Donahue with

Donahue with Phyllis Bennis
MSNBC, 31 July 2002

PHIL DONAHUE, HOST: Good evening. We start our program tonight with what appears to be a familiar scene, but one with which we will never feel any immunity. At Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, seven people were killed, and more than 80 wounded after a Palestinian militant bombed a crowded cafeteria there. Of the seven killed, three were American. I’m in the company of Phyllis Bennis in our studio, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. And let me remind our viewers that on the satellite is Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. And we’ll also talk to Senator Lincoln Chafee, who is a member of the Senate foreign relations committee. He was there today during the hearing. Well, Mrs. Bennis, please, give us your briefest speech about why you’re against going after Saddam Hussein.

PHYLLIS BENNIS: No. 1, we don’t have the right, Phil, under international law to go to war against a country that has not attacked us. Iraq has not attacked us, and we have no evidence about what weapons they do or don’t have. We need inspectors back in. We don’t need another war in this already war-torn region. This is a region that is at the boiling point because of what’s going on under Israeli occupation, and the kinds of results of that we’re seeing today.

DONAHUE: And you have a significant percentage of the American population saying, oh, these hand-wringing liberals are going to stand there and suddenly Saddam is going to have a big one, and then we’re going to be in trouble and that’s the trouble with you people, you don’t get it.
BENNIS: But I’ll tell you who does get it, if you don’t think I do. The joint chiefs of staff are among those who are saying, we do not have a basis to be going to war. We don’t have the capacity to do an assassination with 250,000 ground troops. What we do know is that American troops will die. And we know that tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, families, mothers...

DONAHUE: And millions will die if Saddam launches one.

BENNIS: But there’s no evidence that there is even a weapon that exists in that country yet. The UNSCOM inspectors, when they left, said that 90 to 95 percent of the weapons were already accounted for and destroyed. We provided the weapons to that regime throughout the 1980s. That was a big problem. We should never have done that. We have a lot of problems with our credibility, saying that now, because we don’t like it, we think he might give the weapons to somebody else maybe in the future, maybe they would use them. But we know if we go in now, it won’t be a maybe. It will be a war that will kill tens of thousands of Iraqis-children, old people, families. And it will kill thousands, potentially, of American GIs.

DONAHUE: But you have to acknowledge that you’re asking us to accept your crystal ball. I don’t think that makes you a bad person. But so does the other side, right?

BENNIS: I’m not asking for a crystal ball. I’m saying there are other things we should be doing. It’s not a question of sitting back and saying, we don’t care if there are weapons of mass destruction. We need serious inspections. We need to extend the military sanctions beyond Iraq to the entire region. This is an arms-glutted region. And until that changes, we’re going to have tremendous instability there.

DONAHUE: Ivo Daalder, senior fellow at Brookings Institute. We read with interest your piece in this morning’s "Washington Post", an op-ed piece in which you said, among other things, Congress has to be in on this. Please make your case, Mr. Daalder.

IVO DAALDER, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: We’re at the beginning of a debate here in the country. The hearings that started today in the Senate foreign relations committee start that off. But the hearings are not enough. The hearings are important. I’m glad that Senator Biden and the rest of the committee are doing them. But what we really need to be faced with is the fact that, if we’re going to war, we will go to war. And Congress, the last time I looked, is the one who declares war, who decides that, in fact, the United States can initiate military action. Congress has a solemn responsibility, more so than the president in this case, to have all 535 voices heard on the question of whether or not it is the right thing to do at this point in time, to initiate military action against Saddam.

DONAHUE: I hear no energy in Congress for this, what you describe, a congressional mandate to get Congress’ view on this.

DAALDER: Well, let’s wait and see. I mean, the hearing today was only the first step. But clearly, Congress cannot escape the responsibility. It cannot say the president will decide when and how to use force. That’s an issue that was debated at the time when the framers of the
Constitution were debating it. And one delegate stood up and said, let’s have the president have the power to initiate war, and he was mocked. And rightly so, as something that is wrong with the Republic. We have balances and checks in the Constitution. And the most important one is that the president is commander in chief and the Congress is the one that authorizes the use of force in these kinds of circumstances.

