MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam
Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved
in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make
that connection.
MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know.
MR. RUSSERT: Vanity Fair magazine reports that about 140 Saudis were
allowed to leave the United States the day after the 11th, allowed to
leave our airspace and were never investigated by the FBI and that departure
was approved by high-level administration figures. Do you know anything
about that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t.
MR. RUSSERT: Joe Lieberman, the senator from Connecticut, running for
president, had this to say: “...what President Bush gave the American
people on Sunday night was a price tag”—$87 billion—”not a plan. And
we in Congress must demand a plan.”
What is our plan for Iraq? How long will the 140,000 American soldiers
be there? How many international troops will join them? And how much
is this going to cost?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well,
some of those questions are unknowable at present, Tim. With respect to the financing, the $87 billion we’ve asked for is—about
3/4 of that is to support our military and security operations. About
1/4 of it will go specifically to helping make the investments Bremer
believes we need to make in order to get the Iraqis back and functioning
on their own capability.
So how long will it take? I don’t know.
MR. RUSSERT: In terms of costs, Mr. Vice President, there are suggestions
again—it was a misjudgment by the administration or even misleading.
“Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House’s National Economic Council,
projected the ‘upper bound’ of war costs at $100 billion to $200 billion.”
We’ve already spent $160 billion after this $87 billion is spent. The
Pentagon predicted $50 billion: “The administration’s top budget official
[Mitch Daniels] estimated that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in
the range of $50 billion to $60 billion...he said...that earlier estimates
of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence Lindsey,
Mr. Bush’s former chief economic adviser, were too high.”
And Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense, went before Congress
and said this: “We’re dealing with a country that can really finance
its own reconstruction, and relatively soon. The oil revenues of that
country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the
next two or three years.” It looked like the administration has truly
misjudged the cost of this operation.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I didn’t see a one-point estimate there that
you could say that this is the administration’s estimate. We didn’t know.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I didn’t see a one-point estimate there that
you could say that this is the administration’s estimate. We didn’t know.
And if you ask Secretary Rumsfeld, for example—I can remember from his
briefings, he said repeatedly he didn’t know. And when you and I talked
about it, I couldn’t put a dollar figure on it.
MR. RUSSERT: But Daniels did say $50 billion.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, that might have been, but I don’t know what
his basis was for making that judgment.
There are funds frozen, Iraqi assets in various places in...
MR. RUSSERT: How much is all that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t have a final dollar figure. We
don’t know who will...
MR. RUSSERT: Why is there no bidding?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I have no idea. ..... I don’t know any of the details
of the contract because I deliberately stayed away from any information
on that, but Halliburton is a fine company.
MR. RUSSERT: Reconstituted nuclear weapons. You misspoke.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yeah. I did misspeak.
MR. RUSSERT: Now, Ambassador Joe Wilson, a year before that, was sent
over by the CIA because you raised the question about uranium from Africa.
He says he came back from Niger and said that, in fact, he could not
find any documentation that, in fact, Niger had sent uranium to Iraq
or engaged in that activity and reported it back to the proper channels.
Were you briefed on his findings in February, March of 2002?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.
I don’t know Joe Wilson. ..... One of the questions
I asked at that particular time about this, I said, “What do we know
about this?” They take the question. He came back within a day or two
and said, “This is all we know. There’s a lot we don’t know,” end of
statement. And Joe Wilson—I don’t know who sent Joe Wilson. He never
submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.
