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American Morning
Whole Administration Not Yet Behind Strike on Iraq
Aired August 30, 2002 - 08:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, now a chance to talk with Jeff Greenfield. All morning long we've been telling you about strike disputes, the argument over whether to stage a first strike against Iraq, also the negotiations about whether to head off a baseball strike.
Stepping up to the plate, our star hitter, our cleanup hitter, our Sammy Sosa, our Mark McGwire.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think you beat that metaphor right into the ground. But all right.
KAGAN: Let's start with the news of the morning and that we're hearing that, from sources within the State Department, the White House, that Colin Powell, Secretary of State Colin Powell breaking ranks with the administration and the hard rhetoric we've been hearing from Vice President Cheney.
GREENFIELD: Well, this shadow play has been going on for weeks. We've been seeing what some people think of as the surrogates of the first Bush administration, Brent Scowcroft being the most notable, saying you can't do this alone, and hardliners have been pointing to Powell from the very beginning as a guy who's a little soft on the use of military force. So in that sense, these reports are consistent. And that also helps explain what the vice president has been doing the last week, two speeches before veterans' groups to say, in effect, we're going to listen to everybody, we're not a bunch of cowboys, we welcome the debate, we're not accusing our adversaries or our opponents of lack of patriotism, but we've got to get this guy out of here.
And I think if you listened to the speech yesterday, we've been playing selected sound bites throughout the morning, if you listen to this take that he said to these Korean War veterans, I think you get the whole argument kind of in microcosm.
Let's take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, sitting atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, to take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies and to directly threaten America's friends throughout the region and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail. Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies and against us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GREENFIELD: Now, there is the argument for preemptive action, two of them. One, he'll kill an awful lot of us if we don't stop him first. And second, it's almost like a Munich argument, if you don't stop Saddam now, he'll be able to exert increasing power over the whole region and that has economic consequences because if he has a stronghold on oil the whole Western world is in trouble.
KAGAN: Well, what happens then when someone as high ranking as the secretary of state is letting word, allegedly, leak that he's not really on board completely for this plan?
GREENFIELD: Well, I think what it shows is that what we, it is the most dramatic example yet of the fact that this debate is taking place not between right and left. It's not like Vietnam. Nobody's in the streets chanting Saddam Hussein's name and waving Iraqi flags. But that there are signals going out to the rest of the world and to the American public that this administration, this administration, most of them are saying we've got to do it, but that not everybody is on board yet.
It also occurred to me -- and I'm getting way ahead of myself -- that in this century we've had two secretaries of state resign in protest over military action. William Jennings Bryan didn't like Woodrow Wilson leading us into WWI or getting us in. And Cy Vance quit Jimmy Carter because he didn't like the idea of a rescue operation.
KAGAN: All right, let's move on from a possible strike on Iraq to a possible baseball strike. Why is it that the American public is so angry with the players?
GREENFIELD: A really interesting question. The AFL-CIO took a poll, and granted, it's the labor unions, so it may not be neutral, and their poll showed in any labor dispute when people first hear about it, 48 percent of them tend to side with the workers and eight percent side with management, because more people are workers than management.
KAGAN: So why isn't that working for the baseball strike?
GREENFIELD: In the baseball strike, the polls are completely different. More people side with owners than players. And I, if you think about it, I think there are a couple of reasons. One obviously is that the players make a lot of money.
KAGAN: Right.
GREENFIELD: But, you know, the people we saw on the MTV awards last night make a lot of money. A lot of news people make a lot of money. A lot of TV stars make a lot of money.
I think it's, in part, that people think that the players are playing a game.
KAGAN: They are.
GREENFIELD: Well, they are, but they don't see it as work. I mean the fact is most of us, certainly most American males have played baseball. You know, god help us, I'm still playing softball every week. I don't think I can get 50,000 people to turn out to watch me, except out of pity. But the point is I think people see these people as the luckiest people in the world. They're getting paid millions to play a game. How dare they think about going on strike?
KAGAN: Stop your whining.
Quickly, do you think there's going to be a strike?
GREENFIELD: I have no idea. I don't do predictions because if I could, I'd win the lottery every week.
KAGAN: And then you wouldn't come play with us.
GREENFIELD: Precisely.
KAGAN: There you are -- work with us.
GREENFIELD: And here I am.
KAGAN: What you do is work, what they do is play.
GREENFIELD: All right.
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