thank you for coming out this evening i'm going to tell you some stories i think you'll enjoy the stories but i'm also going to try to make you uncomfortable all start by taking a back in time to december first one nine hundred forty   more excited if she know it was me in europe england and germany are locked in a death struggle it's the outcome will determine the fate of mankind for the next hundred years but americans don't want to get involved it's a european problem we don't want it to become a problem most americans would rather see angle and win but if you ask them to sacrifice they'd say we've just been through ten years of depression we don't have anything left to sacrifice president f d r knows how important it is but he can't move the american people he's been able to get a little help through congress by calling it lend lease instead of aid over the vocal opposition of such influential skeptics as charles lindber if there is a tipping point in the struggle for the survival of democracy he knows that if hitler succeeds in strangling england or in the north atlantic they'll be no way to stop fascism from conquering the world the british fleet in the british industrial capacity will be at the service of the bad guys and that we no platform in western europe for launching a counter attack the normandy fleet would have to cross the atlantic ocean not just the english channel in oklahoma the old folks have noticed a change have at least with getting better we don't have those terrible blizzards like we used to have when i was young in england an engineer named guy calendar has presented data to the royal meteorological society he shows that the earth's average temperature is increased slightly he suggests that industrial carbon dioxide might be the c well no let's move ahead just a few days to december seven thousand nine hundred forty one the japanese attack on pearl harbor devastation to the american fleet if you've known any pearl harbor survivors like my old neighbor bob french you might have an idea of how traumatized they were december eighth nine hundred forty one everything is changed my father joe was in the naval reserve and was called up almost immediately in route set down and look to ruth's options they decided that she would close their apartment in indiana and move her little family to her parents farm in new york joe and ruth put their dreams of happy family life on hold and said a goodbye no americans understood that it was their war and they went to work on it december first one thousand nine hundred one is just like where we're at with climate change most americans know there's a problem but they wanted to be somebody else's problem the chinese burn a lot of coal let them change their ways we've just been through a long recession we don't feel like sacrificing so what if the earth's temperature has risen by one degree what's a big deal ocean levels rising by three millimeters a year let a great grandchildren worry about that bad things will happen by the end of the century but we did then why should i care a species are going extinct well that is to bed takes all my effort just to make sure i don't hurricane katrina devastated new orleans hurricane sandy shut down new york city if those are the pearl harbor for climate change then climate change isn't going to give us a pearl harbor at least not until it's too late each weather event is just an event no single event proves anything about climate change scientists can't attribute any specific event to climate change might be just a random fluctuation skeptics make the most of this uncertainty you can disagree with them but you can't point to i think it's worthwhile to know that it goes a lot further back than that in eight hundred twenty two the french physicist made the first attempt to calculate the earth's energy budget and lot of heat the earth receives in the sun versus the amount of radiates back in the space a result his calculation was that the earth should be a frozen ice ball he speculated about several possible explanations for the discrepancy including the idea that maybe somehow the air acted as a blanket holding in some of the heat life would be a cautionary tale for them idea was that you would stay healthy but keeping the body rep and blankets whenever possible he died in his home at the age of sixty two when he tripped on his blanket and fell down the stairs it's ok to laugh  e is a little dark in the middle of one thousand century an english physics scientist john tyndall discover the carbon dioxide is opaque to infrared radiation in other words it absorbs heat rather than passing it studying natural processes involving carbon dioxide whom calculated the rate that the industrial activity of the day was putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere he was startled to find that was on the same scale as the natural exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the earth a notion that was eight hundred ninety six swedes turned up a lot in this story will tell you why in the one nine hundred century the ice ages have been discovered and the big question was what caused them and might become again if you live in the northern country like sweden with their capital at the lead of the bankrupt alaska you know that when the ice ages return you'll be the first to see it climatology wasn't a big important science in those days but for those who were consensus on global warming that warning was over twenty years ago when almost nothing has been done to address it when the war started joe was teaching mathematics university where he had a reputation for throwing chalk at students who fell asleep in his class being a mathematician he was interested in cryptanalysis code breaking is a reservist you take in the navy's correspondence course in it so when he was called up he was sent to washington d c and assigned to the navy's code breaking department he found himself in a large room where one man was learning morse code by tapping out messages to himself code successfully thanks to the friendship between f d r and churchill the united states