Interview: John Kerry with William Rivers
Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Interview
Monday 22 December 2003
This interview is formatted somewhat differently than the one I
did with Governor Howard Dean this past May. Senator Kerry and I spoke
for about 20 minutes in a minivan that was flying down some back road in New
Hampshire on the way to a gathering at Hopkington High School. Kerry was slated
to speak about environmental issues to a science class that was constructing an
electric hybrid car as part of the curriculum. Because our one-on-one time was
constricted due to his campaign schedule, I have decided to add a portion of his
comments from that classroom.
WRP: Senator Bill Nelson revealed last week that he and
some 75 other Senators had been given an intelligence briefing by a Bush
administration official just before the Iraq war vote, during the time frame of
those quotes I just read. In that briefing, they were told that Iraq had not
only chemical and biological weapons, but had the technical capability to strike
American cities on the East Coast with unmanned drones filled with these
poisons. Nelson refused to divulge who gave the briefing. I want to take you
back to this time, to September and early October of 2002. What were you
thinking about during this period, in the days and weeks before the Iraq
resolution? I know you can’t reveal classified briefings, but were you getting
at the time data that persuaded you that a yes vote was the proper course?
JK: Absolutely. More than that. I attended one particular
briefing at the Pentagon. The Secretary of Defense was there, as well as the
Admiral in charge of all intelligence. They passed photographs around showing us
very specific locations and places where, they said, their intelligence
confirmed that weapons of mass destruction were being held. This was in addition
to those unmanned drones, which we were told about, and in addition to the
45-minute deployment capacity, which we were told about.
WRP: I wrote a book last September called ‘War on Iraq:
What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You To Know,’ which stated that Iraq’s WMD
capabilities had been grossly exaggerated by the administration, and therefore
their rationale for war had no standing. That book, over the last fifteen
months, has been proven to have been absolutely correct on this point. A lot of
people read that book, and have subsequently turned away from your campaign for
one reason: These people believe this data was out there before the Iraq vote,
that it was available to you, and they believe you chose to ignore it or
disregard it and vote in favor of the war. How would you answer that charge?
JK: There were a number of people offering contrary
opinions, but this was compared to the overwhelming evidence that was put in
front of us in very specific and factual terms. When someone shows you a
photograph and says, “Our intelligence tells us that in this building is the
following, and we have the following sources to back up these determinations,”
it is pretty compelling.
What’s more, what I thought was equally compelling was not just
the evidence, but were the very direct promises of Colin Powell and others
within the administration about how they were going to proceed, about working
with the United Nations, about using weapons inspectors, and about war being a
last resort. In foreign policy, traditionally, we have worked across party lines
to try to have one voice to speak with as a country in the interest of our
national security. Obviously, the President, we now know, broke every single one
of those promises and disregarded his own word. He is not a man of his word.
Given the information we were given at that time, however, a lot
of very smart people made the same decision. Bill Clinton thought we ought to do
what we did. He was the former President of the United States, and made his
judgment based on eight years of experience. Hillary Clinton voted for it. Tom
Harkin voted for it, as did Joe Biden. A lot of people made the judgment that
this is a serious threat, and made the judgment that the administration was
committed to going through the international process, build a coalition and do
this right.
They didn’t do it right. They did it wrong. I was one of the
first Senators to stand up and hold them accountable for it. In fact, I
forewarned them each step of the way about what they needed to do to
legitimately live up to their obligations
WRP: How do you feel now, after all this time has passed,
when you hear these stories about unmanned drones striking the East coast, and
other threat stories like that?
JK: It is one of the worst intelligence lapses, or
deceptions, in modern history.
WRP: True or False: A solution to the Iraq problem,
particularly the need to bring international cooperation into the conflict, and
into the repair of that country, will never be found as long as Bush is in the
White House.
