Transcript: President Bush, Part 2

Couric's Interview With President Bush

(CBS) 
BUSH: Right. Well, for example – there's a – we – we uncovered a – a potential anthrax attack on the United States. Or the fact that– Kalid Sheik Mohammad had got somebody to – to line up people to fly airlines, to – to crash airlines on, I think, the West Coast or somewhere in America. And these would be Southeast Asians. In other words, we've uncovered cells.

And – this – this is pretty rich data that has been declassified so that I'm capable of telling the American people the importance of the interrogation program. And I'm gonna call upon Congress to make sure that our interrogators have the capacity to do so without breaking the law.

See, we're not – we're not interrogating now because CIA officials– feel like the rules are so vague that they cannot interrogate without being tried as war criminals. And that's irresponsible, particularly in a time when our country could be in danger. So I'm – we wanna – in other words, the point is we wanna work with Congress and clarify the rules.

COURIC: Is this a tacit acknowledgement at all, Mr. President, that the way these detainees were handled early on was wrong?

BUSH: No, it's not at all. It's a – it's a tacit acknowledgement that we're doing smart things to get information to protect the American people. I've said to people we don't torture. And we don't.

COURIC: But the courts obviously, the Supreme Court, as you well know, said that the way the administration was handling detainees was unconstitutional.

BUSH: No, the – the court said – I beg your pardon.

COURIC: Okay. Well, then you correct me.

BUSH: Well, here's what I think the court – said. I know the court said, "Look, you– the president's gonna set up military tribunals." And they said, "No, you can't do it alone. You've gotta have congressional approval." They didn't say military tribunals were wrong. They just said it's important to work with Congress.

They also said that any detainee needs to be held with – under what's called Article III of the Geneva Convention. And it's a vague article. And so what I'm asking Congress to do is to – is to interpret Article III of the Geneva Convention under US law.

COURIC: One of the things you said earlier is that you regret that Abu Ghraib ever happened.

BUSH Yeah, yeah.

COURIC: Do you wish that your administration had handled detainees and sort of the rules and – and the guidelines for the treatment of these – detainees differently?

BUSH: Well, we've – we've – I think if you analyze the facts down at Guantanamo Bay, for example – the – people will find that our – these detainees, many of whom are violent – killers, have been treated – very well. International Red Cross go – has been down there I think 30 different times. There's – a lot. Let me put it that way.

And 30 different nations have sent people. And so there – there's a constant review of the process. And the speech today says, okay, we're a rule of law. We– we– we've now got a court system in which to give people their chance to– you know, be tried, brought to justice.
COURIC: Yesterday I know that you were very tough on Iran, raising concerns about that country's nuclear ambitions and its ties to terrorism.

BUSH: Right.

COURIC: Do you consider Iran the next battlefield in this vast ideological war?

BUSH: I consider it – extreme Shia as part of this ideological war. The – al-Qaeda's extreme Sunni. Hezbollah, which … attacked Israel – is a extreme Shia form of – these ideologues that use terror to achieve their objectives. And Iran sponsors Hezbollah. I – oftentimes, told people imagine how difficult a situation would be if the Iranians, who sponsored the Hezbollian attacks coming out of Lebanon and onto Israel, had a nuclear weapon. And – and so the first objective– Katie, is to work with Europe and Russia and China to – to say clearly to the Iranians that, you know, it's not in your nation's interest to have a nuclear weapon.

COURIC: I know we're almost out of time, Mr. President, and you have a very busy day ahead. But one philosophical question that many have that I'd like you to respond to, if you could, is that US policy, vis-à-vis Iraq, and the United States' close alliance with Israel, certainly highlighted in recent events between Israel and Lebanon, has galvanized terrorists worldwide. In other words, these policies have created more terrorists than they have eliminated.

BUSH: Yeah.

COURIC: How do you respond to that?

BUSH: Well – the first thing I would tell people that – we weren't in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001, when 19 killers killed 3,000 Americans in the most brutal attack on our – on our soil – ever.

COURIC: But they were from Saudi Arabia.

