Call to Action

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:

Some ask why Iraq is different from other countries, or regimes, that also have terrible weapons. While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant, who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. The same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.

Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? And there's a reason. We have experienced the horror of September the 11th. We have seen that those who hate America are willing to crash airplanes into buildings full of innocent people. Our enemies would be no less willing. In fact, they would be eager to use biological, or chemical, or a nuclear weapon. Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us.

Two administrations, mine and President Clinton's, have stated that regime change in Iraq is the only certain means of removing a great danger to our nation. I hope this will not require military action, but it may. And military conflict could be difficult. An Iraqi regime faced with its own demise may attempt cruel and desperate measures. If Saddam Hussein orders such measures, his generals would be well advised to refuse those orders. If they do not refuse, they must understand that all war criminals will be pursued and punished. If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully. We will act with the full power of the United States military. We will act with allies at our side, and we will prevail. (Applause)

JIM LEHRER:

Among those watching the President's speech were a group of voters in Denver, Colorado, who join us from time to time. Here with correspondent Spencer Michels, in Iraq segment two, is their discussion.

SPENCER MICHELS:

Thank you all very much for being with us tonight. The President has spoken. He's spoken many times on this issue, so have many people in Congress.

SPENCER MICHELS:

Eric Duran, maybe you can start. Is he convincing you of the case for intervention in Iraq?

ERIC DURAN, Democrat:

I guess I still remain pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. I think we need to be really honest with ourselves about what we're talking about here. We're not talking about just weapons of mass destruction, we're talking about a wholesale change in the Iraqi government. And the President tonight in his speech once again alluded to that. And so I guess I'm ambivalent because, you know, back in 1991, when we did assemble an international coalition to fight in Iraq, we weren't… weren't successful. And I don't think the President's really assembled an international group or coalition at this time, so I'm really concerned. You know, a regime change to me means that we're going to be sending in ground troops.

SPENCER MICHELS:

So you are not convinced at this point.

Linda Stahnke, are you convinced?

LINDA STAHNKE, Republican:

I'm convinced. I'm impressed with the intelligence information that he spoke of tonight. It looks like our intelligence forces are doing a better job than what we had previously, and I think his response is measured. He's taking the time to convince the American people, to convince the U.N.. He's not a loose cannon running around making wild statements. I think he's doing a thorough job of explaining it. And I don't think it's that we weren't able to make the regime change in '91, it's that we backed off. We chose not to, and we made a mistake. We acknowledge that we made a mistake. We should have done it then and finished the job. We're in trouble now. This is a wholesale change in how we handle war. It's a different kind of war. It's not a war because we've been attacked or we're physically in immediate danger; it's a change in philosophy. And I think that's why the country's having such a hard time with this.

SPENCER MICHELS:

But the President at one point in his speech said that "we cannot wait for the final proof. We don't have the smoking gun."

LINDA STAHNKE:

Well, the smoking gun would be when it's too late, when something actually has happened. And then we'd be saying, "How long have you known how bad this was," like we're doing with 9/11.

ERIC DURAN:

When you look at the information that he presented tonight, you heard the years 1991, 1994, you know, so there isn't a lot of new information in there tonight.

ROBERT JORNAYVAZ, Republican:

I think he spoke the plain truth. Our perspective has changed since 9/11, and every American's perspective should be very, very different than it was prior to September 11. And I disagree. I think he set forth a very clear and concise argument for very stiff, tough weapons inspections. We have to know what Saddam Hussein has. We know that these people are willing to come over here and destroy our country. And we can't…

ERIC DURAN; He talked about a regime change. He did not talk about just weapons inspections.

ROBERT JORNAYVAZ:

He was very honest. Saddam Hussein…

ERIC DURAN:

He said we needed a regime change.

ROBERT JORNAYVAZ:

Clearly… Saddam Hussein is clearly the enemy. We can't, as he put it, "take refuge from responsibility" in acknowledging that Saddam Hussein is not a good fellow. He's a bad guy. That is a reality of today's world.