JK: True. The solutions are very specific and very
achievable, but depends on the United States not acting arrogantly, not acting
unilaterally, and being willing to share power, authority and responsibility. If
you are willing to transfer that to the United Nations, or to a coalition
working under an umbrella – it doesn’t have to be directly U.N., but has to be
approved by the U.N. – so that you are giving real shared authority over
reconstruction and governmental transformation, and it’s not a Paul Bremer/U.S.
decision-making process but a legitimate international accord as to how you
empower the Iraqi people to decide their own future, then you absolutely have
the ability to get additional help on the ground.
I’ve talked to the ambassadors and the other people involved. I
know Kofi Annan and the U.N. are prepared to be involved. But you have to invite
them and share with them appropriately, and this administration has refused to
do that.
WRP: Do you feel a kinship with the peace movement that
exploded around this Iraq invasion, given your background? Or do you feel
alienated from them because of that vote?
JK: I felt enormous understanding, empathy, sympathy and
respect for the voice they were articulating. I completely understood it. I came
from there. I understood the confusion over why someone with my long history,
why there was confusion over my position, why people were questioning it.
But I felt my decision was absolutely consistent with the
counter-proliferation efforts I have been making as a Senator for my entire
career. I felt proliferation was a critical issue. I thought a President ought
to get inspectors back into Iraq. I thought a President ought to hold Saddam
Hussein accountable. But I knew how to do it right, and my regret is that this
President proved he not only didn’t know how to do it right, but was prepared to
go back on his promises, be deceptive, and mislead the nation. I regret that he
did that, and I regret that I put any trust in him at all. I shouldn’t have,
obviously.
Put it this way: Given the circumstances we were in at the time,
the decision was appropriate, but in retrospect I will never trust the man
again. That’s why I am running against him. He deserves to be replaced with
someone who is trustworthy.
WRP: In terms of the 2004 campaign, the central argument
put up by a lot of people in the Democratic base who are against you is that you
don’t “get it.” They see other candidates as fighting for their progressive
values, and they see you saying “Get over it” after the election debacle in
Florida, as quoted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In contrast, your voting
record in the Senate is clearly as progressive as the day is long. Where do you
stand with the progressive community? Do you “get it”? Can you be their
leader?
JK: I believe that I am the most consistent, most
accomplished progressive fighter in this entire field. My record over 35 years
of standing up and fighting for progressive causes is clear on with respect to
women, with respect to the environment, with respect to children, education,
health care, our role in the world, human rights, civil rights. My record is
stronger, longer and deeper than any other candidate in this field with respect
to the progressive agenda of this party.
When I say “Move on” from 2000, I’m as angry as anyone else.
Votes ought to be counted. But my objective is to win. My objective is “Don’t
get mad, get even.” They way you get even is to go out and take that agenda to
the country and build a coalition around it. I think if you compare my record to
the people in this field, I think it’s clear that I am the progressive
candidate. I am the one who has stood up and taken the risks and fought for the
agenda of my party with consistency.
I think the progressives in our party need to look and see who
has the ability to take that progressive agenda and still stand up and beat
George Bush. We don’t need to send the country a message. We need to send the
country a President.
Upon arrival at the school, Senator Kerry inspected the hybrid
car the students were constructing, and then sat down with them in their
classroom. A portion of the comments he made are below:
JK: After you get out of school here, after you finish
college, most of you are going to be looking around asking, “How am I going to
find a job that is going to excite me and do some good?” I believe that one of
the great possibilities for your generation is to make America safer – safer in
terms of our dependency on oil from the Middle East, from Saudi Arabia, Iraq,
Iran, etcetera, but also safer in terms of our health and our long-term future
on this planet.
Give me a show of hands: How many of you have studied global
warming? Almost all of you. How many of you believe, after studying it, that
global warming is a serious issue? All of you. How many of you think we’re doing
anything about it? None of you. There you go. And you’re right, we’re not doing
anything about it. We’re going backwards.
