On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Michael Pugliese wrote:
> Relevent hits in the past for Iraq and biochem warfare though. Are you sure
> you saw Woolsey on ABC?
Yeah. Here's something from PBS NewsHour (not ABC, but I swear I saw him on ABC):
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/terroristattack/government.html
-d
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JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, on the whole good, but there are a couple of implications. First of all he talked about no distinction between those, as Larry said, who harbor the terrorists and the terrorists themselves. If this was bin Laden, that suggests blaming Afghanistan, and fine, but he also said that we would use law enforcement and intelligence to bring them to justice.
Now this was the Clinton administration approach to assume that terrorism was largely a law enforcement matter, and if you found the people who perpetrated the act and convicted them, you have done the job. There's I think a substantial body of opinion that is starting to rethink that.
A number of people are starting to suggest, for example, as did the FBI agent we were talking earlier - who headed up the first part of the World Trade Center investigation in 1993 - that there may have been Iraqi government involvement behind Ramsey Youssef, the mastermind of that plot as well as the plot to bomb a number of American airliners in the Pacific, which is what led to his being caught. Now, if there was Saddam Hussein behind the screen - like the Wizard of Oz -- pulling the levers, it's much more important both in '93 and now than even the people who harbor the terrorists or even the terrorists who carry it out.
So first and foremost our intelligence agencies, I think, have to go back into some of this material that was not looked at in '93, '94, '95 because it was under grand jury secrecy because it was solely in the possession of the FBI and Justice Department -- and we need to decide whether or not we may have ourselves in a situation of being at war with a country. I think it's possible, it's certainly not proven, but we need to find out.
[ .... ]
JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, if we go attacking anyone, we should be sure that we're attacking the right people. I mean, we didn't do that quite right in Sudan, for example, in 1998. But it seems to me if we find that there is state-sponsorship behind here -- Iran is possible -- I think Iraq is more likely -- then we're at war with that country. This was an act of war against the United States. This was Pearl Harbor.
The difference is in December 7th of 1941 we saw those rising suns on the wings of Japanese aircraft and we knew who had attacked us. Now we need to be careful and be sure - but if we are sure not only I think military action, but particularly things like supporting the democratic opposition in Iraq, there are a number of steps that we can and should take very much along the lines of what we did against the worst nations that we were opposed to during the Cold War and more because we would be involved in military action. We have to get, I think, very serious now.