re doing a terrific job.
I‘ve never, Chris, in my entire life been more proud of the armed forces than the troops I saw in January in Iraq.
MATTHEWS: What do you make of this prospective duty for our soldiers there, once we have a new government stood up over there, which is our goal, to have them stay on afterwards, basically as an army, basically, to protect the new government over there? Do you think soldiers will like that kind of duty?
MCCAFFREY: Well, I don‘t think the soldiers care. I think the people have got to worry about it, you know, Lieutenant General Rick Sanchez and his commanders.
It‘s hard to imagine how this is going to work on 1 July, a sovereign Iraqi government. One doesn‘t exist. There is no ministry of the interior, ministry of defense. These police forces, ICDC, the border guards, they were put together by the U.S. Army division commanders.
So I don‘t understand how they have control over coalition forces.
It‘s counterintuitive. I hope it works. We‘ve got bright people.
MATTHEWS: Yes, but who replaces Paul Bremer in reality? Bremer is the—sort of the governor general, like MacArthur was. But who is going to be that new person in this new government that gives the orders to the troops: move out, head over here. We need you to help here. Go do this, line up here, move there, leave the country at some point? Who makes that call?
MCCAFFREY: Well, we‘ll have a U.S. ambassador. The good news is getting Colin Powell back in charge of U.S. national security policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. That‘s where it belongs.
A lot of the work to be done is political and economic...
MATTHEWS: Right.
MCCAFFREY: ... not military. So we‘ll have a good ambassador, a couple of thousand people in the embassy. Apparently Lieutenant General Rick Sanchez will stay on as the joint military commander. We‘ve got a great young officer, Lieutenant General Tom Metz, who will actually command coalition fighting forces.
MATTHEWS: Well, have a good weekend. General Barry McCaffrey, great to have you here on HARDBALL this Friday night.
MCCAFFREY: Good to be with you, Chris.
MATTHEWS: It‘s the first anniversary of the war with Iraq.
Still ahead, former CIA Director James Woolsey, who supported the war with Iraq, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has opposed the war. They‘ll both be here with their thoughts on the first anniversary of the war with Iraq.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: This half-hour on HARDBALL, one year after the war in Iraq
began, is the world safer with Saddam Hussein out of power? Former CIA
Director James Woolsey will be here. Plus, Bishop Desmond Tutu on why he
is against the war in Iraq,
But, first, the latest headlines right now.
(NEWS BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.
The September 11 attacks and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are proof that there are grave failures in American intelligence. But have we gotten any better at the human intelligence game?
James rMDNM_Woolsey served as director of the CIA during the Clinton administration. He‘s now vice president of the Booz Allen consulting firm. He visited Iraq just three weeks ago.
Well, give us your report, Mr. Director. How is it going over there, just generally for the American people to hear?
JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: I think we‘ve got a substantially better than 50/50 chance, Chris, of moving them in the—helping them move in the direction of democracy and the rule of law.
The Shia and the Kurds are 85 percent of the country, and I visited with Kurds up in the north and I visited in Shiite villages in the Sunni Triangle. And, yes, everybody argues and they criticizes things we‘re doing and so forth. And at the end of the conversation, they say but don‘t let your military leave.
I rode around with a commander, Colonel Ryan, who had just built seven schools in the Sunni Triangle. And the people were standing beside the road waving and smiling and greeting him. Now, they were Shia from Shiite villages in the Sunni Triangle. But I think that—there are a lot of traffic jams while I was there in late February, weddings. People had postponed weddings because of violence and so forth.
MATTHEWS: Right.
WOOLSEY: And it was not—a religious holiday was coming up and they were not supposed to get married after that for a time. And so there was a concentration of weddings.
But you drive through the streets there were all these traffic jams. And you would look and see the source. It‘s bridal parties. It‘s a little different than one gets in, “if it bleeds, it leads” coverage.
MATTHEWS: I understand.
Give me a reasonable scenario of next couple years, say three, five years from now. If things work out pretty well, what will it be like over there? What will that country‘s role in the world be, Iraq?
WOOLSEY: Well...
MATTHEWS: And what will our role be with Iraq?
WOOLSEY: Some type of either the existing Governing Council or a somewhat larger one governing things for the next six months after July 1 and sometime around the end of this year, beginning of next year, elections for an assembly that can draft a constitution and serve as a government on a temporary basis beyond that.
The really positive thing, I think, is this constitution that they agreed on. There was some storm and stress in doing it. But it is not an Islamist constitution. It is not Sharia. It says that Islam will be one or a source of law. But it‘s got a bill of rights. It‘s got religious freedom. It‘s got freedom—procedural freedoms for judiciary.
