:43:00
On that day, what did the President say to you?
:43:03
The President, in a very intimidating way,
:43:05
left us - me and my staff -
:43:07
with the clear indication
:43:09
that he wanted us to come back with the word
:43:11
that there was an Iraqi hand behind 9/11
:43:13
because they had been planning to do something
:43:15
about Iraq from before the time they came to office.
:43:18
Did he ask about any other nations other than Iraq?
:43:20
No. No no no. No. Not at all. It was Iraq, Saddam,
:43:22
find out, get back to me.
:43:24
And were his questions more about Iraq
:43:26
than about al Qaeda?
:43:27
Absolutely.
:43:28
Absolutely.
:43:29
He didn't ask my about al Qaeda.
:43:30
And the reaction you got
:43:31
that day from the defense secretary,
:43:32
Donald Rumsfeld?
:43:33
And his assistant, Paul Wolfowitz?
:43:34
Well, Don Rumsfeld said, uh,
:43:36
when we talked about bombing the al Qaeda
:43:38
infrastructure in Afghanistan,
:43:40
he said there were no good targets in Afghanistan,
:43:42
let's bomb Iraq.
:43:44
And we said but Iraq had nothing to do with this.
:43:46
And that didn't seem to make much difference.
:43:49
And the reason they had to do Afghanistan first
:43:51
was it was obvious that al Qaeda had attacked,
:43:53
and it was obvious that al Qaeda was in Afghanistan.
:43:57
The American people wouldn't have stood by
:43:59
if we had done nothing on Afghanistan.
:44:17
The United States began bombing Afghanistan
:44:19
just four weeks after 9/11.
:44:22
Mr. Bush said he was doing so
:44:23
because the Taliban government of Afghanistan
:44:26
had been harboring bin Laden.
:44:30
We will smoke 'em out of their holes.
:44:32
We're gonna smoke 'em out.
:44:33
Smoke 'em out.
:44:33
Smoke him out of his cave.
:44:35
Let's rush him and smoke him out.
:44:38
For all his tough talk,
:44:39
Bush really didn't do much.
:44:42
But what they did was slow and small.
:44:45
They put only 11,000 troops into Afghanistan --
:44:49
there are more police here in Manhattan,
:44:50
more police here in Manhattan
:44:52
than there are US troops in Afghanistan.
:44:54
Basically the President botched the response to 9/11.
:44:57
He should have gone right after bin Laden.
:44:59
The US Special Forces didn't get into the area