SPENCER MICHELS:

Well, let's hear from Dee Cisneros a minute, who's a retired teacher.

Saddam Hussein is the enemy: Do you agree with that?

DEE CISNEROS, Democrat:

Yes, I agree that he's an enemy, but I don't think that we should go around assassinating all the regimes that we don't agree with. He has been there… he has been contained for 11 years, 12 years. He has been contained, and we have the deterrents. Why can't we continue…

SPENCER MICHELS:

Deanna Hopkins.

DEANNA HOPKINS, Republican:

I think we think we're contained, but and I don't think… I think from the beginning the goal of the administration has not been to get weapons inspectors back in. We've been inspecting for a decade now, and it seems that they just kept running up against the same challenges over and over.

SPENCER MICHELS:

Reporter: Dr. Morris Clark, I'd like to hear from you for a minute on this.

MORRIS CLARK, Democrat:

When he spoke tonight, I think the President was a lot more clear in his thought pattern than he has been in the past. But what is disturbing is just that, the scientific evidence. He said we have reason to believe and evidence shows, but he never really spoke about how clear the evidence was, how strong the evidence was. He never alluded to the source of the evidence, and that was somewhat disturbing to me. The second thing was, if we're going to talk in terms of the U.N., and if you're going to make those kinds of persuasive arguments, you would think that we would, in fact, have more coalition building, that there would be more people, countries that would be allies to us. The problem, as I see it, is if we did have an attack, and we did win, so there's a whole generation of children that are going to grow up, we're the ugly Americans. I don't think it's in our best interest to be the superpower in a world, a whole world, that hates us.

SPENCER MICHELS:

I want to hear from Chris Goodwin.

CHRIS GOODWIN, Independent:

Well, I don't think there's any question that Saddam Hussein is a horrible, brutal dictator, and he's murdered his own people and taken aggressive acts against countries in that region. But I think we need to pay more attention to a lot of our allies in Europe and a lot of the people in the Congress who are beginning to speak out. I think we need to get away from this rush towards war. I think getting U.N. inspectors back in there and dealing with the situation in that way is a much better situation. I think we might force the situation where it would be more likely for Saddam Hussein to use those weapons of mass destruction. If he feels that he's desperate, he will do that.

SPENCER MICHELS:

You say listen to the folks in the Congress, but the Congress seems to have said that it's going to go along with President Bush. Does that disturb you at all?

CHRIS GOODWIN:

It's very disturbing, and I think in the last couple of weeks, more members of Congress have been starting to speak out against that. Maybe he has a majority of votes, but I don't think… I don't think it's unanimous by any means.

DEANNA HOPKINS:

I feel that there's no need for the President to go in and then… and not have Congressional support. And then in a year, Congress, to go back and question their support for him, or pull the funding, because then we've just taken ourselves… put ourselves in the middle of a mess and it's going to be really hard to get out of.

SPENCER MICHELS:

I'm sort of curious in general here, do you think we're going to be in a war with Iraq?

ERIC DURAN:

Oh, absolutely.

JASON MUNDY, Democrat:

Yes.

SPENCER MICHELS:

Go ahead.

JASON MUNDY:

Yeah, I think… I think we have a President here who is preparing for war. I think he… he's trying to get the support of the American public while at the same time the administration's pushing a resolution through Congress. I think at the same time the administration is working on a resolution through the U.N.. I think he began by wanting weapons inspectors to return. The Iraqi regime said, "Fine, we'll have weapons inspectors and we will let you search." And now to… the new stipulation is for you to remain a viable regime, you basically need to participate in self- destruction. That's the only way you can…

ALL TALKING AT ONCE:

I think…

SPENCER MICHELS:

Linda Houston over here.

