Terror cells and outlaw regimes building weapons of mass destruction are different faces of the same evil. Our security requires that we confront both. And the United States military is capable of confronting both.
Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don't know exactly, and that's the problem. Before the Gulf War, the best intelligence indicated that Iraq was eight to ten years away from developing a nuclear weapon. After the war, international inspectors learned that the regime has been much closer -- the regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993. The inspectors discovered that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a workable nuclear weapon, and was pursuing several different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.
Before being barred from Iraq in 1998, the International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled extensive nuclear weapons-related facilities, including three uranium enrichment sites. That same year, information from a high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected revealed that despite his public promises, Saddam Hussein had ordered his nuclear program to continue.
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists.
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've 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.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: Well, it was. It was stripped of almost all the kind of rhetorical stuff that you expect of presidential speeches. I mean Michael Gerson (ph), his chief speechwriter, is very good at that. This struck me as a prosecutor's brief, the summoning of all the evidence, the specifics of it. This is what a defector said after leaving in 1995; here's what our pictures said.
And I was surprised. I had thought he would make a kind of more domestic speech, praising, say, Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, maybe subtly isolating some of the Democrats. He was so far from getting near the politics of this and so determined to set out the evidence that it was a very, yes, stern is a good word.
BROWN: Did you find it effective in the way it was presented?
GREENFIELD: You know, yes. What I was thinking about -- and this is how the White House would like to think about it, I'm sure -- is suppose someone were trying to give a speech urging the international community to stop Hitler in 1935 or 1936, pre-Austria, pre-Czechoslovakia, pre-Poland, maybe even pre-Rhineland. That was the tone of this.
I mean this is actually a throwback to the arguments before Vietnam, (UNINTELLIGIBLE); namely, the domino theory in a way. If you don't stop them here you are going to have to stop them here and the consequences will be greater.
And I think that by setting out at the very beginning of the speech, saying, look, you all have a lot of questions and they're legitimate. Let me try to answer them. I thought he summoned the evidence well.
BROWN: Was there in the speech to your ear a sort of deal closer argument?
GREENFIELD: Look, I think the most strongly felt belief of some of the people who are less inclined to the pre-emptive notion and less inclined to the view not in the speech that, if we do this in Iraq we can change the whole Middle East, was the argument about blackmail. When he said if Saddam gets a hold of nuclear weapons he'd be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression.
I think people who are not keen on the more grandiose vision of some of the hawks do believe that. That that's what worries them more than a kind of a -- you know he'll take Pittsburgh in two weeks.
BROWN: Yes. I was struck by -- the president, at one point, acknowledged there is no -- where nuclear weapons are a clear smoking gun, but…
GREENFIELD: Yes. And that I think is the hardest sell he has (UNINTELLIGIBLE). He was saying, we don't know, and that's the problem. And he used the line that's been used many times before by Condoleeza Rice and others, you know, we can't wait fro the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
And he used the line that's been used many times before by Condoleeza Rice and others, you know, we can't wait fro the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
And he used the line that's been used many times before by Condoleeza Rice and others, you know, we can't wait fro the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
And he used the line that's been used many times before by Condoleeza Rice and others, you know, we can't wait fro the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
And he used the line that's been used many times before by Condoleeza Rice and others, you know, we can't wait fro the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
I don't think he has convinced the people who think, look, we have contained this guy for 11 years. This notion that he's chomping at the bit to do terrible things is wrong. He cares more about his own survival and Iraq's survival.
I don't think he has convinced the people who think, look, we have contained this guy for 11 years. This notion that he's chomping at the bit to do terrible things is wrong. He cares more about his own survival and Iraq's survival.
I don't think he has convinced the people who think, look, we have contained this guy for 11 years. This notion that he's chomping at the bit to do terrible things is wrong. He cares more about his own survival and Iraq's survival.
I don't think he has convinced the people who think, look, we have contained this guy for 11 years. This notion that he's chomping at the bit to do terrible things is wrong. He cares more about his own survival and Iraq's survival.
I don't think he has convinced the people who think, look, we have contained this guy for 11 years. This notion that he's chomping at the bit to do terrible things is wrong. He cares more about his own survival and Iraq's survival.
But I do think that the very fact that he stayed away from a kind of more Stentorian rhetoric we're sometimes used to is probably a smart move.
BROWN: Thank you. Thanks for coming in, Jeff Greenfield.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the U.S. Supreme Court says no thanks to getting in the middle of New Jersey's Senate race. We could have invited Jeff in to talk about that too.
Next, another sniper attack outside of Washington. This one gets worse by the day. And we continue in a moment.
This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.
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Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
-- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
-- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
-- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
-- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
-- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, "Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world," he said, "where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nations security to constitute maximum peril."
Understanding the threats of our time, knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi regime, we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring.
Some believe we can address this danger by simply resuming the old approach to inspections, and applying diplomatic and economic pressure. Yet this is precisely what the world has tried to do since 1991. The U.N. inspections program was met with systematic deception. The Iraqi regime bugged hotel rooms and offices of inspectors to find where they were going next; they forged documents, destroyed evidence, and developed mobile weapons facilities to keep a step ahead of inspectors.
Eight so-called presidential palaces were declared off-limits to unfettered inspections. These sites actually encompass twelve square miles, with hundreds of structures, both above and below the ground, where sensitive materials could be hidden.
The world has also tried economic sanctions -- and watched Iraq use billions of dollars in illegal oil revenues to fund more weapons purchases, rather than providing for the needs of the Iraqi people.
The world has tried limited military strikes to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities -- only to see them openly rebuilt, while the regime again denies they even exist.
The world has tried no-fly zones to keep Saddam from terrorizing his own people -- and in the last year alone, the Iraqi military has fired upon American and British pilots more than 750 times.
After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.
BROWN: A number of other stories making news around the country. Briefly, tonight, we begin on Wall Street.
Another sell-off. This one late in the day. The Dow fell more than 100 points, in part because of profit warnings from sears and also increasing concern about the possibility of a war with Iraq. Here we go with another week.
Another factor in the market's decline, this ongoing west coast port lockout. The president today signed an executive order creating a board of inquiry which will look into the dispute between longshoremen and management. The cost of the port shutdown is estimated at $2 billion a day. It seems to me that is up a billion dollars from last week, isn't it?
A guilty plea today from a former WorldCom accounting director for falsifying financial records. He said he did so at his boss's request. Buford Yates is the second executive agreeing to help the government with its case involving WorldCom.
And the space shuttle Atlantis. these pictures -- you cannot get prettier pictures than this. Lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center today. A video camera mounted near the top of the external fuel tanks gives us a new way of looking at a shuttle launch. It was the first shuttle flight in four months. The entire fleet grounded this past summer because of cracks in the fuel lines. They're off to the international space station for 11 days, if all goes well.
That is -- you know, no matter how many times you see that, it's something.
Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, we'll talk with "New York Times" columnist Nick Kristof who is just back from Baghdad.
Up next, the War on Terror, catching the big fish, the little fish, or just an old shoe. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
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