Archive for February, 2007

Rice Questioned on Pre-9/11 Statements that Iraq Had Not Rearmed

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

Outside the Capitol Hill studios of Fox News, Sam Husseini asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about claims she made — as National Security Advisor with then Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2001 — that Saddam Hussein’s “military forces have not been rebuilt.” Claims made not too long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States in part on the asserted premise of Iraq being a military threat.

In February of 2001, Colin Powell said: “He has not developed any significant capabilities with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.” In July of 2001, Condoleeza Rice is on the record as saying, “…we are able to keep arms from him [Saddam Hussein]. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”

Both of those statements are documented in a film by journalist John Pilger and a relevant clip from the film of these quotes is available on YouTube.

With no response to that line of questioning, Husseini queried Rice on a widely accepted fact that has not been officially acknowledged by the United States — Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons.

However, the Secretary of State stopped for no-one, and drove off into the morning snowstorm.

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Edwards’ Mid-East policy doesn’t admit Israeli nukes

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

Leaving the studios of CBS, presidential candidate Senator John Edwards repeated his position that he was for direct engagement with Iran. That position is qualified by Edwards also insisting that “all options are on the table.”

In January, in a satellite broadcast to the Herzliya Conference in Israel Senator Edwards asserted a domino theory-like prediction, “once Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the Middle East will go nuclear, making Israel’s neighborhood much more volatile.”

Sam Husseini wondered if the region wasn’t already further destabilized by Israel’s own first possession of nuclear arms in the Middle East (excluding the United States’ own projection of force).

Husseini asked the senator if he would acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons and wondered if the lack of such acknowledgment also aggravated the situation. Edwards spoke around the question. Presumably an Edwards presidency would continue the US tradition of not openly acknowledging Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

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Schwarzenegger dismisses single-payer healthcare

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

Dismissing the idea of a single payer health care system in his state, via the specter of an imagined inefficient government bureaucracy, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke of a health care system where all citizens were “insured.” His vision seemed to keep firmly in place a private layer of industry between citizens and health care services that one might think could be obsoleted or diminished by an state mandated system.

As he left for his car, The Washington Stakeout’s Sam Husseini asked the governor if he believed there was “such a thing as a business bureaucracy,” to which Schwarzenegger responded “oh yeah” — but there was no opportunity to further explore the governor’s thoughts, or see what he knew about the examples and lessons learned in Canada.

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