*EPF107 10/04/2004
Rice Maintains Coalition Forces Were Right to Make War on Iraq
(With Saddam deposed, chance exists for "a different kind of Mideast") (600)

By Robert Fullerton
Washington File Staff Writer

U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said October 3 that she remains convinced U.S. and coalition forces were right to invade Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Rice made the comment on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" after being questioned about a New York Times story that examines whether the Bush administration described Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program honestly. The lengthy Times article specifically looks at whether aluminum tubes being imported into Iraq were for nuclear weapons or artillery rockets.

Rice acknowledged that differences existed within the U.S. intelligence community about the threat level posed by Saddam Hussein. For instance, she said, "you had a debate" about whether the aluminum tubes "were only really suited for nuclear weapons." Rice said the tubes "were alongside a lot of other evidence about experts being kept together, about balancing equipment being brought in, about how these procurement efforts were being funded."

Nonetheless, the intelligence community "as a whole," including then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, was convinced the tubes were "for centrifuge parts" to be used in making nuclear weapons, she said. The intelligence community believed that Saddam Hussein, a "dangerous man in the world's most dangerous region," in fact "was reconstituting" his nuclear program -- and that he had biological nuclear weapons."

Rice said people within intelligence circles "are still debating the question. But whatever the case there, I stand by the decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein and remove this threat to American security, this threat to the Middle East, this thorn in the side of any efforts to build a different kind of Middle East. When you're a policymaker, yes, you can try -- you can get ground down in the details of this debate versus that debate."

"But," she said, "you have to keep your eye on the most important assessment, and that's ����Was Saddam Hussein a threat?' Of course he was a threat. And anyone who believes that the world was better with a false sense of stability with this dictator in power than we are now with an opportunity to build a different kind of Iraq as a lynchpin for a different kind of Middle East really isn't making a good judgment."

Asked if President Bush would apologize, as coalition partner Great Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair has, over faulty intelligence reports about Iraq, Rice said, "We are all unhappy that the intelligence was not as good as we had thought that it was. But the central judgment was absolutely right."

When "you are confronting that kind of threat, you're best to go after it before it is too late," she said. "And I stand by the decision firmly today."

When asked how the United States views news reports that militant Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr wants to enter Iraqi politics, Rice responded said "[W]hat is important" is whether this is acceptable to Iraq's sovereign government; that will decide who can participate in the elections.

"Those elections of course are going to be enormously important to the future of Iraq," she said.

Regarding al-Sadr, she said the United States has learned to pay more attention to the Muslim cleric's "actions" than to "his words." She said al-Sadr's militia also "have been pretty well devastated by the attacks of American and Iraqi forces" in recent days, and "perhaps that is why he is reconsidering his options."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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