CNN LARRY KING LIVE
Bob Dole Turns 80
Aired July 22, 2003 - 21:00 ET
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0307/22/lkl.00.html

KING: President, maybe I can get an area where you may disagree. Do you
join, President Clinton, your fellow Democrats, in complaining about
the portion of the State of the Union address that dealt with nuclear
weaponry in Africa?

CLINTON: Well, I have a little different take on it, I think, than
either side. First of all, the White House said -- Mr. Fleischer said --
that on balance they probably shouldn't have put that comment in the
speech. What happened, often happens. There was a disagreement between
British intelligence and American intelligence. The president said it
was British intelligence that said it. And then they said, well, maybe
they shouldn't have put it in. Let me tell you what I know. When I left
office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical
material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we
knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection
processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for
four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten
half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I
thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the
U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you
don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued
sanctions. I mean, we're all more sensitive to any possible stocks of
chemical and biological weapons. So there's a difference between
British -- British intelligence still maintains that they think the
nuclear story was true. I don't know what was true, what was false. I
thought the White House did the right thing in just saying, Well, we
probably shouldn't have said that. And I think we ought to focus on
where we are and what the right thing to do for Iraq is now. That's
what I think.

KING: So do you share that view, Senator Dole?

DOLE: Oh, he's exactly right. Let's put the focus where it belongs. I
never got to be president. I tried a couple of times. But President
Clinton understands better than anybody that he gets piles and piles of
classified, secret, top secret information, and I don't know how many,
maybe the president can tell me. I don't know how much of this goes
across your desk every day. It probably shouldn't have been in the
message. But that's history. It's passed. We can't change it. And we
need to focus on the real problem.

KING: What do you do, Mr. President, with what's put in front of you?

CLINTON: Well, here's what happens: every day the president gets a
daily brief from the CIA. And then, if it's some important issue -- and
believe me, you know, anything having to do with chemical, biological
or nuclear weapons became much more important to everybody in the White
House after September the 11 -- then they probably told the president,
certainly Condoleezza Rice, that this is what the British intelligence
thought. They maybe have a difference of opinion, but on balance, they
decided they should leave that line in the speech. I think the main
thing I want to say to you is, people can quarrel with whether we
should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or
whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there
were unaccounted for stocks...

DOLE: That's right.

CLINTON: ... of biological and chemical weapons. We might have
destroyed them in '98. We tried to, but we sure as heck didn't know it
because we never got to go back in there.

KING: Yes.

CLINTON: And what I think -- again, I would say the most important
thing is we should focus on what's the best way to build Iraq as a
democracy? How is the president going to do that and deal with
continuing problems in Afghanistan and North Korea? We should be
pulling for America on this. We should be pulling for the people of
Iraq. We can have honest disagreements about where we go from here, and
we have space now to discuss that in what I hope will be a nonpartisan
and open way. But this State of the Union deal they decided to use the
British intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence.
Then they said on balance they shouldn't have done it. You know,
everybody makes mistakes when they are president. I mean, you can't
make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in
awhile. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing
to do now. That's what I think.