and britain had negotiated an information sharing agreement unquote breaking joe's vailable at the right moment with the right skills got the assignment of being the reluctant to share any more information about it than they had to nominally djoser to work alongside the british but israel assignment was to bring back to washington everything you could find out about everything that was going on a pledge of the park when george something to report you had to travel back to washington you know we came home sometime during the war because a if a picture the roof took of joe in his navy uniform with two toddlers in fact his first trip back was in september one thousand nine hundred two just a few weeks after i was born he was carrying the complete plans of the machine the british had built to decode german messages portugal's neutrals a transatlantic travel went through lisbon joins description of lisbon was it was full of men and black top wanted uniforms nobody could see where they were british or german or american joe would fit right in he was a tall slim man with a black top coat in the  cigarette the transatlantic plate was in a pan am clipper a beautiful flying boat designed built by boeing is the first successful commercial transatlantic aircraft fascinating airplane did it for fifteen hundred horsepower piston engines wingspan three quarters of a seven forty seven and they were catwalks inside the wings of an engine failed an engineer would shut it down go out into the wing and repaired in flight can is written a spy novel about a trip in a pan am clipper it's called night overwater now i want to draw a map of the atlantic ocean in your mind's eye if you cheat by looking at the map on the wall over there you'll get caught because you'll be thoroughly confused on your upper left of north america with florida separated by the caribbean from south america in brazil if you putting labels on them every member of the mediterranean has to ours and caribbean has to be only only fifteen years earlier during the war that was a combat zone no passenger traffic was only used to shuttle fighters and bombers from american factories to british airfields not all made it there's still an entire squadron the p thirty eight  greenland there buried now under two hundred fifty feet of ice and snow except one of them that was excavated if years ago and restored to flying condition correspondent say this is a reporting from to ca did you ever look up the car to see where it is if you think of west africa bulging into the atlantic ocean is the breast of oil and three miles an hour now that you've got this map in your mind one talk about hurricanes hurricanes form off the coast of the car the travel west into the caribbean or west in the north to north america in hundred eight hurricane mitch went into the caribbean and dropped six feet of rain on hunters it killed over eleven thousand people washed away most of the roads and bridges in honduras and nicaragua said their economic development backed by twenty years funny thing happened in two thousand and four for the first time ever recorded a hurricane formed in the south atlantic and went south west made landfall at tory's brazil halfway down the coast between natal and the tip of south america the unique thing happened in two to those if i was an interesting year in other ways there were four category five hurricanes the never been more than two in one season before and of the six most powerful hurricanes ever three were in two thousand and five including hurricane katrina i want you to follow him up north to where greenland drops into the top of the atlantic like a cork in the top of a bottle holds enough water to raise the sea level by another sixteen feet and those are the small ones and nobody can predict when these ice sheets are going to melt but they are accelerating the flows in unexpected ways manhattan is an island in the north atlantic and not a very high one we learned last fall what a storm surge can do to two manhattan manhattan last longer than two over the male dives but not for the ration of a ninety nine year lease well continue north up off the top of your map to the arctic ocean the top of the globe the amount of arctic ice varies seasonally the month of winter ice has been declining steadily as long as people have been keeping records of it into those  seven the summer ice declined so drastically that people were predicting ice free arctic by the summer of two thousand and fifteen they recovered somewhat in the next few years but then when a decline again and last summer it was well below the two thousand and seven level the northwest passage for centuries impassable to explorers and it's been to first by a schedule cruise liner in a soul sailor stop thinking about the end of the century really bad things are going to happen while i'm still around to say i told  soul newspaper article summarized climate change by saying they used to hurricanes floods and drop this is the new normal they almost got it right except the new normal as there is no normal things are going to keep getting worse the storms bigger the floods deeper the drops longer until we do something about it in twenty eleven the united states experienced fourteen weather disasters costing a billion dollars more each they broke the old record nine in one year thinking about becoming famous budget forget it glacier and tell them about kilimanjaro covers a quarter of the area that it had a century ago question national park in montana used to have one hundred fifty glaciers now it is twenty five want to see him but to get on yours and go over there sugar was rationed in wartime britain and the british were desperate for sugar for their tea joe found a way to take advantage of the situation since you station alone at bletchley park had a peculiar status in the navy and navy parlance he was a detached unit excuse to drop by his desk and chat his handlers in washington told him to get an organization chart at bletchley park he tried the direct approach on this one he went to the project director at or travis and asked for an organization