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American Morning
Bush Administration Reaction to Both Deadly Bombings
Aired August 20, 2003 - 07:31 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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Now to the White House and the Bush administration reaction to both the deadly bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad, also that suicide blast yesterday afternoon on the bus in Jerusalem.
Dana Bash live from the White House with the reaction this morning -- Dana, yesterday the president said the killers, in his words, will not win ultimately. Today, what's the message there?
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bill, both of those bombings were clearly major setbacks for the Bush administration and are really seen as intertwined here, because the White House strategy has been to first bring democracy to Iraq and to calm the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, with the broad goal of completely transforming the Middle East. That is the stated goal here at the White House. And goal, step number one in reaching that goal is, of course, dealing with Iraq.
And the president, speaking in Crawford yesterday, said that the attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was actually against the Iraqi people and he vowed not to be deterred.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: All nations of the world face a challenge and a choice. By attempting to spread chaos and fear, terrorists are testing our will. Across the world, they are finding that our will cannot be shaken.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Now, the administration has been trying to get countries from around the world to help U.S. troops, who are really stretched in Iraq, and trying to stabilize that country. Eighteen countries are currently assisting the United States. But what a senior administration official I talked to yesterday said is that the hope is that this bombing yesterday actually will serve as a crystallizing moment for the international community, that the bombing of the U.N., which is the ultimate symbol of peace and international cooperation, could actually rally countries around the world behind the U.S. effort in Iraq, behind the fact that they believe here at the White House that terrorists are trying to destabilize that part of the world.
But already we are hearing from some of the president's political opponents, Democrats saying that part of what happened yesterday was evidence of the fact that the Bush administration was simply not prepared for post-war Iraq and the situation there -- Bill. HEMMER: Dana Bash at the White House.
Thanks -- Soledad?
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now with more on the Baghdad bombing is the U.S. administrator for the reconstruction of Iraq, Paul Bremer.
Mr. Bremer, good morning.
Thanks for joining us.
And I also want to welcome, along with you, the viewers from CNN- I.
L. PAUL BREMER, U.S./IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATOR: Good morning.
O'BRIEN: Thank you.
First and foremost, Sergio Vieira de Mello, you worked with him. He was very, obviously, important to the reconstruction effort from the U.N. perspective, but also to the administration, as well.
How critical do you think his loss is?
BREMER: Well, I have to say, first of all, that I feel I lost a good friend and I want to give my condolences to his family and the families of all the people who were killed or injured yesterday.
As the secretary general of the U.N. said earlier today in his press conference, the U.N. will continue here. They're not going to be intimidated to leave. So our work with the United Nations and the United Nations' work in helping to reconstruct Iraq will go forward. As the president said, the world is not going to be intimidated by these terrorists.
O'BRIEN: There are obviously numerous hard targets in Iraq, when you consider the number of U.S. military there, and soft targets, as well. Why do you think the U.N. was the target in this case? Just because of the ease of the attack?
BREMER: Of course, we don't know what the motives were, because we don't yet know who did it. But one possibility is that they thought they could scare the U.N. into leaving the country. They have not succeeded in that, as the secretary general has pointed out earlier today. We'll have to see what the investigation turns up. The Iraqi police are on the scene and investigating it and when they have something to announce, maybe we'll know a little more about who did it.
But we're not going to rest until we find these terrorists. It's part of a global war against terrorism that was declared, really, officially on us on September 11 and it's a war we're going to have to fight where the terrorists are, and unfortunately the terrorists are now here in Iraq. O'BRIEN: As you mentioned, we don't at this time know who did it. But who is on your short list of potential suspects? Does this seem to be an attack that is far superior to the abilities of Saddam loyalists?
BREMER: Well, it certainly is an attack of a different scale than the ones we've seen here before, including the attack two weeks ago against the Jordanian mission. It does not mean, I think, that we can exclude the possibility that the Fedayeen Saddam or some of the old Saddam guys did it. They had very substantial explosives capabilities in parts of their intelligence services and it's not impossible that it was done by them.
