Ladies and gentlemen, this is your National Security Advisor:

From the Meet the Press transcript of the interview with Condoleezza Rice: (emphasis added)

• ... after 9/11, the president was looking at a situation in which he was presented with an intelligence picture of a Saddam Hussein who had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical weapons ...
  
  
• The international community had a serious credibility problem where it came to weapons of mass destruction and the willingness to enforce tough resolutions, and what the president and the coalition did was to rescue, really, that credibility ...
  
  
• [Iraq had] the most dangerous regime in the world's most dangerous region ...
  MR. RUSSERT: More dangerous than North Korea?
  I think more dangerous than North Korea ...
  
  
• The president wants to know, as much as anybody, and probably more than anyone else, what became of the weapons of mass destruction. We were all somewhat surprised that we have not yet found them.
  
  
• Did we know on September 10 that September 11 was imminent? No, we did not.
  
  
• The president, of course, is the president, and he does have a schedule to keep ...
  
  
• MR. RUSSERT: Will you testify under oath in public about September 11?
  Tim, this is not a matter of preference; this is a matter of principle. It has long been a legal and constitutional principle that assistants to the president, the presidential staff, do not testify before legislative bodies. But this is not a matter of preference. ... as a matter of principle, we cannot breach this wall between the legislature and the executive.

posted by Quiddity at 3/14/2004 05:17:00 PM