chart we don't have one was the reply shows that he didn't know where the tribes meant we don't have a chart or we don't have an organization before the war there was a young irish woman who worked for the british to work for the british foreign office since she was fluent in several european languages that they thought she might be useful at bletchley park and she was assigned there but in one thousand forty it was still hard for men to give real responsibility to a woman no matter how talented so she was made typos to the project director and later his personal assistant she never seen americans before except in movies so when they started showing up at bletchley park she was fascinated joe met her and recognized a potential confronted with a bright and attractive young woman who had access to all the secrets he was there together he did what any good spy would have done he said to  issue in a small way with the phrase the greatest generation just because it's in the singular there are multiple generations involved winning the war my grandparents owned and operated a dairy farm full time work for both of them and for ruth and anybody else who happen to be on the farm except me of course when the worst part of my grandfather was already retirement age but he took a job in a munitions factory a dozen miles from the farm he got up before dawn milked the cows go to the factory put in a shift drove home again and finished the farmer my grandmother of course put in similar hours on the farm during the depression many american families had small the gardens that they used to extend their meager budgets these more easily into victory gardens everybody owned a little dirt to support the war effort at its peak the victory garden movement produced forty percent of america's vegetables and that didn't win the war but it did make a difference your hybrid cars and your home conservation efforts are the victory gardens of climate change by themselves they won't solve the problem but they are an important part of the solution after the war my if you tried to ask joe about it he would divert the conversation with an amusing anecdote for example an american soldier was arrested running naked on the hallway of a london hotel the charge was being out of uniform his defense was the british really didn't like having american troops stationed there used to see through only three things wrong with the inks through overpaid oversexed and over here those were the days when ladies were girdles a british manufacturer made a girdle with an instruction label  said may be removed by a strong yank yanks or yanks are so unpopular that he changed the label no it read maybe removed by a strong  moscow it's at the letter to the ketchikan alaska muscovites are used to cold and i used to heat in two thousand and ten moscow set an all time high temperature record on july twenty third but that records broken on july twenty fourth and that record was broken on july twenty fifth in moscow continued to set you temperature records on july twenty six july twenty seven july twenty eight and july twenty nine wildfires rage to around the city peat bogs that have been drained for fuel burned the air in moscow was full of smoke and fumes until mid august the official russian position have been that climate change is a fraud but when president medvedev announced a state of emergency he said what's happening to our planet's climate right now needs to be a wake up call for all of us remember the old folks in oklahoma the summer before last they had thirty days in a row of temperatures over one hundred degrees but that's nothing compared to the wichita falls texas where they had one hundred days over one hundred degrees and last summer the heat moved to the u s east coast including washington d c if it didn't change the minds of some skeptics in congress maybe hurricane sandy will do you know what a tipping point is how many thought it was the percentage of the check that you need to leave as a tip ok the tipping point is the point where a process become self sustaining and no longer needs an outside force to drive it suppose for example your car breaks down and indeed to push it over hill to get get to the repair shop you get some friends together you push it up the hill when you get over the top you don't need to push any more that's a tipping point in fact you might want to jump in and slam on the brakes but you can't it's already rolling away faster than you can run there it's climate involves a number of processes that have a potential like that to keep themselves going even after we stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere the problem isn't just buildings falling down or alaskan natives who can't drive their off road vehicles from one village to another there's nothing under the permafrost that's released when it melts and methane is more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide russian researchers already seen methane bubbling out of bubbling out of the arctic ocean off the north coast everyone there is no longer any remedy when through want of foresight they are suffered to increase to such a height that there perceptible to everyone there is no longer any remedy when the greenland ice sheet is melted in the ocean levels risen by twenty three feet it will be way too late the greatest generation fought and won the second world war but they needed pearl harbor to awaken them to action if today's generation overcomes climate change they'll be even greater because they did it without a pearl harbor but if they fail it will be the generation that squandered mankind's last chance when i was a teenager in the  nuclear annihilation was the big threat t s eliot's poem was popular this is the way the world ends this is the way the world ends this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper in two thousand and c released another report they considered a range of scenarios from best case to worst case things are already worse than their worst case scenario and the rate we're putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the loss of p before