It's also possible, and that's the second list, that it was done by some foreign terrorist group like Ansar al-Islam, which is a group with close ties to al Qaeda and which was operating in the north of Iraq before the war.
O'BRIEN: Obviously as a member of a large international organization, he was, Sergio Vieira de Mello was very high profile. Do you think he was the specific target of this attack?
BREMER: It certainly is possible. I was down at the site last evening and it appears that whoever did this positioned the truck in a place where it was quite clearly pretty much in front of de Mello's office, at the back of the U.N. headquarters building. So it's possible he was, in fact, targeted.
O'BRIEN: You were there last night. Give me a description of what you saw and just how bad the devastation was from your point of view.
BREMER: Well, as your viewers have seen, I'm sure, it collapsed the entire side of a building, the back side of a building with large amounts of concrete. By the time I got there, a couple of hours after the attack, there were large numbers of Iraqi civil defense rescue people working side by side with Americans. The Iraqi police were there working side by side with our own soldiers, trying to clear the rubble, trying to preserve the evidence.
There were some friends of mine who had survived, U.N. officials who were there, dazed and obviously emotional. At that time we didn't know that Mr. De Mello had died.
It was a moving scene, an awful scene, a scene that remind you how ugly the face of terrorism is wherever it appears.
O'BRIEN: Kofi Annan spoke yesterday fairly strongly about U.S. security in Iraq or, from his position, the lack of it. I want to first play his sound bite for you before we talk about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL: We had hoped that by now the coalition forces would have secured the environment for us to be able to carry on the essential work of political and economic reconstruction, institution building and for Iraqis to carry on with their work. That has not happened and all efforts are being made to bring the security situation under control. When this will happen, I do not know. But serious efforts are taking place.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Those were comments from Kofi Annan this morning. He says, you know, efforts for security have not happened. Do you think that's a harsh criticism of the U.S. and the efforts there? And how do you respond to those comments?
BREMER: Well, you might also have quoted another part of what he said, which was that while we are responsible for law and order here, and that's true, the fact is there's no such thing as a hundred percent protection against terrorism, a point he also made. And even in that bite that you just gave, he pointed out that serious efforts are under way.
The U.N. had its own security people on that site there. They were responsible for that site, as, indeed, most of the foreign missions here have their own security on their sites. We have called a meeting of all of the heads of missions here for Friday, where we are going to review our security arrangements and offer to provide each of them technical assistance on their own sites to see how their individual security can be improved.
We, of course, share the secretary general's concern that the sooner this kind of thing can be stopped, the better, and we work -- we are certainly not going to slacken off our efforts to restore full security to Iraq.
O'BRIEN: The U.N. has certainly made a point of not having overwhelming security. And you say there are discussions about changing that. How much do you think that will change?
BREMER: You know, that's a question you really should ask of the U.N. The secretary general made clear in his press conference earlier today that the U.N. is not going to be intimidated or chased off by the terrorists. Obviously we will be prepared to review with them and in any way they want and provide them any assistance we can give them -- we've offered that already last night -- in reviewing their security and in finding an environment that is both safe for them but one which allows them to serve the Iraqi people, as they were trying to do.
O'BRIEN: To what degree do you think this attack derails your job that you've been sent to do, the rebuilding of Iraq? I mean are you looking at now a situation that's just completely out of control?
BREMER: No, absolutely not. It is obviously a very unfortunate incident. It does not derail our efforts. As the president said in his statement at Crawford, we are going to go forward. We have a very good plan to deal with the problems of security, and, more importantly, really, to get the economy going here. The political process is well under way. The governing council, which is the transitional government here, issued a very strong statement this afternoon, pointing out that this was an attack against the Iraqi people and inviting the Iraqi people to help work with the coalition on security through the police and civil defense corps and inviting friendly nations to also assist in security. And we will certainly see, I think, a broad international effort now to see if we can't all of us work together, both on the reconstruction and on security.
O'BRIEN: Paul Bremer is the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq.
And I want to thank you for joining us. And, also, and you've lost friends yesterday in that attack, and our condolences go out not only to you for your loss, but also the families who lost loved ones, as well.
So thank you for your time this morning.