DONAHUE: Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island. Well, sir, first of all, do you agree with what you just heard Mr. Daalder say?

SEN. LINCOLN CHAFEE ®, RHODE ISLAND: Well, there is a conflict, obviously. And as Mr. Daalder said, there’s one part of the Constitution that says the president is commander in chief, and then another part says only Congress shall declare war. And over the years that has been debated.

DONAHUE: It’s allowed everybody to duck, then. Really what it has allowed, it’s allowed 535 people in Congress to hide until they find out which way the wind is blowing.

CHAFEE: No, I think we take our responsibilities very seriously here. And the advent of these hearings is an indication of that. And certainly, this is an instance where there’s going to be a surprise, that we’re going to have some kind of military action that’s going to be a surprise. So, all the more reason for Congress to be involved in this decision.

DONAHUE: Right. What is your view now? You’re a Republican from Rhode Island. And, in the tradition of your father, I don’t think you’re upset if we call you a moderate. Tell us your feelings here. What do you think?

CHAFEE: I agree with Phyllis, that the first order of business, to find out what the threat is. Before we risk any American lives, what is the threat? And how extensive are the weapons of mass destruction? How aggressive is Saddam Hussein and other weapons he might have? And then, what are the regional consequences? Is this going to just ignite our allies in the neighboring countries? Jordan has got a very difficult, tenuous situation. The whole region is fragile. Even Saudi Arabia has a population that the ruling family has to worry about. And then, how about Pakistan? Is that going to all of a sudden ignite in a conflagration of anti-Americanism? And so these are some of the hard questions that are coming out in the hearing.

DONAHUE: Kindly stand by. We’ll be right back with some different views on Iraq, in just a moment.

DONAHUE: Attacking Iraq has been the focus of Senate hearings today. I’m joined by Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Phyllis Bennis is here, she’s a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. And Ivo Daalder is here, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. And we are joined now by the "National Review’s" senior editor, Ramesh Ponnuru. Well, Mr. Ponnuru, sir, the conservatives have been waiting to hear from you. You’d go into Iraq alone. You don’t care if we have to do it alone. Do I understand you?

RAMESH PONNURU, SR. EDITOR, "NATIONAL REVIEW": Well, I think it’s always better to have allies in these things. I think one of the ways you ensure that you don’t have to go it alone is by signaling that you are willing to do so if necessary. I think in the end, when we move against Iraq-and I do think it’s a when, not an if-that we are going to have some allies. We’re going to have the British on our side, probably. The Italians,
probably. The French, the Germans...

DONAHUE: Probably. OK. I’m not sure everybody is going to agree with that. Well, the British seem to be saying, are you sure? We’ll go if you want us to. I see no enthusiasm in Europe at all among our allies.

PONNURU: I didn’t say we needed our allies to be enthusiastic. We just need them to be allies.

DONAHUE: Right. Make your case. You are saying that the president of the United States, on his own, and without necessarily getting any kind of approval from Congress, has the power to go knock off another head of state if he wants to?

PONNURU: All right. Well, let me first say that I do think it’s a good idea for there to be a congressional debate and for the president to work to build a bipartisan and an international consensus for regime change in Iraq. But I think it’s important that we also keep in mind that we have been at a state of war with Iraq, technically, for 10 years now. Remember, we’ve had fighters flying over Iraq every day for a decade. We enforce the no-fly zone. We have dismembered and liberated part of the country. You remember in 1998, Clinton had the Desert Fox campaign. What was his legal authority to do that? His legal authority was that the law authorizing the use of force against Iraq in the original Gulf War has never expired.

BENNIS: But that was not actually having anything to do with what happened in Desert Fox. That law that was cited by President Clinton was one that authorized the use of force to get Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. That happened in 1991. And the UN resolution did not authorize it.

PONNURU: Also said, restore peace in the region.

BENNIS: The UN resolution did not authorize any additional force.

DONAHUE: We’ll be here all night on this one. I ask you, Mr. Ponnuru, if we give ourselves the power to go and knock off another head of state, why can’t someone who doesn’t like us assign the same power to themselves? Doesn’t this-doesn’t this endanger heads of state around the world?