the war the japanese naval commander admiral yamamoto had studied in the united states and then traveled here's a diplomat he warned his government don't get into a war with america their industrial potential will swamp us they've north is warning month five times the best rate hitler could hope to achieve that's how we won the war we swap them and that's what we need to do with climate change we should be making solar panels when turbans thermal installations title generators everything we know how to make just as fast as we can make it a thirty percent reduction by two thousand and thirty isn't nearly good enough we need to be shutting down the coal and oil plants just as fast as we can replace them but that is where the peril ends we need to make an effort on the scale of the second world war but we don't need to send young people overseas to die in battle did you ever have a nightmare where something awful was happening and you tried to scream but no sound came out that's what climate scientists are experiencing today part of the problem is that scientists are very good at screaming and t in five the national academy of sciences issued a statement they said climate change is real it is human caused it's dire and it's urgent that something be done about it how many of you have read that statement good very good how many knew it exists if you more i hope when you read a news report of an extreme weather event watch for the words climate change to really find them you need to supply that part yourself nessa's top climate scientist james hansen has written a book called storms of my grandchildren it's a curious mixture of concrete science with screams of frustration over the political resistance to doing anything about it well a told  several stories and it's time to start wrapping him up as you know america england and russia won the war defeated the axis powers f d r died of a stroke in april one thousand forty five when victory was in sight but not yet achieved yamamoto was killed in an american air raid made possible when a decoded japanese message revealed his travel plans poses above the war mourn their losses were otherwise satisfied with the outcome in time even germany and japan were happy of of american society brought about by the war effort launched several decades of american prosperity in one hundred forty five the united nations was formed in the hopes that at least in some cases talk c combat the parade every day for joe's safe return and he did return safely but the casualties of war take many forms but the end of the war joe would fall in love with the irish girl at bletchley park ruth was crushed when she recovered she took a job at the university and raised to two boys as a single mom she was the greatest of the greatest generation climate change well the oil interests managed to stave off action until several important climate processes were beyond control the biggest impact on humans was food supplies food became so scarce that only those with a lot of money could get it and then even scarcer until only those with a lot of guns could get it drop me dust bowls of corn and wheat farms no water for irrigation the rice growing areas of asia dried up the tiny creatures of the base of the ocean food chain died from alaska to bangladesh no more ocean fisheries simply bull cried out why did god let this happen others cried out why did our parents and grandparents let this happen around the globe billions of people did what people do in their homeland can't feed them the picked up their wives and the babies and their guns and they started walking mexico became a desert hundred million mexicans form crossed the border into california and texas finding no food there they kept walking many species went extinct only the most adaptable survived rats crows and humans and tropical diseases now this part really important and i want to make sure i get it right so i'm going to check my crystal ball no that's not what happened the people rose up there overthrew the oil interest they demanded an end to government by lobbyist technocrats replaced plutocrats people who actually wanted to solve the problems begin making the plans they recognized the central importance of sustainability they recognize that no it could only be achieved by the global community but they also saw the logical contradiction in using force to get cooperation on sustainability so america decided lead by example american stop saying only do it if they do it and did it the rest of the world seen as sustainability could be done seeing that it was good and seeing how to do it soo in time even saudi arabia was happy and now my message to you is make it so my name is scott ritter and former weapons inspector for the united nations special commission the organization created by the security council to conduct weapons inspections in iraq for the purpose of disarming iraq and being one of the few people that's actually been to iraq it's actually questioning the current u s policy tell us what your assessment is iraq's weapons capabilities currently well i think we have to start with what we know and that goes back to december one thousand nine hundred eight when inspectors were last in iraq we know that as of december one thousand nine hundred eight we had accounted for ninety five percent of iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities this is fundamentally disarmed iraq that ninety five percent of their capabilities were accounted for and disposed of and that this includes one hundred percent of the factories used by react to produce chemical weapons biological weapons nuclear weapons and long range ballistic missiles all the associated production equipment with those factories in the vast majority of the product produced by these factories now there is some element of the over of what iraq had that's unaccounted for we don't know what the final disposition of it is but we can mitigate the monitoring program in the history of arms control blanketing the totality of iraq's industrial infrastructure with no notice inspections remote cameras sophisticated sensors