Also, I'd like to thank our viewers at CNN-I for staying with us.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired August 20, 2003 - 07:31 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Now to the White House and the Bush administration reaction to both the deadly bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad, also that suicide blast yesterday afternoon on the bus in Jerusalem.
Dana Bash live from the White House with the reaction this morning -- Dana, yesterday the president said the killers, in his words, will not win ultimately. Today, what's the message there?
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bill, both of those bombings were clearly major setbacks for the Bush administration and are really seen as intertwined here, because the White House strategy has been to first bring democracy to Iraq and to calm the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, with the broad goal of completely transforming the Middle East. That is the stated goal here at the White House. And goal, step number one in reaching that goal is, of course, dealing with Iraq.
And the president, speaking in Crawford yesterday, said that the attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was actually against the Iraqi people and he vowed not to be deterred.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: All nations of the world face a challenge and a choice. By attempting to spread chaos and fear, terrorists are testing our will. Across the world, they are finding that our will cannot be shaken.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Now, the administration has been trying to get countries from around the world to help U.S. troops, who are really stretched in Iraq, and trying to stabilize that country. Eighteen countries are currently assisting the United States. But what a senior administration official I talked to yesterday said is that the hope is that this bombing yesterday actually will serve as a crystallizing moment for the international community, that the bombing of the U.N., which is the ultimate symbol of peace and international cooperation, could actually rally countries around the world behind the U.S. effort in Iraq, behind the fact that they believe here at the White House that terrorists are trying to destabilize that part of the world.
But already we are hearing from some of the president's political opponents, Democrats saying that part of what happened yesterday was evidence of the fact that the Bush administration was simply not prepared for post-war Iraq and the situation there -- Bill. HEMMER: Dana Bash at the White House.
Thanks -- Soledad?
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now with more on the Baghdad bombing is the U.S. administrator for the reconstruction of Iraq, Paul Bremer.
Mr. Bremer, good morning.
Thanks for joining us.
And I also want to welcome, along with you, the viewers from CNN- I.
L. PAUL BREMER, U.S./IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATOR: Good morning.
O'BRIEN: Thank you.
First and foremost, Sergio Vieira de Mello, you worked with him. He was very, obviously, important to the reconstruction effort from the U.N. perspective, but also to the administration, as well.
How critical do you think his loss is?
BREMER: Well, I have to say, first of all, that I feel I lost a good friend and I want to give my condolences to his family and the families of all the people who were killed or injured yesterday.
As the secretary general of the U.N. said earlier today in his press conference, the U.N. will continue here. They're not going to be intimidated to leave. So our work with the United Nations and the United Nations' work in helping to reconstruct Iraq will go forward. As the president said, the world is not going to be intimidated by these terrorists.
O'BRIEN: There are obviously numerous hard targets in Iraq, when you consider the number of U.S. military there, and soft targets, as well. Why do you think the U.N. was the target in this case? Just because of the ease of the attack?
BREMER: Of course, we don't know what the motives were, because we don't yet know who did it. But one possibility is that they thought they could scare the U.N. into leaving the country. They have not succeeded in that, as the secretary general has pointed out earlier today. We'll have to see what the investigation turns up. The Iraqi police are on the scene and investigating it and when they have something to announce, maybe we'll know a little more about who did it.
But we're not going to rest until we find these terrorists. It's part of a global war against terrorism that was declared, really, officially on us on September 11 and it's a war we're going to have to fight where the terrorists are, and unfortunately the terrorists are now here in Iraq. O'BRIEN: As you mentioned, we don't at this time know who did it. But who is on your short list of potential suspects? Does this seem to be an attack that is far superior to the abilities of Saddam loyalists?
BREMER: Well, it certainly is an attack of a different scale than the ones we've seen here before, including the attack two weeks ago against the Jordanian mission. It does not mean, I think, that we can exclude the possibility that the Fedayeen Saddam or some of the old Saddam guys did it. They had very substantial explosives capabilities in parts of their intelligence services and it's not impossible that it was done by them.
It's also possible, and that's the second list, that it was done by some foreign terrorist group like Ansar al-Islam, which is a group with close ties to al Qaeda and which was operating in the north of Iraq before the war.
