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American Morning

Richard Butler on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction

Aired December 03, 2001 - 07:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The chorus to target Iraq next in the U.S. war against terrorism is getting louder. A new coalition of conservatives, veterans of the Cold War and Iraqi exiles, are increasing pressure on the administration to take action against Saddam.

Iraq's ability to produce weapons of terror are well known to our ambassador in residence Richard Butler of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former chief weapons inspector for the U.N. He joins me now.

Welcome back.

RICHARD BUTLER, FORMER U.N. CHIEF WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: How real is this political pressure that's mounting on the administration?

BUTLER: Very real. The temperature is going up day by day. I think we now have to understand that what President Bush did last Monday in the Rose Garden where -- when he was asked, if Saddam doesn't accept inspectors back as the president had demanded, what will happen? He said he'll find out. Now we know that what the president -- we now know that what the president was doing was saying to this big strong pressure group in Washington that I'm listening to you, we are now contemplating serious action against Iraq. He was also sending a message to Saddam and to the world. I think we have to take very seriously that this is now moving up on the administration's agenda.

ZAHN: Want for you to quickly analyze what Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had to say over the weekend about Iraq and any potential inspectors that might come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The fact of the matter is that we have inspectors, the U.N. had inspectors in Iraq for a long period. We couldn't find beans, and it's there, and we know it's there. And it was defectors who came out and told us where it was that helped us to find it.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ZAHN: Is that true, you couldn't find beans when you were over there?

BUTLER: No, I'm sorry, it's not true. And I'm a bit surprised that he put it as starkly as that. The point the Secretary made about defectors is true, they were very helpful.

Remember there was Saddam Hussein's son-in-law who went away to Jordan for a while? And then when he came back with Saddam saying all was forgiven, Saddam promptly murdered him in 24 hours. That man, Hussein Kamal, was in charge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, and we got at his chicken farm a million pages of documents that helped us identify much, you know, of the weapons program. But it's not true. The Secretary is misleading people there when he says we didn't find things, we did. We just...

ZAHN: What exactly did you find (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

BUTLER: We found a lot of chemical munitions and we destroyed them. We destroyed the means to make them, we destroyed some missiles and missile warheads. We had the biggest problem with biology because that's the one that Saddam, I think, attached most importance to and tried to keep us away from.

ZAHN: He also has the ability to move that stuff around pretty quickly.

BUTLER: Absolutely.

ZAHN: He has mobile vans that work through the country.

BUTLER: That's right. And he's doing that right now in anticipation of an American attack upon him. That's been reported from Washington, and it is true.

I left out nuclear. We did stop his nuclear program. The so- called Crash program which when we did stop it was only six months away from producing an atomic bomb.

So I don't want to have a public fight with the Secretary. He's overstated his case. What I would rather focus on in this -- is this, there is a demand now to get those inspectors back. I think people should listen to that because the president has now made clear that if that doesn't happen there will be -- there will be military action. And there is a pressure group in Washington that is very strongly behind that to which the administration is listening. These are people who sent a letter to President Clinton in 1998 saying you must get Saddam. Signatories of that letter included Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy today, Paul Wolfowitz. So this is serious and watch this space.

ZAHN: You've got 30 seconds left, if -- reflections on this flash point that has been reached in the Middle East. Where do you see these talks going between Ariel Sharon and his cabinet members and any reports this morning that suggest under act of consideration by some members of his cabinet is the idea to topple Yasser Arafat? BUTLER: Yes, I heard that report, some seven members of the cabinet. That's a pretty big bunch. It is a government of national unity. They'll be sitting in crucial session today to decide what to do. Paula, I think the signs are that they may decide to take some very, very heavy military action. Lord knows what will then happen. This is truly serious. I think this is the moment where above all the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat have got to bring those people under control otherwise this is going to get very serious.

ZAHN: Do you personally believe Yasser Arafat will survive this either politically or physically?

BUTLER: I doubt it.

ZAHN: Either way?

BUTLER: Politically, in particular, I doubt it. He's got a very, very serious choice to make here. He either has to get those people under control or I suspect it will be curtains. One of the pictures we saw of them arresting some of these terrorist leaders didn't look very robust to me.

ZAHN: There didn't even appear to be handcuffs, either.

BUTLER: No, no. I mean I think this is a critical moment, and let's hope we get through it, you know, relatively is hardly the word to use I guess in this context, but relatively peacefully with smaller rather than larger loss of life. But this is -- this is tough. This is critical on both sides.

ZAHN: As always, thanks for your perspective.

BUTLER: OK.

ZAHN: See you same time, same place tomorrow morning.

BUTLER: Got you.

ZAHN: Richard Butler, our ambassador in residence.

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