and never once did we detect had significant dual use capability that is production equipment that was used for legitimate civilian purposes that could be modified or adapted to produce weapons of mass destruction but this isn't a problem so long as you have inspectors in place in country monitoring the use of the equipment but as i said in one thousand nine hundred eighty if you remove inspectors from the pitcher or record reconstitute significant aspects of the programs within a period of six months well inspectors been gone for nearly four years so there is a real potential for iraq to have rebuilt its weapons programs and it's of grave concern hence the absolute requirement to get weapons inspectors back to iraq but you know we should be careful in when people allegations they tend to point back to one thousand nine hundred ninety two and say record the programs then therefore they have them out no we disarmed iraq they didn't have the programs in one thousand nine hundred eight when the inspectors left so for iraq to have weapons today they would have had to reconstitute because well there's evidence circumstantial evidence rhetorical evidence there's a lot of evidence but it's not substantial fact there's been no factual evidence brought forward that makes that case  that's why congress has select oversight committees the senate select intelligence committee the house intelligence oversight committees it's incumbent upon the president to share such sense of sensitive information with these oversight committees to date no such intelligence has been shared with them we likewise maintain classified relationships with a number of countries our allies nato allies etc i think it speaks volumes when we say that we are standing alone on this issue because if we had this kind of substantive fact of the sensitive information that can't be shared to the general public because of its great sensitivity we would certainly share it with our allies with whom we have classified information sharing relationships and we would be standing alone because trust me if we could make a case that iraq has these weapons the world would support tough action against iraq the fact that we're standing alone speaks volumes for you know the reality that this information doesn't exist but let's take this another step you know history is replete with examples where the president ited states has recognized the absolute requirement to justify the american people the potential use of american military force hence in the cuban missile crisis john f kennedy showed the american public the u two photographs they clearly demonstrated russian missiles in cuba hence when we had the russian shooting down a korean administration released the transcripts of the intercepted conversations from the russian pilot to the ground control station showing that the pilot was under orders to shoot the airplane down hence when we pharmaceutical plant in downtown khartoum and take a soil sample and that sample revealed the presence of chemical degradation by products that could be affiliated with a vieques nerve agent so there's a history of the presidency sharing sensitive intelligence information to make the case for war we are talking about going to war against iraq we're talking about war that is justified by the threat posed by iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the president claims to have you know knowledge of the existence of these weapons and it's incumbent upon the president to share how he knows this with the american public so we can support him in his war can you give us this is iraq's weapons capabilities in comparison to its neighbors in the region well as of one thousand nine hundred eight of course erected have any weapons capability in terms of weapons of mass destruction because we fundamentally disarm them you know let's let's let's go around the block here let's start with iran iran has long range ballistic missile capabilities that can go up to two thousand kilometers that's significant iran is seeking to develop a nuclear weapon significant good reason to believe that iran has biological weapons and we know iran has chemical weapons in large quantities so iran has significant weapons of mass destruction saudi arabia saudi arabia has chinese made chinese made intermediate nuclear chinese made intermediate range missiles there's some discussion that the chinese may have provided nuclear weapons for these for these for these missiles under chinese control but provides a strategic turns to the israeli nuclear capability israel themselves as over two hundred thermo nuclear devices syria has missiles tipped with chemical weapons probably has biological though iraq was in a dangerous neighborhood full of weapons of mass destruction you know and you iraq used to have you know programs of a similar nature chemical biological nuclear and long range ballistic missile these have been eliminated we don't know what their final disposition is because inspectors have been there for years but if inspectors go back in then these programs will be certified as being eliminated and that means that iraq will not have any weapons while they live in their new neighborhood full of weapons currently the administration is maneuvering to strengthen the u n resolutions on inspection do you feel that that's necessary to the previous resolutions strong enough to make your job well i think i've made it clear that we we achieved a fundamental level of disarmament ninety five percent and that was in the old resolutions so absolutely the existing resolutions provided more than enough means to disarm iraq with the put the current resolution being proposed in the security council into perspective it's not about disarming iraq it's about going to war with iraq the curve a solution puts preconditions for the return of inspectors that are so severe deliberately so severe that iraq will never accept them if iraq doesn't accept them the united states the truth is weapons inspectors were ordered out by the united states of america two days before the begin a bombing campaign that was triggered