O'BRIEN: Obviously as a member of a large international organization, he was, Sergio Vieira de Mello was very high profile. Do you think he was the specific target of this attack?
BREMER: It certainly is possible. I was down at the site last evening and it appears that whoever did this positioned the truck in a place where it was quite clearly pretty much in front of de Mello's office, at the back of the U.N. headquarters building. So it's possible he was, in fact, targeted.
O'BRIEN: You were there last night. Give me a description of what you saw and just how bad the devastation was from your point of view.
BREMER: Well, as your viewers have seen, I'm sure, it collapsed the entire side of a building, the back side of a building with large amounts of concrete. By the time I got there, a couple of hours after the attack, there were large numbers of Iraqi civil defense rescue people working side by side with Americans. The Iraqi police were there working side by side with our own soldiers, trying to clear the rubble, trying to preserve the evidence.
There were some friends of mine who had survived, U.N. officials who were there, dazed and obviously emotional. At that time we didn't know that Mr. De Mello had died.
It was a moving scene, an awful scene, a scene that remind you how ugly the face of terrorism is wherever it appears.
O'BRIEN: Kofi Annan spoke yesterday fairly strongly about U.S. security in Iraq or, from his position, the lack of it. I want to first play his sound bite for you before we talk about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL: We had hoped that by now the coalition forces would have secured the environment for us to be able to carry on the essential work of political and economic reconstruction, institution building and for Iraqis to carry on with their work. That has not happened and all efforts are being made to bring the security situation under control. When this will happen, I do not know. But serious efforts are taking place.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Those were comments from Kofi Annan this morning. He says, you know, efforts for security have not happened. Do you think that's a harsh criticism of the U.S. and the efforts there? And how do you respond to those comments?
BREMER: Well, you might also have quoted another part of what he said, which was that while we are responsible for law and order here, and that's true, the fact is there's no such thing as a hundred percent protection against terrorism, a point he also made. And even in that bite that you just gave, he pointed out that serious efforts are under way.
The U.N. had its own security people on that site there. They were responsible for that site, as, indeed, most of the foreign missions here have their own security on their sites. We have called a meeting of all of the heads of missions here for Friday, where we are going to review our security arrangements and offer to provide each of them technical assistance on their own sites to see how their individual security can be improved.
We, of course, share the secretary general's concern that the sooner this kind of thing can be stopped, the better, and we work -- we are certainly not going to slacken off our efforts to restore full security to Iraq.
O'BRIEN: The U.N. has certainly made a point of not having overwhelming security. And you say there are discussions about changing that. How much do you think that will change?
BREMER: You know, that's a question you really should ask of the U.N. The secretary general made clear in his press conference earlier today that the U.N. is not going to be intimidated or chased off by the terrorists. Obviously we will be prepared to review with them and in any way they want and provide them any assistance we can give them -- we've offered that already last night -- in reviewing their security and in finding an environment that is both safe for them but one which allows them to serve the Iraqi people, as they were trying to do.
O'BRIEN: To what degree do you think this attack derails your job that you've been sent to do, the rebuilding of Iraq? I mean are you looking at now a situation that's just completely out of control?
BREMER: No, absolutely not. It is obviously a very unfortunate incident. It does not derail our efforts. As the president said in his statement at Crawford, we are going to go forward. We have a very good plan to deal with the problems of security, and, more importantly, really, to get the economy going here. The political process is well under way. The governing council, which is the transitional government here, issued a very strong statement this afternoon, pointing out that this was an attack against the Iraqi people and inviting the Iraqi people to help work with the coalition on security through the police and civil defense corps and inviting friendly nations to also assist in security. And we will certainly see, I think, a broad international effort now to see if we can't all of us work together, both on the reconstruction and on security.
O'BRIEN: Paul Bremer is the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq.
And I want to thank you for joining us. And, also, and you've lost friends yesterday in that attack, and our condolences go out not only to you for your loss, but also the families who lost loved ones, as well.
So thank you for your time this morning.
Also, I'd like to thank our viewers at CNN-I for staying with us.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
