Rice Says Iraq War Still Worth It

Five years after 9/11 the United States is still embroiled in costly and violent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — the latter of which many people are questioning on the grounds that the Bush administration may have led the United States to war under false pretenses.

On CBS News' Face the Nation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the war in Iraq is still a crucial part in the larger struggle against Islamic terrorism.

"Well, first of all, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is very important and better for the world," she told Bob Schieffer. "One cannot imagine a Middle East that would be different and would not be a place in which extremism thrives without Saddam Hussein's removal and the chance for a different kind of Iraq."

After 9/11, the Bush administration justified invading Iraq because it said longtime dictator Saddam Hussein harbored terrorists and held weapons of mass destruction.

A Senate report released Friday disclosed for the first time that a CIA assessment in October 2005 said Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates."

Rice said Sunday she does not remember seeing that particular report.

Republican John Lehman, a former member of the Sept. 11 commission, said the U.S. has taken important steps to stem terrorism by capturing many of those responsible for planning the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We have gotten rid of most if not all theater commanders of al Qaeda, but we have not addressed as a nation the root cause... this jihadist ideology that is being preached around the world, basically funded with Persian Gulf money."

Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste, also a commission member, said the war in Iraq "has been a recruiting poster for jihadists throughout the Muslim world, and there are far more terrorists now than there were on 9/11. The Iraq invasion and occupation had nothing to do with terrorism. It had nothing to do with 9/11."

Rice said Hussein wanted to destabilize the region and had been shooting at American planes since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

Also last week, President Bush announced that the terror suspects in secret prisons would be transferred to military control and said there is no one currently in what he called this "CIA program." Rice said those prisons were important tools to obtaining information from enemies of the United States.

"But now, many years later, we believe we've exploited that intelligence value to the degree that it's now time to bring them to justice," she told Schieffer. "After September 11, it was very clear that the big missing link in our abilities to fight the kind of attack that took place on September 11 was information."

Thanks in part to these operations, Rice said the U.S. is safer now than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks, but must not relent in fighting terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere.

"I think it's clear that we are safe — safer — but not really yet safe," Rice said.

"We've done a lot. In terms of homeland, we're more secure. Our ports are more secure. Our airports are more secure. We have a much stronger intelligence sharing operation," said Rice, who was President Bush's national security adviser when al Qaeda masterminded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Also appearing on Face the Nation Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. said the Dept. of Homeland Security, founded after 9/11 with the intention of protecting the United States from another terrorist attack, is an unfocussed, underfunded "huge bureaucracy."

"It was sort of put together very quickly after the 9/11 Commission began, almost as a defensive reaction," he said speaking to Schieffer from Ground Zero." It hasn't worked, and we ought to look at something new."

New York governor George Pataki, a Republican, said that the country is safer than before 9/11 but there are gaps in security.

"I think, the borders. When you're in a state of war, how can you be in a position where you have thousands of people crossing into the country illegally?" he said on Face the Nation.

He said that mass transportation like planes and trains are going to be vulnerable for sometime and that Americans are going see National Guard troops stationed at Penn Station and Grand Central Station and other high traffic spots.

"I don't think there's anyone who can look you in the eye and say that a terrorist or an organized attack couldn't happen again," he said.