I thought he was good (of course) but then I like a calm straightforward statement like, "Well, I believe in the old admonition if you're the captain of the ship and the ship goes aground, you're responsible."
He's relatively soft-spoken, so I can see how people underestimate him. I think he's been saying such important things, and saying them for months and years, about this administration's deceptive practices, that I can't figure out why when Dean and Kerry finally say the same things it's suddenly Big News.
CNN Inside Politics Interview with Bob Graham CROWLEY: Well, Senator, as you know, the president scores fairly high among the public for being trustworthy and honest. This, obviously, is an attempt to say, Wait a second. But when you say misleading and his administration is misleading, aren't we talking about the president? And is this an actual accusation from Democrats, yourself included, that the president deliberately lied? I mean, isn't that what everybody is sort of dancing around?
GRAHAM: Well, I believe in the old admonition if you're the captain of the ship and the ship goes aground, you're responsible.
The administration, President Bush appointed all of the key people who are running our intelligence agencies. He appointed the people in the Department of Defense and the Department of State which reviewed the information. And in spite of all that, in his State of the State Union -- message, he had a statement that was clearly untrue. And that is that Niger had supplied nuclear materials to Iraq.
CROWLEY: Senator, let me ask you on the general question of weapons of mass destruction, I want to -- we found something that you said in December on the CBS program, and I want you to put it in context for me. As we all know, Bush's move into Iraq, you have been opposed to and voted against.
Here's what you said in December. "We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons for mass destruction.
How does that square with saying, Look, you know, the president, you know, made this up?
GRAHAM: Well, that statement was based on the briefings that we had had just a few weeks earlier by the CIA and other intelligence agencies in which they made such a case. Apparently we were not getting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in terms of what they knew or what they knew was dramatically at variance with the facts.
CROWLEY: So you were misled as well as the president?
GRAHAM: Yes. And I think the other members of Congress who heard what we had every right to assume was an accurate, balanced, taking into account all the information that which supported weapons of mass destruction and that which contradicted that, that we were led to believe that there was compelling evidence to believe that there were such weapons in Iraq.
(more)
Candy was certainly nice to him, heh. She smiled a lot. Is she that kind of interviewer?
On edit: Oh, and I should add, for those who may not know, that
Graham voted against the resolution for war with Iraq because he felt it was a diversion from the real issue of terrorism. His statement about WMD's should be viewed in that context.
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