One of the biggest contributors to global warming is carbon
dioxide, in addition to sulfur dioxide, mercury and so forth. All the ice core
studies and all of the analysis – there are 1,500 scientists at the United
Nations, all of whom have agreed that this is a serious issue. 160 nations
worked for ten years to come up with a solution, and the United States under
George Bush was the first country in the world to say, “To hell with all of you,
we’re walking away from the solution, we’re declaring it dead.” In the last
weeks, some of President Bush’s friends were working hard in Washington to get
$50 billion of subsidies for oil and gas drilling instead of helping you get
better batteries for that car out there, so you can do more research into
electric cars, so we can begin to do some of the things we need to do to clean
up our air, water, you name it.
This is your future. This is real stuff. It really wasn’t so long
ago that I was sitting where you are sitting, and I was probably daydreaming
half the day away, trying to figure out what to do with my life like a lot of
you are. And then, after college, along came a war, and I wound up fighting in
it, and a lot of young students got active in politics. The first speech I ever
gave in politics, I was exactly the age some of you are here today. This is when
it begins. So you all can help us make a difference.
God only gave the United States of America three percent of the
world’s oil reserves. That’s all we have. We import almost 60% of our oil. Saudi
Arabia has 46% of the world’s oil reserve, and we have three. All of the Middle
East has 65% of the world’s oil reserves. So we are very dependent on an
unstable area, and on relationships we don’t particularly like, and I don’t care
how smart you are, there is no way you can figure out a way for the United
States of America to drill it’s way out of this predicament. We have to invent
our way out of it. I think it’s time we got about the business of really trying
to do that.
So I’m going to create a $20 billion energy conservation trust
fund. I’m going to create a hydrogen institute, where one of you may wind up
working after you graduate. Which one of you said you wanted to be an electrical
engineer? There you are. You could go to work at that hydrogen institute, and
help us discover – it may not be hydrogen, but there is something out there that
is going to be the clean energy source for the future and for your generation.
We’ve got to start finding it.
That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m running for President. That’s
why I want to talk to all of you today. Can we open this up? Can I get some
questions?
STUDENT: Global warming is pretty much, like, the
most important issue for me. We’ve denied it’s a problem for so long that it’s
now this huge problem. You said this is one of the reasons you want to be
President. What is your record as far as environmental stuff?
JK: I’m happy to share that with you. I have the strongest
environmental record of anyone who is running for President. I began my
involvement with the environment, it was pretty much against my will, when my
mom got me up at four in the morning and dragged me out for a so-called nature
walk. She told me to stop and listen, and I did, and I heard things I hadn’t
heard and saw things that I hadn’t seen. She began to explain all of that to me,
and I’ve never forgotten it, because that connection is what started it.
When I came back from Vietnam, I became involved in Earth Day.
This was 1970, and then I was chairman of Earth Day in New England in 1990. We
actually painted Storrow Drive biodegradable green, and we had hundreds of
booths up and down the Charles River showing people what the technologies of the
future could do.
I’ve been chairman of the Oceans Committee in the Senate. I’ve
written our fisheries laws, I’ve written our plastics pollution laws, our marine
mammal protection laws, our flood insurance laws, our coastal zone management
laws. I was in Rio for the Earth Summit in 1990. I was at Buenos Aires, Kyoto,
The Hague for the global warming conferences. I’ve helped negotiate with the
less developed countries on those issues. I led the fight to stop Newt Gingrich
from literally killing the Clean Air Act. I led the fight as a Lieutenant
Governor to make acid rain a national issue, and it’s now in the Clean Air Act.
I led the fight to stop the drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I
come to this race with a long and passionate record of caring about the
environment.
Sometimes in America, the environment becomes a really bad
discussion. People like George Bush and his friends will say, “You have a
choice. You can have a job, or you can have a clean environment.” Have you ever
heard that argument? Jobs or environment, right? It’s a false choice. Cleaning
up the environment can be jobs. In Massachusetts, the fastest-growing part of
our economy is environmental companies that do clean-up of toxic waste and
chemicals, and to consult with companies so they don’t spit out dirty water and
the like.
I’m convinced that a good President can help bring the country
together in a way that doesn’t lose us jobs, and in a way that helps create a
better future, and that’s why I’m running. That’s why I’m here.
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William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times and international best-selling author of three books - "War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," available in August from Context Books.
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