by american manipulation of the inspection process to provoke a confrontation with iraq and then used intelligence information gathered by weapons inspectors to target saddam hussein in a manner which was outside the framework of the mandate to disarm iraq support by the security council all this was done without security council permission so no iraq didn't kick the inspectors out the united states ordered them out and then the united states corrupted inspection process by using it in a manner which was had nothing do with disarming reckon everything to do with going after saddam hussein and iraq he said because the inspection process has been so know the problem is that from the very beginning the united states isn't playing around with weapons inspections inspections were never intended to disarm iraq they were intended to provide a justification for the continuation of economic sanctions that would contain iraq destabilize iraq  you know the the law support by the security council states if iraq is found to be in compliance with its obligation to disarm economic sanctions will be lifted and usually one thousand nine hundred one secular state changed baker then secretary of state james baker stated that even if iraq complies with its obligation to disarm we won't lift sanctions until which time saddam hussein is removed from power america's policy of regime removal has always trying to disarm it therefore the united states has always manipulated the disarmament work to achieve to facilitate its policy of regime remov give us a sense of the amount of weapons of mass destruction were destroyed by u n weapons inspectors u s bombing campaigns well the u s bombing campaigns during operation desert storm were extensive they targeted a number of iraq's production facilities that were related to weapons of mass destruction in particular a ballistic missile chemical to a lesser extent nuclear and we destroyed some weapons artillery shells rocket shells etc but at the end of the day when inspectors came in what we found is that a lot of the bombing was actually ineffective and much of what iraq had in terms of weapons of mass destruction and the production base for weapons of mass destruction was still intact and we eliminated so the weapons inspection process was of far more effective on several orders of magnitude than in military action in terms of getting rid of iraq's weapons of mass destruction and yet i think it would be just occasion for the us using it to reaction against iraq is that through this military action we will somehow then destroy those weapons of mass destruction that they  holding us i think with the us the saying is through this military action we will remove saddam hussein from power and thereby able to ensure that all of iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be declared to the weapons inspectors they view the impediment of completing the process of disarming iraq as being saddam hussein just this week there was an article by a i believe one of the former swedish u n weapons inspectors saying that there was a lot of a lot more problems on the entire teams that were in there than i think it been  born to you he was saying for instance that it would be difficult for someone to go and make extra copies of particular document the people would when they were supposed to return to the embassies that night they would some of them would did you see examples of that when you were working there oh yeah you know we found a constant struggle everybody's talked about the battle of will between the weapons inspectors and in iraq and truly there was erected want to be disarmed and  we had a job of disarming them and there was this in arresting conflict at the world is aware of but there was another conflict the world i'm not aware of and there's the battle of wills between the inspectors and government seeking to use the weapons inspection process as a vehicle to gain insight into iraq which had nothing to do with disarming iraq i e spying on iraq and there was a constant struggle to prevent you know documents from being copied from information  which was collected by inspection teams to be passed to our governments without the approval of the weapons inspectors you know is a constant struggle from the very been about the methodology you would use for detecting different weapons systems that you would want to find and i think first of all we have to make it clear that  with one exception in the summer of one thousand nine hundred one the weapons inspectors never found a single weapon in iraq just didn't happen the concept of us kicking down the door and well biological weapons never happened well we decided iraq how did that occur the same way a police department solves a crime you know very rarely do the cops go out into the woods and kick the dirt over and there's the body what happens is the cops compel criminal to confess the crime and lead them to the body and that's what we did with the iraqis through the process of our investigations we put pressure on the iraqis we collected data we collected you know evidence and  confronted the iraqis with this evidence we interrogated the iraqis over and over and over again and highlighted the inconsistency is in their stories and in the end compelled them to confess confess a crime that they had a weapons program and then to leave us to the bodies so that we could account for them and dispose of them and it's this way that we disarmed iraq you know zoos a very difficult job it took a lot of time  you know in my case every inspection team that i led into i reckon there were many regionally and initiated only after two to six months worth of research intelligence work travelling around the world gathering data  determining where we want to go into iraq and why we want to go there and what we're looking for in the gathering the requisite expertise you know do we need certain kind of sensors etc and the idea was to collect forensic data  put pressure on the iraqis you know appear to close in on something that might be hidden and then compel the iraqis to confess a crime and take us