BUSH: No, but they're – but– but they share the same jihadist mentality, this radicalism. See, that's the interesting thing about this war, Katie. It's – we're not facing a nation-state. We're facing people from other nation– around the – around the globe, frankly, that share an ideology and the desire to – achieve objectives through killing innocent people.

[wissam4]

I always dreamed of studying in the USA, I even applied for this year's Medical program; but I'm not sure if I'll ever go there, to a country that doesn't respect me, my people and our freedom, freewill and independence.
Mr. Bush, Blair and Ms. EuroRussia, the MidEast problems can be resolved easily by making an independent state of Palestine according to the UN resolutions (the borders of 1967), return the millions of Palestinian refugees home, COMPLETE nuclear and mass destruction weapon removal of the region. These are the main points, and once there is peace there would be no need for extremism (historically proven) and about oil don't worry it'll finish in the next 100 years at max so spend the US citizen much earned money on altrenative energy resources rather than...
Ooops, I forgot that you don't want peace in our region, as this would compromise your occupation and makes you consider us as people.
(comment ends)

[wissam4]

2. When talking about Islam extremism, he must remember that americans made these groups in Afghanistan and asked their "moderate Islamic" ally which is Saudi Arabia to give the power, money and weapon to fight soviets in Afghanistan. Contrary to what Bush said that extremists are a minority in the Middle East it's not the case anymore, they are increasing in popularity day after day in the Sunni communities because they represent the only hope left for a "dignified" life as the "moderate" regimes in KSA, Jordan, Egypt,... are oppressing their people with US approval. I'm a Lebanese Christian so I'm afraid that this "war on terrorism" is like another crusade, afterwhich Eastern Christians will lose and the bed of christianity would have no more christians in it (israel is making for instance a cleansing of christians off Jerusalem whose number now barely flares the 2000 from a 70% at the beginning of the past century).
3. When talking about Iran's goal to acquire nuclear energy, Bush tells us a fairy tail about pure good and pure evil. Why does he allow israel to have not simply nuclear power but a full range nuclear weapons? Isn't israel a state just like Iran built on a fanatic religious idea? Doesn't it treat Arabs in it as second degree citizens? But that's a democratic state, it's all virtuous even if crimes against humanity are made everyday, Bush would say that it's for the greater good. When was the first instance of evil breeding good?!
(Part 2 ends, to be continued)

[wissam4]

I'm from Lebanon the MidEast and when I read the interview with George Bush, I saw the same erroneous look at the region and its people. I'm not saying that the American administration doesn't know the reality but it simply changes it to its own goals which are far from fighting extremism and closer to breeding some. I'm going to give a few representative points that show how the American administration breeds terrorism and extremism in our region:
1. History and historical events don't account for the american analyses. For example, when talking about israel nobody mentions that its rise (by european Jewish settlers killing and displacing Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and subsequent aggressive actions and "ideology" - simply review the Talmud that mentions israel must extend from the Euphrates to the Nile) and continuous aggression on neighboring countries is the major cause of instability. When Bush said "And I wanna remind people that it was an unprovoked terrorist attack on that democracy [israel]", he simply forgot that israel was breaching the Lebanese borders every day of every year by sea and by air, it still holds Lebanese prisoners, it infiltrated repeatedly commando and spy forces... and Lebanon is a democracy from 1920 by the way.
(part 1 ends, to be continued)

[deeeeekay]

Favourite line: when Bush says "one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." !!!!

Yes, George, that's why we didn't want you going into Iraq in the first place!!!! There was no connection, and still isn't, unless you want to consider the insurgency and civil war there as "terrorism". But hey, even if you could twist them into the definition of "terrorism" (which you can't), then wouldn't you have created terrorism yourself in order to now justify occupying the country to fight it?

[artm72]

President Bush took the oath to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" not "the people of the United States". President Bush consistantly fails to recognize this.

The people of the United States, our country and our way of life are far better protected by the Constitution than by any man or his appointed cabal. That is why our Constitution has facilitated the development of a great nation and that is why our President should be made to obey it or face impeachment.