HUME: Former Vice President Gore said here in Washington the other day that the president is intensely misleading the American people by continuing to aggressively and brazenly assert a linkage between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein. Newspaper headlines on the 9/11 Commission staff report have suggested the same thing.
And basically the idea is, here in Washington anyway, that you keep saying that there's this linkage between Iraq and Al Qaida that doesn't exist. How do you respond to these accusations?
RICE: Well, first of all, the administration has been very clear that this is not about Saddam Hussein or Iraq's operational control and direction of Al Qaida. It is not anyone's contention that somehow Saddam Hussein directed 9/11.
But we know that going back for more than a decade, there have been contacts and connections between security personnel from the Iraq security services and Al Qaida. We know that they provided expertise in bomb-making, in document forgery.
We know that Zarqawi, who is the face of terror today in Iraq, was operating out of Iraq and, by the way, himself, was known to be from time to time in Baghdad. His network operated out of Baghdad, the very network that led to the death of Mr. Foley, the U.S. aid worker.
So it's simply not true that there was no contact, that there were no relationships between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein. I would say that, yes, it wasn't operational control, but there was some facilitation of what Al Qaida was trying to accomplish.
And from our point of view, given the Bush doctrine about harboring terrorists and facilitating terrorists, and given that Saddam Hussein, not just with Al Qaida, but a wide range of terrorists, Abu Nidal, Palestinian rejectionists, paying $25,000 to Palestinian suicide bombers — Saddam Hussein's regime was a sponsor of terrorism. It's been noted in State Department reports for years and years and years. It's been noted in U.N. Security Council resolutions. It's simply not accurate to say that this was not a regime that helped terrorists.
HUME: You say you never asserted an operational connection or at least operational control. What do you suspect?
RICE: Well, I can't — you know, I can't speculate. I do know that there have just been a number of contacts, high-level contacts, over a number of years.
But you don't have to have operational control of Al Qaida or operational direction of Al Qaida in order to help Al Qaida. Helping them with document forgery or with bomb-making is helping Al Qaida. Supporting Palestinian rejectionists and paying $25,000 to suicide bombers is 180 degrees from the interests of the United States and peace in the Middle East.
The fact is, Brit, Saddam Hussein was a threat. His regime had used weapons of mass destruction, continued to seek to make weapons of mass destruction, had the capability, the intent, the knowledge and the know-how to do it. He'd attacked his neighbors. We'd gone to war against him in 1991. We'd gone to war against him again in 1998 because he'd refused to allow inspectors in. In 2003, the world finally said to him, "You really have to disarm or face serious consequences." He was firing at our aircraft in no-fly zones.
This picture that somehow emerges of a relatively benign Iraq is simply at odds with the entire decade and two years since his defeat in 1991. And that says nothing of the horrors that he committed against his own people.
So we need to get back to the picture here of what the United States and the coalition achieved. We overthrew one of the worst tyrants of the 20th century who was well into those activities in the 21st century. The Middle East is safer for it. America is safer for it.
And we should celebrate for the Iraqi people, that they're finally about to move toward a decent government, because heaven knows they suffered long enough under this bloody tyrant, as did the neighbors under the shadow of his threats.