PONNURU: I think it’s a mistake to assume that countries that mean us ill are going to be inhibited by our lack of action. Look, Saddam Hussein has been credibly alleged to have masterminded a plot to assassinate former President Bush. The fact that the US followed a no-assassination policy does not seem to have inhibited him.

DONAHUE: But we have supplied the materials to Saddam. He was our SOB. When he killed the Kurds, we stood mute. We did nothing about that. Now we’re apparently prepared to send up to a half a million of our best, highly-trained young men and women. Doesn’t seem fair to them. We set up this thing and now we’re going to send them in to risk their lives to fix it.

PONNURU: Also we aided the Soviet Union during World War II as well. And then afterwards, we combated them. I don’t think that there was this huge hypocrisy there. I don’t think it was-that would be like saying because we were allies with South Africa for a good many years, that we were somehow immoral. It would have been completely wrong for us to impose sanctions on South Africa as we did. If you’ve made mistakes in the past, the thing to do is change them and fix them now, not to wring your hands-to quote you-and do nothing because of that.

BENNIS: But if wringing hands was the only option, that would be a different matter. But I think what we’re talking about here is a scenario where we will have support for a US military strike because there is not a country in the world that will not be afraid to stand up to the US But we have to ask ourselves, is the US really safer? Are Americans safer if we go to war based on a coerced coalition, where people don’t agree with their governments? And those governments, in the Middle East in particular, may actually be overthrown for their alliance.

DONAHUE: Senator Chafee, I also noticed that, you know, this is such a kabuki dance we’re watching on TV. Nobody seems-we’re going to be careful. Hagel, Biden, in the House we have Gephardt, Daschle-yes, we don’t like Saddam, but we got to be careful. Nobody is taking a stand. Do you agree?

CHAFEE: Yes, I do. I think we’re still traumatized after September 11. And the American public is being very aggressive right now. I think in bellicose, and politicians are listening to that. I hear from my politicians, hey, it worked for Qadhafi. We bombed him, we never heard from him since.

DONAHUE: Well, Pan Am 103...

BENNIS: And we killed his 3-year-old daughter. We didn’t get Qadhafi.

CHAFEE: But we intimidated them. But I think it’s also our job as politicians to think of the long-term and not react to the passions that, understandably, were stirred up after September 11.

DONAHUE: We have more voices who want to make their own contribution to this dialogue. And we will hear them. May I ask you all to stay. We want you all to make your case, as we talk about Iraq. Should we, shouldn’t we? What do we do? We’ll be back in just a moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: It’s safe to say that Saddam Hussein and his regime have developed the ability to make any number of things mobile. They have mobile missiles. They have mobile radars. They move around a lot of things to avoid detection or if not detection, at least to avoid having them attacked. (END VIDEO CLIP)

DONAHUE: Does Iraq really have weapons of mass destruction, and if so, how can we prove it? Joining my other guests is Hans Von Sponeck, former UN assistant secretary-general, who has lived in Iraq, spent two weeks there recently. You were the former UN assistant secretary-general and humanitarian coordinator for Iraq. You quit. We’ll talk about that in a moment. You’ve heard our commentary here so far. Kindly make your case, Mr. Von Sponeck. What do you think?

HANS VON SPONECK, FMR. UN ASST. SEC. GEN.: Well, good evening, Mr. Donahue. I would just like to say, misinformation or wrong information base and, at the same time, military might is a pretty-a pretty lethal combination. And what we see and hear every day is an attempt really to provide the American public and also members of the US Congress with information that isn’t even close to what the reality on the ground is. I think your intelligence agencies, the State Department, the government in general, know very well that what is proclaimed to be the threat isn’t really the threat. But without creating this kind of a smokescreen, what you are-what you would do is you would pull the carpet away from the entire US policy in dealing with Iraq as, I would say, the US government is moving away from its containment policy to an occupation policy. And as an outsider-I’m not an American, but I’m also not a fanatic. I’m simply someone who has seen recently, most recently two and a half weeks ago, I was there. I am not an arms expert, I make no claim to be. But when I go with a German television group to two sites which are described in "The New York Times" and British press and by statements from American officials as sites that have resumed the production of weapons of mass destruction substances, and you go there and they’re destroyed, then you begin to wonder, on what basis all these allegations are made that Iraq poses that threat, even to a distant country like the US?

