On March 25 Sam Husseini spoke with Senator Orrin Hatch outside of CNN’s Washington studios. Hatch claimed that Saddam kicked out the UN weapons inspectors, contradicting the public record that the inspectors were withdrawn. Hatch also claimed that Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, told him that the inspectors could not get any further than they did, although ElBaradei is also on the public record as having asked for more time and attesting to working inspections.
Continue reading for a transcript of the exchange.
Samir Al Sumadaie, the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, was questioned outside the studios of CNN in Washington, D.C. on March 25.Continue reading for a transcript of the exchange. (more…)
Senator Hagel was questioned about recent reports of Kurdish militias receiving U.S. support and operating out of Iraq to launch attacks into Iran. The Senator said he had no knowledge of these reports. Sam Husseini also questioned Hagel about his vote to give the President the authorization to use force and the lead-up to the Iraq war. When Husseini pressed that some public information existed at the time that could cause one to doubt the President’s claims before the war, Hagel insisted that “the entire intelligence community of this government, all 16 agencies,” and our allies were all convinced of the existence of weapons of mass destruction, although Hagel also admitted regretting his vote.
Continue reading for a transcript of the exchange.
After her March 18 appearance on CBS’s Face The Nation, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA), spoke with the press gaggle outside the studio. Sam Husseini, with The Washington Stakeout, asked her about stalled cluster bomb legislation she has proposed and then about the Iraqi oil law that the Bush administration has backed — she did not answer the latter question as she was being called away by an aide and said nothing again when asked as to why she couldn’t or wouldn’t comment on it.
Also outside the studios, activists with the group Code Pink gathered in opposition to funding of the war. They chanted under the banner of “Don’t buy Bush’s war.”
Continue reading for a transcript of the exchange.
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.”
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.