It‘s really a fine document, and the Iraqis did it. Jerry Bremer had a hand in blessing for, helping broker it, but they have put together in 11 months a decent transitional constitution. And, you know, it took Germany four years after World War II with us in occupation to get to that point.
MATTHEWS: And you see the development of a civil society out of that, a society without atrocities, a society without a trouble-making foreign policy, a country of some freedom?
WOOLSEY: This is the Middle East, and there‘s going to be problems, including serious problems from some of the residual Baathists among the Sunni and some of the terrorists that I think are coming in from Syria and maybe Iran and Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
And they‘re going to have to work really hard to keep on top of the violence, so they don‘t keep having suicide bombings and shootings and the like. But generally I think the Shia realize that for the first time in 13 centuries, really, they‘re able to govern themselves without the Sunnis staying on top of them in a democracy. And the Kurds have been operating a very decent government up in the north for 12 years under the protection of American and British air power.
So I think you start with something close to 85 percent of the population that would really like to have some type of a reasonable point of moving toward democracy under the rule of law.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: But what would protect a new government over there against the terrorists from outside, the people—the Sakari (ph) types who are associated with al Qaeda and the people who lost the war, the Sunnis?
WOOLSEY: Well, in the first instance and for a time, it‘s got to be us. We need to stay in substantial numbers. I think our military is likely to move out of the cities and into camps outside the cities.
MATTHEWS: How long do you think we should stay?
WOOLSEY: Well, I would hope
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Five years, 10 years?
WOOLSEY: I think it is a perfectly reasonable place, if the new Iraqi government is willing, for us to base some troops that could be able to respond to emergencies in the Middle East, sort of the way we have been in Germany for some years. But I think that‘s up to the new Iraqi government.
But, keep in mind, they have between 200,000 and 300,000 people under
arms now. As I would drive through and be driven through the north and the
Sunni Triangle, I‘d see Iraqi civil defense corps taking over roadblocks
and road checks and operating
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Can this new government constitutionally tell us to leave if they chose to do that?
WOOLSEY: I think yes. I think, once they have sovereignty, they could. But I don‘t think they‘re going to.
MATTHEWS: OK, well, we‘ll come back and talk to former director of the CIA, James Woolsey, just back from a trip three weeks ago to Iraq to give us his thoughts on what‘s coming next over there and what should be done with bin Laden‘s right-hand man if we catch him on the Afghan border.
And later, Archbishop Desmond Tutu is going to be here with me.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
ANNOUNCER: You‘re watching HARDBALL. Now it‘s time for today‘s Marriott map facts. Which state is the only state whose name begins with two vowels?
Stay tuned for the answer.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Coming up, Archbishop Desmond Tutu on why he‘s against the war in Iraq. He‘s coming here when HARDBALL returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: In today‘s Marriott map facts, we asked you, which state is the only state whose name begins with two vowels? Give up? The answer is Iowa.
Now back to HARDBALL with Chris Matthews.
MATTHEWS: We‘re back with James Woolsey, former director of the CIA.
Let me ask you about the big question everybody‘s asking this weekend, and we‘ll be back on the air if something happens, obviously. And that is, will we catch the guys who blew up the World Trade Center? Is it your appropriate that Zawahiri, the No. 2 guy in the al Qaeda organization, was the brains behind that plot to blow up our buildings?
WOOLSEY: I‘ve always thought he was, in a sense, smarter and more operationally minded than bin Laden. They are really a noxious pair. But I think he‘s the more crucial of the two in terms of actually planning things.
On the other hand, there are these independent cells that seem to be
growing up, and they may not communicate with one another a great deal in
these different countries, like possibly the Moroccans, who attacked in
Spain. So he may be in the—not so much in the business of planning
operations anymore, the communications
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: You‘re talking about bin Laden or Zawahiri?
WOOLSEY: Well, either one. The communications for them with the outside world may be very difficult.
MATTHEWS: We went looking for him, we and our allies, back in—right after 9/11. He was out there bragging on all those tapes about he was the one, 80 years later, the sword fell on America and all that stuff.
Why do you think it‘s taken Musharraf, our ally over there in Pakistan, so long to corner him, if he has him cornered?
WOOLSEY: I think Musharraf has been very reluctant to get out there into those Northwest Frontier provinces, Waziristan and the others, where the British didn‘t go much when they were there.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Well, that was the days of the 1870s and ‘80s, when Churchill would go up to the Malacca fields, forest and that sort of stuff.
WOOLSEY: Well, it‘s very hard to operate up there, because those tribes are really independent and very tough.
MATTHEWS: Right.