to where the material is that we're looking for very successful and then either you or the iraqis would then destroy the material yeah the idea would be well sometimes it's already been destroyed a lot of the stuff the iraqis have blown up and just refused to tell us about it and then we would prove its existence and they would take us to the dead body so we could click it off and other times when we found it then generally what occurred is that it was destroyed by the iraqis under our supervision in accordance with our criteria so do you feel that iraq is currently an immediate threat to the united states i believe i recognize the potential to be a threat to international peace and security if it reconstitute its weapons programs this is what international law says it's as i reckon to have these weapons because these weapons in the hands of a wreck represent a threat to international peace and security so by definition of international law for iraq seeks to require it they would be a threat and we need to deal with them  terms of iraq represent a threat to the national security united states to the region at this point in time no i don't see any evidence of that you know when it is a serious price that's really a determination for the security council remember if you're going to speak of respecting international law you have to respect the fact that that the the answer of what the final accounting will be  left up to the security council if it was my vote i'd say military action decisive but it's not my vote it's the council's vote and the other thing is you i think you have an obligation at least i would i would hope the council would have an obligation to consider before going to war every alternative short of war to resolve this problem just because iraq obstructs or is non cooperative or non compliant doesn't automatically mean we're going to war it means iraq needs to be held accountable how they get you know what that methodology is for you know accountability that's the progress of the security council and you feel that and till there was evidence of an imminent threat to us or other members of the world that it would be reasonable to continue pursuing perhaps diplomatic means or whatever to accomplish your goals  yeah i think that diplomatic engagement or other nonviolent means of resolving this situation should be pursued extensively until which time either we have a solution or we're confronted with the fact that the only solution that will work is military force i want to jump ship it could based on an interview done with counter spent one of the things that the u s brings up is that saddam gassed his own people the kurds and yet there is at least one particular incident in there that i believe the still somewhat hazy as to whether iraq actually gassed specific village an nothing well i think the village in question is whole object which is most and more often or most often presented is the most graphic example of iraq's use of chemical weapons against its own population i don't think there's any doubt that iraqi used chemical weapons and who object the question is who killed the kurds and there's good reason to believe that the actual gas munitions that killed the kurds were fired by the iranians not by the iraqis says that least was the fruit a fruit like a roma this is something that's more likely to be found in a cyanide based chemical agent which the iranians use as opposed to you know the more  odorless nerve agent which would have been used by iraq so i think that there's you know good reason to believe that the kurds were killed by iranian munitions but having said that iraq still used chemical weapons against its own population so we shouldn't try in sight this is an example that exonerates iraq know they there is no exonerating this regime they used chemical weapons they used them against the kurds they used them against the iranians it's a statement of fact and should be considered when talking about you know how we're going to hold saddam hussein accountable to the rule of law what would be your proposal if you were in charge of things or the solution we're facing right now i think we need to recognize a couple things that the regime removal is the policy of the united states too much political capital has been committed to the concept of regime rule to walk away from it disarm it is the policy of the international community so we have to implement disarmament right now disarmament and regime removal are linked by the united states so you're not going to achieve disarmament it's it's it's it's an inherently flawed policy process i would the dealing the tube also sanctions we need to recognize that the sanctions hurt the innocent iraqi people and don't target saddam hussein so what i would propose is to put weapons inspectors back into iraq iraq has said it it's agreed to be held accountable to the rule of law i would deal link sanctions from inspections and so sanctions are lifted inspectors are in if you don't comply with the inspectors it's not a matter of are imposing sanctions it's a matter of us coming in and blowing you off the face of the earth so there's your reason to comply but then i would also recognize that the weapons inspection process if iraqis found to be in compliance means that saddam hussein still continues to exist as the leader we need to find a way to target so i think president bush hit it on the head when he spoke before the general assembly and i nations  criminal he's committed crimes against humanity then mr president indict saddam hussein as a criminal as somebody who's committed crimes against humanity indict his senior leadership and then re impose economic sanctions on iraq but this time link the lifting of sanctions in particular iraq's ability to sell oil to the iraqi government turning saddam hussein over to the international court of justice to be held accountable for the crimes he's committed i believe that this kind of pressure could result in saddam hussein being removed from power within a period of six months and it's going to be done without having to resort to military action