sen (d-fl) bob graham on cspan washington journal

sen (d-fl) bob graham on cspan washington journal this morning, 2/3/2004.

"i can't telll you what 535 members of congress had in mind when they voted either for or agianst the war. let me tell you why i voted against the war.
 we were facing a number of evil people in the middle east & central asia of which saddam hussein was one. clearly he had abused his own people, gone to war two times, was a genuinely bad human being.
 the problem is, there are a lot of other genuinely bad human beings in that part of the world & we had to determine which was our first priority.
 my standard of answering that question is which of these evils  has the greatest opportunity to kill americans?
 by that standard, it was a no contest; al quaida had shown the will to kill americans, the ability to kill americans, to kill 3000 on september the 11th, & had a significant prescense inside the united states of america from which to launch other attacks to kill americans.

 frankly saddam hussein had none of those qualities.

 so i voted against the war because i thought it was a distraction from our greatest threat, which was osama bin laden &  al quaida & i am afraid i have been right.

  the fact is that we had al quaida on the ropes in the spring of 2002. we allowed it to rise up & re-generate & now, a whole series of terrorist attacks...fortunatley none inside the united states, they have occured around the world.

 al quaida, the other international terrorist groups, in my judgement, continue to be the number one threat to the people of the united states."

•  NO ACCESS to their offices

  he also says that he & many other senators have NO ACCESS to their offices because of frist's ricin.

  www.nornsisland.com

  by n69n on Tue Feb 03, 2004 at 02:36:59 PM PDT

  •  N

    I wonder who planted the ricin, which just happens to occur when the USA Today numbers came out and on a Primary day, following a horrible week for chimpy??

    by Al Rodgers on Tue Feb 03, 2004 at 02:54:53 PM PDT

•  Al Queda and Iraq: The WWII USA-USSR precedent

  If history is a useful guide, then the lesson of WWII is that America will recognize relative evils, and work with the lesser to defeat the former (allying with Stalin to defeat Hitler). So let's call this a precedent.

  Add to this (as Graham notes) that Al Queda clearly poses the greatest danger to American well-being.

  Further consider that Al Queda's natural enemies include the secular Baath of Iraq, and the Shia theocrats of Iran.

  Take these two facts, mix in the precedent, and one can conclude that America's post 9/11 strategy should have been to form a functional alliance with Iraq and Iran in order to eradicate Al Queda.

  The fact that BushCo adopted a completely contrary path ("axis of evil") suggests that they simply do not see Al Queda as a serious threat.  

  Perhaps they are right, that Al Queda got massively lucky, and with a modicum of better security effort they won't succeed again.  But that's not the vision they are spreading.

  by danielh on Tue Feb 03, 2004 at 02:55:24 PM PDT