WOOLSEY: And I think he‘s been laying off because he hasn‘t wanted to antagonize them any more than he already has. But I think he‘s seen these two assassination attempts against him.
MATTHEWS: Musharraf has.
WOOLSEY: Musharraf has.
And he‘s seen how much the Islamists hate him. And I think he‘s now increasingly casting his lot with trying to crush the al Qaeda link with the Islamists in northwestern Pakistan.
MATTHEWS: Whenever Israel would catch a terrorist, a big guy, there would be some move to try to get him back, some deal, some trade offer. Do you think, if we got a guy with the mega-tonnage of Zawahiri, that we would get a lot of attacks coming at us with the idea of freeing him?
WOOLSEY: A lot of attacks...
MATTHEWS: Or cut a deal.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: We‘ll blow up a couple of places and say we‘ll keep it going if you don‘t free the guy?
WOOLSEY: They‘ll try most anything. We‘re not going to do it. We‘re not going to let him go no matter what. But they will do their best to do things like they did in Spain.
MATTHEWS: Would we turn him over to a third country that might be a little unpleasant to him, like Egypt?
WOOLSEY: I imagine, with someone as senior as Zawahiri, we would hold on to him.
MATTHEWS: Keep him?
WOOLSEY: I think we would, and question him and keep him as long as we need to.
MATTHEWS: Could we make a case—tough question, because I know you‘re a tough customer. Could we make a case in a world court or any kind of international body that bin Laden actually did finger the World Trade Center, he did it?
WOOLSEY: Oh, I think so.
MATTHEWS: We could make that case?
WOOLSEY: Yes, I think we can, absolutely.
MATTHEWS: OK, well, everybody wants to make it.
Anyway, thank you very much, James Woolsey, former DCI.
Coming up, Archbishop Desmond Tutu will be here.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. His latest book is titled “God Has a Dream, a Vision of Hope.” Ten years ago, I traveled to South Africa to cover the end of apartheid, Bishop Tutu and the first democratic elections.
Here‘s a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU, SOUTH AFRICAN LEADER: The day has come!
Yes!
MATTHEWS (voice-over): Walking with Archbishop Desmond Tutu to the polls early today, we watched a man who acted like his prayers had been answered.
TUTU: Thank you.
(LAUGHTER)
TUTU: Great. Great.
You see us. We are two, three inches taller than we were yesterday, you know. And all of them are like that. They know that we are now going to choose our government.
MATTHEWS (on camera): Do you think they have hopes about their own personal lives in front of them?
TUTU: Absolutely. I mean, who doesn‘t when they vote.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTHEWS: That was one heck of a day, wasn‘t it, Archbishop? Your country finally went to general elections for everybody.
(LAUGHTER)
TUTU: Fantastic, fantastic.
MATTHEWS: I always tell everybody that your first words in voting were probably not in the dictionary. Yippee. Great stuff.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: And, by the way, I will always remember those biblical lines of people going for how many miles those lines went that morning.
TUTU: Oh, fantastic, fantastic. It was quite unbelievable.
But then, how do you describe what it really means like to become free, when previously you had shackles manacling you.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
TUTU: Your wrists and your ankles and then they‘re snapped?
MATTHEWS: Right. How old were you when you voted that day?
TUTU: Sixty-three.
MATTHEWS: Sixty-three. God, it seems young to me. Anyway...
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: But for you it was the first time you were allowed to vote legally in your own country.
TUTU: Yes. Yes. Yes.
MATTHEWS: Let me talk to you about the world or ask you about the world, people want to know your views, morally speaking and also in secular terms.
TUTU: Yes.
MATTHEWS: What do you think about the United States today? What do you think we‘re doing, right or wrong?
TUTU: I love...
MATTHEWS: In Iraq, in the war on terrorism, whatever you want to call it?
(LAUGHTER)
TUTU: I love—I love the people. I love the people enormously.
You‘re some of the most generous people. But I can‘t quite make out why you should have been exporting so much destruction to other places.
MATTHEWS: How did we do that? Well, be particular.
TUTU: Yes.
Well, you know, we thought after September the 11th that awful, awful outrage which everybody has condemned roundly correctly, for a moment you didn‘t act as a country in the kind of way that we thought you were going to. And many of us were saying, ah, now we are seeing a new paradigm of power. It is that we aware it is individuals who have done this thing against the United States, and, therefore, they are going to be treated as the criminals that they are.
Unfortunately, and very sadly, you reverted to the kind of pattern that one had always duplicated, but was sad to see happen. You hit out against a whole nation.
MATTHEWS: You mean Iraq.
TUTU: Well, no, you went to Afghanistan, remember.
MATTHEWS: Well, from our way of looking at it, Afghanistan was the home of the al Qaeda organization.