LINDA HOUSTON, Republican:

Well, I don't believe that. I think that, you know, he signed a truce, he signed a resolution, and he has not abided by that resolution at all. In fact, sure, he says, "bring the investigators in, but under my terms. I'll tell you where you can search and where you cannot." And I believe that I don't know whether we'll go to war or not, but I think we need to push him right to the absolute edge so that he realizes if he's not going to follow the rules and regulations, that he's going to pay the consequences. And I have a son in the military who's a pilot, and I know what that's going to mean, and I still feel like the President is doing everything right. I think he is a wonderful leader and he will bring the followers.

DEE CISNEROS:

What if this is all just a lot of propaganda? This is so close to the election. Where is the economy? There are many young people out there on the streets, homeless people, people that have lost their $100,000 jobs and are now on food stamps. I mean, isn't that just as important as Iraq?

SPENCER MICHELS:

Are you saying that when you say propaganda, you mean this is a diversion?

DEE CISNEROS:

It may be a diversion from… from… for elections.

BRENT NEISER, Republican:

For our economic security, national security is still a fundamental factor. You know, we're going through the market downturn, we've had a recession, and for markets to become stable, they need to have confidence that security is out there and it's appropriate. And we do need to think a lot about post-regime change, what that's going to be. That requires heavy U.N. involvement, heavy international presence, and it will take a long time.

SPENCER MICHELS:

Susanna Cordova, I haven't heard from you.

SUSANNA CORDOVA, Democrat:

You know, I found myself thinking during his speech that I wished that he was saying all of these things about Osama bin Laden. You know, not that we didn't aggressively try to take care of that situation, but I'm one of those people who hear what's being said, and it does really frighten me. And then I do think, "well, gee, we really should do something about that." And then I… when I stop to think, I just don't know how effective we'll be. You know, I don't know how effective we were at making sure that the very real threat to terror… to our country through terrorism was effectively stopped, and so then I think about moving on to this. It really frightens me, because I think…

SPENCER MICHELS:

Well, assume this, though. Assume that it would be effective. Assume that the United States went into war with Iraq and won and took over the country.

SUSANNA CORDOVA:

I think that's a big assumption.

GROUP MEMBER:

A very big assumption.

SUSANNA CORDOVA:

I think that's a really big assumption.

ANOTHER GROUP MEMBER:

And who's going to replace Saddam Hussein? Who's there? How do we know that…

SPENCER MICHELS:

Bob?

ROBERT JORNAYVAZ:

I think the reason we're so conflicted is, is Americans by nature are not aggressive. We're not an aggressive country. We have not typically attacked other countries, tried to have regime changes. That's not who we are and what we're about. But we always have to go back to September 11 and recognize that our perspective simply has to change; that America has been attacked here, in our heart, and at some point, we have got to recognize that there is a new reality out there. We just can't run from the fact that there are people out there that want to come and tear apart our way of life.

ERIC DURAN:

We need to… we need to examine that, what happened on September 11. We need to be very clear about that. There were 20 people in the al-Qaida network that were responsible, and what was really the head and leadership of that organization. Of that group that lived around in the tent and didn't have, you know, a country, and weren't living in fortified bunkers, or didn't have the trained armor, you know, we don't know that we've gotten Osama bin Laden. We… I think we only know that we've killed five of those top twenty, and those were the individuals that were responsible for September 11. Now we're talking… now we're talking about Iraq, where we don't have an international coalition assembled, our President was unable to assemble a coalition at this point, and we're talking about going it alone, to do something that we were unable to do in 1991.

BRENT NEISER:

I really think when you… it's going to take the resolve of the United States basically saying, "we're going to have to put up and shut up." We've had no inspectors there for four years. Now, I think that type of signal can create the atmosphere for an Osama bin Laden to think, "oh, we can strike America, they're weak. They don't do what they say they do." We passed a resolution in the House and Senate about regime change in Iraq in 1998, and there have been no inspectors. So we have to put some muscle behind the U.N., and basically leave the Security Council to say, "let's do what you say you wanted to do four years ago. Now is the time to do it."

SPENCER MICHELS:

I'm afraid we've got to end it there. We're out of time. Thank you all very much for coming back and being with us.