DONAHUE: Right. I think it was you who wrote in "The Guardian"-did you not have a piece recently in "The Guardian"?

VON SPONECK: That’s correct. That’s correct.

DONAHUE: And you said, you know, Saddam can release all the pressure here from this balloon, which is getting larger and larger every day, by merely letting the inspectors in. Imagine how he-why doesn’t he do that?

VON SPONECK: Well, there’s a very good answer. If you have, in the course of the history-and Mr. Richard Butler should have mentioned that. If he had been honest today in the testimony in the US Senate foreign relations committee, then he would have mentioned that his organization, for which he was responsible, was misused by lateral intelligence agencies. So Iraq is worried. The foreign minister said to me, we will let the arms inspectors come in, but on the condition that we have guarantees from the United Nations that the inspection isn’t, again, misused for intelligence that is simply preparing the ground for an ultimate attack against Iraq. That makes sense to me.

DONAHUE: Yes. Now, in your view here, you align yourself with Scott Ritter. That’s true?

VON SPONECK: I do.

DONAHUE: Yes.

VON SPONECK: I do.

DONAHUE: ... who, like you, has suggested that we really are not being honest when we suggest that he’s ready to do something about it. How does Europe feel? We’re going to London in just a moment. [...] If the United States plans to take on Iraq, will we have any international support? Does the United States think it needs it? I’m back with my guests, Republican senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. We have Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for policy studies, the "National Review’s" Ramesh Ponnuru is here, and as is Hans Von Sponeck, the former United Nations assistant general secretary. And joining us from London, this international collection of people who care, is Michael Binyon. He’s on from London to tell us what the folks in Europe are saying. He’s a senior editor at the "London Times". Well, how’re we doing, may I ask you, Michael? How do-how do the London folk feel about the United States of America at this hour?

MICHAEL BINYON, "LONDON TIMES": They feel sympathetic to America. They don’t feel very sympathetic to the idea of attacking Iraq. There’s great skepticism about this. There’s a feeling there’s a fire raging in the Middle East. That’s where the fire extinguishers should be pointing at the moment. Iraq is something that’s been contained for many years. What’s the need to go now?

DONAHUE: The fire in the Middle East about which you speak is, of course, the Israeli-Palestinian drama unfolding grimly before our eyes. In other words, they want-they think-the Brits feel that if-if there can be an easing of the tension, that that would, what, make it less necessary to invade or easier?

BINYON: I think it’d make it easier. It’d certainly make it easier in terms of public opinion. It’d make it easier in terms of the perceived credibility. King Abdullah of Jordan told me a few days ago, just before he set off to see Mr. Bush, an attack on Iraq would open Pandora’s box in the Middle East. You’d have the whole region in flames because there’s the perception that America is not doing as much as it could do to try to dampen down this terrible, terrible conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but at the same time, it’s getting involved in this huge, potentially dangerous fight, where it could get bogged down and a lot of people could be killed in Iraq.

DONAHUE: Well, what’s a prime minister to do? A prime minister very, very close to our president. What will Tony-is Tony Blair going to just have to bear this? Do I understand this? He can’t-he can’t come out of the foxhole now and say, "Don’t do it".

BINYON: He’s going to equivocate for a bit. He’s going to say there’s no decision in Washington. He’s quietly going to be saying to the Americans, "Look, are you sure you’ve got this right? Can you do it? Do you have the military plans? Are your military sure they can do it? If you’re sure and it’s going to work, we’ll help you if we can". But first, try to get the inspectors back in because that would give a real excuse. If the Iraqis don’t let the inspectors in, of course, then there’s a real legal reason to go in.

BENNIS: But you know, Phil, this is the-the region where this is going to be the most profound. It’s not Tony Blair that faces being overthrown if he does or does not go along with George Bush’s war. The governments in the Middle East, the regional governments, the Arab governments most closely aligned with the US-Jordan, Egypt, even Saudi Arabia, the little Gulf states-they all will face major instability and could even face being overthrown if the US demands-and they will have no ability to resist that demand...

PONNURU: And then, Phyllis...

