CNN Live Saturday

A new ad running Sunday in “The New York Times” lists quotes of the administration officials that the ad’s backers say are misleading at best. Joining us live from our bureau in Washington to talk about this are two men with two very different points of view, Cliff May is with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the former communications director for the Republican National Committee, and Mort Halperin is the director of the Open Society Policy Center.

Gentlemen, did the senator from California have a point? Mr. Halperin?

MORT HALPERIN, DIRECTOR, OPEN SOCIETY POLICY CENTER: I think so. I mean, there is a tendency which we see here of exaggerating the truth, of reporting things as certain which are very conjectural, as we know was the case with the alleged attempts to buy uranium. And what we’re saying is there needs to be a full independent investigation by an independent commission so that the American people know the full truth about what the government knew, and what it didn’t know and what it had doubts about, and what information it gave to the public and Congress in order to justify imminent war.

That’s the issue. It’s not whether Saddam was an evil man, it’s not whether that was a terrible regime, it’s not whether we needed to contain it and eventually try to remove him from office. The issue was, was there sufficient evidence to justify going to war then, without the U.N., without our major allies, and that’s where we think the issue of what we knew and how much certainty we should have had about it needs to be fully explored.

KOPPEL: Cliff May, go ahead.

CLIFF MAY, FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: Yes. I think the senator did have a point, but I think ironically, it is this ad that is mostly misleading.

President Clinton kind of summed this up pretty well earlier this week. He said, look, British intelligent had one view, American intelligence had another view, as regards Niger yellowcake uranium, and the president went with the more pessimistic British view. That happens, that’s really all there was to it. It’s instructive that every Democratic presidential candidate who voted in favor of military intervention in Iraq says he would vote in favor of it today, that the dispute over the yellowcake wouldn’t change his mind whatsoever.

If Mort is trying to convince people that this war was not a just war, that the world would be a better place if Saddam Hussein was still in power, I think he’s going to fail. If he’s just trying to take a partisan shot at President Bush, he’s got every right to do that. But at the same time, I think it’s playing politics. It’s playing politics with people’s lives. And that’s a bad idea.

HALPERIN: It’s clear what I said, and I’m not saying either of those things. I’m not saying this was not a just war, I am not saying this was not an evil regime.

MAY: It was a just war.

HALPERIN: I am saying — it was a just war.

MAY: You agree, and you’re glad we did this?

HALPERIN: I would have rather that we waited.

MAY: You didn’t want to do this, you think we shouldn’t have done this.

HALPERIN: … until we had the full support of the American people and full support of the international community based on the facts.

MAY: Mort, Mort, Mort, Mort…

KOPPEL: Let’s let one person speak at a time, how about that?

MAY: It was about 70 percent of the American people in favor of it.

HALPERIN: Because they were told things with certainty that we now know were very, very doubtful. It’s not just the uranium.

MAY: No, no, then why did — Mort…

HALPERIN: It’s everything else.

MAY: Then why is there not one Democratic presidential candidate who was in favor of it that has changed their mind?

HALPERIN: Because people who vote for something do not want to now admit they made a mistake.

MAY: So the presidential candidates, the Democrats are all lying?

HALPERIN: I’m not here to defend the presidential candidates. I’m here to say the American people are entitled to know what facts were, what the CIA told the president.

MAY: Let me tell you…

KOPPEL: Mr. Halperin, let me ask you a question, if I could, about the ads themselves. What is the purpose? I think we all have sort of a sense as to you’re trying to kind of lay the groundwork for the beginning of the presidential campaign season.

HALPERIN: No, we’re not trying to do that at all. What we’re trying to do is support the effort in the Congress, that Congressman Waxman and others have led, to say that there needs to be an independent commission, like the commission that now is studying 9/11, to look at precisely what information was available to the government, what the intelligence agencies thought they knew for certain, what they thought there was very real doubts about, and how the decisions were made to tell the American people that we knew for sure that there was uranium, it was not only in the speech, it was in the report to the Congress, that we knew those aluminum tubes were only for nuclear weapons when people in the intelligence community were saying the opposite.

KOPPEL: OK. Let’s let Cliff May have a final comment.

MAY: Let’s keep this very simple. The ad distorts what we did know about weapons of mass destruction. The national intelligence estimate, which is what — the consensus view of the intelligence community in the United States agreed that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons. In fact, he used them. Look up Halabjah on Google, on the Web and you’ll see the victims of chemical weapons.

He had biological weapons, he admitted it, but never turned them over to the U.N., and everyone agrees, the national intelligence estimate agrees, that he was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program. To do that, he needed more uranium. Where do you get that? Well, Africa is a likely place. Saddam Hussein was a butcher, it’s worse than we thought. He was a threat to us, we were right to do this, and I don’t think Mort’s going to succeed in convincing Americans to have buyer’s remorse over this, and I do think the politics of this is all too obvious.

KOPPEL: Cliff May, Mort Halperin, I thank you both for joining us.