TUTU: So you were ready, then, to kill innocent civilians, as happened, because one of the things why people condemned as much as they did September the 11th was that innocent civilians were targeted.
And if that was wrong in New York and maybe Washington, D.C. and wherever else, it would be wrong even in Afghanistan. You hit out and didn‘t say, well, we‘re going to target...
MATTHEWS: Well, excuse me, Archbishop, but how would we have targeted the criminals in Afghanistan without taking over their country?
TUTU: No, you—it‘s very straightforward. I mean, you‘ve got very many connections.
You work with so many international institutions that is a network that does in fact ensure that criminals are apprehended. And at least—unfortunately, your country decided that it wasn‘t going to endorse the International Criminal Court, because that is the court before which the people who were the perpetrators or who were behind the perpetrators of September 11 should have been arraigned.
And, sadly, you hit out, I think, because you were not able to handle the fact of your vulnerability. You have not even now come to terms with the fact that you are not invulnerable. And one wishes that somebody could have helped you to know that it is of the essence of a creature to be vulnerable.
MATTHEWS: Well, what do we do about keeping that vulnerability to a minimum? I mean, when we got hit on September 11 a couple of years ago in 2001, the American people said, we‘ve got to do something about this. We have to prevent this from happening again. And it‘s not just about revenge. It‘s about preventing it from happening again. Didn‘t we have to go out to get ahold of bin Laden and his organization and kill it?
TUTU: I am certain you should have been able to do that.
But, you see, what you omitted to do was engage the rest of the world and say, look, these people are targeting us now, but they are likely to look for other targets.
MATTHEWS: Right.
TUTU: Let us cooperate and collaborate in the business of trying to ensure that this does not happen again. And it is quite crucial for us to want to look at what are the root causes that enable or make people be ready to engage in desperate acts?
MATTHEWS: What do you think they are?
TUTU: Well, I believe myself that there‘s no way in which we are likely to win the war against terrorism, as long as you‘ve got conditions of poverty, of disease, of ignorance that can make people so desperate that they believe the only options they have are to engage in acts of that kind.
MATTHEWS: But the people who struck us on September 11 were people who were reasonably well educated. They were technical people. Maybe they didn‘t have Ph.D.s, but they had educations that would have allowed them to make a living quite well in the Western world.
TUTU: Now, the point is, if precisely people of that sort who look at the inequities of the international economic order—I mean, to think just now that you say to the developing world, in order for you to make it, produce more. So you sell.
MATTHEWS: Right.
TUTU: And they do produce more.
But then the developed world has massive, massive agricultural subsidies that ensure that farmers in those rich countries can produce their stuff cheaply. And there are high tariffs...
MATTHEWS: I understand.
TUTU: ... that prevent the developing country from being able to sell their goods. And so you say, these guys are playing a game and they make the rules for the game and they are the referees in this games. It is so lopsided that anyone seeking to be a normal person realizes that the odds are stacked against us so horrendously that people will say, I am ready to do anything to get out of this trap.
MATTHEWS: But how much of it, Archbishop, is religiously led? People who have attacked us on September 11 and other times claim a religious mandate. They said they‘re fighting for Allah, for their Muslim faith.
TUTU: Yes. Yes.
MATTHEWS: Why don‘t you tag them? I mean, they are the ones doing it.
TUTU: Just remember, the guys who shoot doctors who procure abortions...
MATTHEWS: Yes.
TUTU: Christians, say they‘re doing God‘s will. The Oklahoma bomber, Caucasian, Christian...
MATTHEWS: Right.
TUTU: He was doing God‘s will. What we must avoid is tarring a faith because some adherents behave...
MATTHEWS: No, I‘m not tarring of faith. I‘m tarring an application of a faith. I mean, I‘m not doing that.
TUTU: Yes.
I think, I mean, that we have tended to tar with the same brush a faith, a religion...
MATTHEWS: Right.
TUTU: ... because some of its adherents behave in a bad way.
MATTHEWS: I know. I don‘t think God made any suicide bombers.
Anyway, thank you. It‘s great. It‘s an honor to have you here. A lot of people disagree with you, but everybody respects you, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Prize winner who fought for his own people for so many years. Thanks for being here.
Join us again Monday night at 7:00 Eastern for HARDBALL. HARDBALL election correspondent David Shuster will walk us through what it takes to make a political ad.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let‘s go to Edwards positive.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Short sentences, punchy wards. The two things that you always have to keep in mind, relevant and credible. And if you make spots that are relevant and credible, you‘re way ahead of the game every single time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: That‘s Monday on HARDBALL.
Right now, it‘s time for the “COUNTDOWN” with Keith.
END
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