BENNIS: ... but it will be a coerced-a coerced alliance, not a true alliance.

DONAHUE: Mr. Ponnuru, I’m sure you wanted to say-respond.

PONNURU: Well, there’s a lot of things to respond to on the table now. First to Mr. Von Sponeck’s comment-he wants us to believe not only that the Iraqi government does not pose the threat that it is often said to pose, but that the United States government knows that is the case, agrees with him, but for some reason wants to have a war with Iraq just for the heck of it. And I think that when you make a suggestion like that, you have crossed the border between sober, responsible debate among reasonable people and gone into the realm of paranoid fantasy. And that makes it very hard to take seriously the credibility of such an observer’s first-hand accounts about what’s going on in Iraq.

DONAHUE: Mr. Von Sponeck responding.

VON SPONECK: Well, I don’t think that I’ve reached that level of paranoia yet. I just...

PONNURU: A lower level of paranoia!

VON SPONECK: I’m just saying I’m standing in front, not behind, that wall of disinformation. It’s very sad to hear words like that coming to a person who tries very hard to convey what he has honestly seen and wants to pass on.

DONAHUE: Right.

VON SPONECK: If one can...

PONNURU: Look, when you say the administration’s lying...

VON SPONECK: Let me just-let me just...

PONNURU: ... I’m saying I doubt it!

VON SPONECK: Excuse me. Let me just finish. If one can proudly announce that one can see out of 35,000 feet into the caves of Afghanistan, after-after many years of inspection in Iraq, you surely can look from the high-from the-from the skies into the sky-into the caves of Iraq. So don’t tell me that your intelligence agencies don’t know what-that what I’m saying and what others are saying, what Scott Ritter is saying, isn’t correct.

DONAHUE: Yes, I...

VON SPONECK: I feel you shouldn’t...

DONAHUE: Right. Mr. Von Sponeck, tell us why you quit, briefly. Why’d you quit?

VON SPONECK: Look, very briefly, if one is associated with a wrong policy that has such frightful implications for people, then one-if one continues, I guess one becomes a part of the problem and is to be blamed. And I wasn’t about...

DONAHUE: Right.

VON SPONECK: ... in good conscience, willing to accept that.

DONAHUE: Senator Chafee, you’re there?

CHAFEE: Yes, I sure am.

DONAHUE: Well, you’re listening in on this. Your hearing did not feature any of the voices similar to what we’re hearing on this program. Don’t you agree?

CHAFEE: Well, we certainly discussed a policy of containment and whether that’s working. And one of the previous guests said it’s containment versus occupation, and that’s really the key question. Containment-even within the administration, the Bush administration, there are those that are saying containment is working, and that doesn’t risk lives, it doesn’t risk, as Phyllis said, a toppling of some of the states there...

DONAHUE: Right.

CHAFEE: ... whether it’s Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. I mean, that’s also important...

DONAHUE: Right.

CHAFEE: ... because don’t forget, a lot of the oil from the world comes from this region.

DONAHUE: Yeah. Therefore what, we shouldn’t be so high and mighty and presume we know what is-OK, I accept that, but...

CHAFEE: Before we throw a match onto the oil or into the gas...

DONAHUE: Right.

CHAFEE: ... there are dire consequences.

DONAHUE: Right...

CHAFEE: There could be.

DONAHUE: ... but it isn’t becoming, really, I don’t think, of our democracy, which promises robust debate, for this to have been produced in - without the voices of dissent, as-like the ones we’re hearing tonight. We’re not hearing that at this hearing. And incidentally, the administration didn’t send anybody to this hearing.

CHAFEE: Well, one of the biggest dissents-I think you’re mentioning it-is who is behind us in the world? Certainly, nobody in the region. In fact, they’re emphatically opposed to this initiative. And in Europe, they’re emphatically opposed to this initiative. Maybe in England, there’s some equivocation on it, but I think their hearts are telling us-telling them, even in England, to have some...

DONAHUE: Right.

CHAFEE: ... some reticence about this.

DONAHUE: Right. Michael...

VON SPONECK: And if I may just...

DONAHUE: Please.

