INTERVIEW WITH VICE PRESIDENT RICHARD CHENEY

NBC NEWS' Meet the Press
Interview by Tim Russert

Washington, D.C.

19 May 2002

Excerpts

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MR. RUSSERT: The vice president of Iraq said yesterday that he expected the United States to attack Iraq regardless of whether or not they allowed U.N. inspectors.                

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, the issue with Iraq isn’t inspectors. That’s just a piece of the equation. The inspectors are a means to allow the international community to assure itself that Iraq has come into compliance with U.N. Resolution 687. Specifically they agreed to give up their weapons of mass destruction, to allow international supervision to see that it had all been dismantled and destroyed. They’ve never done that. They kicked the inspectors out so that the world doesn’t know what they’ve got.

My concern is that we’ll see an agreement to allow inspectors back in but they’ll be constrained. They’ll be limited. They won’t have the size or the right of the penetration that’s necessary to be confident that this guy has not developed nuclear weapons or developing biological and chemical agents. We know he’s got chemicals and biological and we know he’s working on nuclear.                

MR. RUSSERT: If we overthrow Saddam Hussein, what, who do we get? Could it be worse?                

VICE PRES. CHENEY: One scenario by which it would be worse is if we do nothing and one of his sons succeeds him. He’s no prize, but his offspring leave a lot to be desired. He’s got one son who beat Saddam’s personal valet to death with his bare hands back in the 1980s. This is not—there’s no reason to be optimistic about the succession in Iraq if the outside world allows Saddam to continue doing what he’s doing.  

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