Moyers On The Neocons And William Kristol
I often call Bill Kristol--"William the Bloody," a vampire character from Buffy because he's a first degree warmonger who seems to love
BILL MOYERS: No one got more air time from an arm chair than Bill Kristol, editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD And a media savvy Republican strategist. In the 1990s Kristol organized a campaign for increased military spending and a muscular foreign policy. In 1998 he and his allies wrote President Bill Clinton urging him 'to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
And now, just days after 9/11 with many of their allies serving in the administration, they wrote an open letter to President Bush calling for regime change in bagdad. Over the coming months Kristol's Weekly Standard kept up the drum beat.
And what does he get for his dead wrong assertions? A new column in TIME magazine. When you see the carnage this war has caused you understand why I write about them the way I do. (full transcript below the fold)
BILL MOYERS: Dan Rather is talking about prominent Washington figures in and outside of governmentÂ…known as neoconservatives. They had long wanted to transform the Middle East, beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein. The terrorist attacks gave them the chance they wanted. And the media gave them a platform.
JOHN KING (WAR ROOM WITH WOLF BLITZER,CNN 11/19/01): Richard Perle? Next phase Saddam Hussein?
RICHARD PERLE: Absolutely.
WILLIAM KRISTOL (FOX NEWS 11/24/01): One person close to the debate said to me this week that it's no longer a question of if, it's a question of how we go after Saddam Hussein.
BILL MOYERS: In the weeks after 9/11 they seemed to be on every channel, gunning for Hussein.
TED KOPPEL (NIGHTLINE 11/28/01): You are probably the hawkiest of the hawks on this. Why?
JAMES WOOLSEY: Well I don't know that I accept that characterization but it's probably not too far off. I think that the Baghdad regime is a serious danger to world peace.
RICHARD PERLE (ABC THIS WEEK 11/18/01): Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein, plus his known contact with terrorists, including Al Qaeda terrorists, is simply a threat too large to continue to tolerate.
BILL MOYERS: Among their leading spokesmen were Richard Perle and James Woolsey. Both sat on the Defense Policy Board advising Donald Rumsfeld. And they used their inside status to assure the press that overthrowing Hussein would be easy.
RICHARD PERLE (CNN 11/19/01): We would be seen as liberators in Iraq.
BILL MOYERS: Major newspapers and magazines gave them prime space to make their case, including the possibility that 9/11 had been "sponsored, supported and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein." The president, they said, should take "Preemptive action."
WILLIAM KRISTOL (MEET THE PRESS, NBC, 10/7/01): The biggest mistake we have made-it's our mistake, it's not the mistake of the Arabs-- was not finishing off Saddam Hussein in 1991.
BILL MOYERS: No one got more air time from an arm chair than Bill Kristol, editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD And a media savvy Republican strategist.
In the 1990s Kristol organized a campaign for increased military spending and a muscular foreign policy. In 1998 he and his allies wrote President Bill Clinton urging him 'to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
And now, just days after 9/11 with many of their allies serving in the administration, they wrote an open letter to President Bush calling for regime change in bagdad. Over the coming months Kristol's Weekly Standard kept up the drum beat.
FRED BARNES (BELTWAY BOYS, Fox 11/24/01): What are the consequences if the US does not finish off this Saddam Hussein as a second step in the war on terrorism?
WILLIAM KRISTOL: It would mean that the president having declared a global war on terrorism didn't follow through-- didn't take out the most threatening terrorist state in the world."
TIM RUSSERT (MEET THE PRESS, NBC 12/30/01): Safire will you wager Ms. Wright, right now that Saddam will be out of power by the end of 2002.
WILLIAM SAFIRE: Absolutely. I'll see you here a year from now.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: (FOX NEWS 9/22/01) If you go after Iraq you're gonna lose a lot of allies, but who cares.
BILL MOYERS: Charles Krauthammer and other top columnists at THE WASHINGTON POST also saw the hand of Saddam Hussein in the terrorist attacksÂ…
Jim Hoagland implicated Hussein within hours after the suicide bombers struck on 9/11Â….
Â…and the POST's George Will fired away on the talk shows.
GEORGE WILL (ABC 10/28/01): The administration knows he's vowed-Hussein has vowed revenge, he has anthrax, he loves biological weapons, he has terrorist training camps, including 747's to practice onÂ