From: Randy H 

Mark wrote:
> "Phil Payne" 
wrote in message
> news:454d386a{at}w3.nls.net...
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6117442.stm
>>
>> "Richard Perle, a former defence adviser to the Bush
administration, told
>> US
>> magazine Vanity Fair the president was responsible for the failure."
>
> Richard Perle sees it a bit differently than do Vanity Fair and the BBC:
>   http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=6530
>
>   "Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy
> discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be
> used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday's
> election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before
> the election.
>
>   I should have known better than to trust the editors at Vanity Fair who
> lied to me and to others who spoke with Mr. Rose. Moreover, in condensing
> and characterizing my views for their own partisan political purposes, they
> have distorted my opinion about the situation in Iraq and what I believe to
> be in the best interest of our country.
>
>   I believe it would be a catastrophic mistake to leave Iraq, as some are
> demanding, before the Iraqis are able to defend their elected government. As
> I told Mr. Rose, the terrorist threat to our country, which is real, would
> be made much worse if we were to make an ignominious withdrawal from Iraq.
>
>   I told Mr. Rose that as a nation we had waited too long before dealing
> with Osama bin Laden. We could have destroyed his operation in Afghanistan
> before 9/11.
>
>   I believed we should not repeat that mistake with Saddam Hussein, that we
> could not responsibly ignore the threat that he might make weapons of mass
> destruction available to terrorists who would use them to kill Americans. I
> favored removing his regime. And despite the current difficulties, I
> believed, and told Mr. Rose, that "if we had left Saddam in place, and he
> had shared nerve gas with Al Qaeda, or some other terrorist organization,
> how would we compare what we're experiencing now with that?"
>
>   I believe the President is now doing what he can to help the Iraqis get to
> the point where we can honorably leave. We are on the right path."
>
>

Perle could have waited until after the election to be interviewed to
prevent such a event from occurring, but he did, and he got his head handed
to him. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

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