VON SPONECK: If I may just come in here briefly and say there’s another dimension here. A war on Iraq is also a war on an institution that the United States has helped to create, and that’s the United Nations. We are marginalizing an institution because it’s there where this discussion about how to proceed with Iraq should take place, the UN Security Council. So the US government should allow the UN secretary general to play a bigger role, and I guarantee you that if he is allowed to do that, and all the issues can be put on the table...

DONAHUE: Right.

VON SPONECK: ... and not, as Mr. Colin Powell says, only the armed-the return of inspectors, I think you will see there’s progress.

DONAHUE: Yes, but it was Saddam himself who blew off the United Nations personnel that were inspecting his weapons. He...

BENNIS: That’s not true, Phil.

VON SPONECK: That-that is incorrect!

BENNIS: The weapons-the weapons...

VON SPONECK: That is incorrect! The weapons inspectors on the day when I lived in Iraq, left because Mr. Butler withdrew them, not because they were thrown out by the government of Iraq.

BENNIS: They were withdrawn because the United States gave them warning, which he did not give to Hans Von Sponeck and the rest of the humanitarian staff in Iraq...

VON SPONECK: That’s correct.

BENNIS: ... gave them warning in advance that the United States was about to begin its Desert Fox bombing. That’s why they were pulled out. So we have to be very clear about what was the responsibility. The reason that UNSCOM ultimately didn’t work was because it was undermined by the United States...

DONAHUE: Right.

BENNIS: ... as was mentioned yesterday by Rolf Ekeus, the former director of UNSCOM, now the ambassador from Sweden, who said in a
radio interview in Sweden yesterday that it was the United States manipulation that undermined the work of UNSCOM.

DONAHUE: Right. Michael, you’re still there...

VON SPONECK: There’s another case-another case of paranoia, by the way.

(LAUGHTER)

DONAHUE: Michael, you’re there from London?

BINYON: Well, I hear people...

(CROSSTALK)

DONAHUE: Michael, is-is Tony Blair being politically injured by accusations of lapdog to Bush? And is that widely...

BINYON: Oh, yes.

DONAHUE: He is?

BINYON: Oh, yes. There are cartoons of him portrayed as a French poodle or as a lapdog or whatever you like almost every day. There’s a feeling that Britain can’t stand up and say no. There’s a feeling that, of course, we value the relationship with the United States. Most people in Britain do feel very close to the US We do feel that we meant it when we said "standing shoulder to shoulder" after September the 11th. But there’s a feeling that it’s a bit of a one-way street, that we’re giving quite a lot of sympathy, we’re not getting a lot of consultation back. We’re not getting a lot of sort of, you know, "What do you feel?" and "How do we take our allies with you?" And that’s the worry. It’s the worry that Tony Blair really would like to support the US, he really would like to do something about Saddam, but he wants to do it in a way that would not cause huge uproar in his own country and in the rest of Europe.

DONAHUE: Not much time, Mr. Ponnuru. I feel obliged to give you a shot here. You would want to say what, briefly?

PONNURU: There’s a great debate going on in Congress. It is not going to involve people like Ms. Bennis and Mr. Von Sponeck, who seem to trust the word of the Iraqi government more than that of the United States under Presidents Clinton or Bush.

DONAHUE: And one more time, may I ask you, Ivo, you’re saying celebrate the Constitution, as you did in your op-ed piece this morning.

DAALDER: Well, I think one of the things you see in this show is the need for a debate so that more information can come out, so that people both in the Congress and in the country and around the world can make up their minds exactly what needs to be done. That is what was started today with the hearings. We will have more hearings. There will be more dissent in those hearings, as well as more advocates on the administration position. And that’s what a healthy democracy is about. We debate these things before we go and act in the way that people were predicting just days ago.

DONAHUE: Briefly.

BENNIS: We should recognize that we’re supposed to be a nation of laws. We’re not supposed to act like a rogue state.

DONAHUE: Well...

DAALDER: And don’t forget United Nations. That was a good point.

DONAHUE: And have the United Nations play a bigger part.

BENNIS: Exactly.

DAALDER: Absolutely.

DONAHUE: Well, with gratitude to you all, I hope we’ll gather again when perhaps the balloon won’t be so filled and the tension will not be felt quite as palpably as now. Thank you, all.

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