CNN American Morning with Paula Zahn - Interview

SHOW: CNN AMERICAN MORNING WITH PAULA ZAHN 07:00

HEADLINE: Interview With Senator Ted Kennedy

GUESTS: Ted Kennedy

BYLINE: Paula Zahn

BODY:
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: With the possibility of war seeming ever closer, we're look ahead to what post-war Iraq will be like, and how deep and how costly America's commitment might be.

Senator Ted Kennedy will be making a major speech to religious leaders a little bit later on this morning, outlining his concern about war and its aftermath.

He joins us now from Washington—Senator Kennedy, welcome. Good to see you again.

SEN. TED KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Morning. Morning. Good.

ZAHN: First off, I wanted you to respond to a little bit of what White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer had to say about the possibility of war.

He says—quote—"Iraq is not cooperating. Despite whatever limited head fakes Iraq has engaged in, they come to—or continue to fundamentally not disarm."

And he pointed to questions of where is the nerve gas, where are the nerve agents, where is the anthrax? Do you share his concern?

KENNEDY: Well, I think Americans are very much divided on going to war, and there is no question in my mind that there is a rush to war by the administration at the present time.

It does seem to me that as long as the inspectors are making progress, we should support that effort. That has the support of the international community. We can make further progress with the inspectors, and then if we are unable to make the progress, we will have the international community behind us in disarming Saddam Hussein, and whatever steps that we take in the future is obviously going to be enhanced because we do have the international community.

What I'm concerned about—a sort of go it alone, my way or the highway foreign policy of this administration with regards to Iraq, is that it is going to inflame the Middle East. We're squandering the good will that we have built up after 9/11, and this is going to—and our principal focus and attention today ought to be what is happening in North Korea.

North Korea has produced nuclear weapons. It has a missile that can reach the United States. We ought to be talking to a North Korea that has nuclear weapons rather than going to war with Iraq that does not.

ZAHN: Can I come back to the original point you were making, which is your faith in containment, and I want to quickly put up on the screen an editorial that appeared in the "Washington Post," and they make the point—quote—"Inspectors traipsed through Iraq for seven years as Baghdad defied or ignored one Security Council resolution after the next. The most dangerous chemical and biological weapons were not discovered for four years, and then only with the help of a defector. After that, Iraq stepped up its concealment operation, leaving thousands of tons of chemical and biological materiel and dozens of missiles missing."

Why do you believe containment has worked, or...

(CROSSTALK)

KENNEDY: Well...

ZAHN: ... is working—you think is working now?

KENNEDY: First of all, no one—the administration was against inspections. No one said inspections are going to be easy. The inspections are making some progress. And quite frankly, the reason they are making the progress is because we have the forces, the military forces in the area. I'm strongly in favor of continuing the inspections as long as they make progress, and we ought to keep our military forces there as well. That is going to be a lot cheaper than going to war, both in terms of cost and in terms of blood. That's what the policy ought to be.

Instead, we are rushing to war with all the dangers that this has in terms of inflaming the Middle East. Our principal security issues today still are very much as they were described by President Bush and Mr. Tenet, the head of the CIA, and Mr. Mueller, the head of the FBI some time ago, and that's al Qaeda. They are still the principal threat to the United States and the United States' security.

And secondly, we have a changed situation on the Korean peninsula with the North Koreans now, in a very bellicose and threatening way, they can produce the nuclear weapons glade plutonium, which would be an enormous danger in terms of proliferation issues. They pose a much greater threat to the security of the United States. We should be following what our allies say in that part of the world, all of our allies in South Korea and Japan say that we should talk to the North Koreans, even some of those closest advisers of President Bush, Mr. Armitage, former Ambassador Lily (ph), Brent Scowcroft, who was an adviser to the first President Bush, all have said that we should be talking to North Korea.

That poses a greater threat to the imminent security of the interests of the United States and our allies, I believe, than does today, does Iraq. And yet we are going full bent towards war in the Middle East.

ZAHN: Finally, sir, and my producers are going to very mad at me if I don't do this quickly, do you concede that the Iraqis have routinely lied to inspectors, though, during this inspection process?

KENNEDY: I don't question that they haven't cooperate completely, and that they have misled the inspectors. On the one hand, that is certainly true, but we have made progress, and we ought to continue that progress. That has—we ought to continue as long as we are making progress. That is the issue.

The issue is, should we continue to try and make progress through the inspectors, or should we rush to war. My sense is that we ought to continue to make progress as long as we can, bring our allies, the Western world with us on the road to disarm Saddam Hussein.

If that is not going to be effective, we will have the world community with us. Today, we are seeing that the world community in too many instances is abandoning our rush to war.

ZAHN: Final question for you. It has to do with Medicare and the overhauling of that program, as well as some of the things the president is going to talk about today when it comes to prescription drug benefits, just a 15 second thought on what is right about the president's plan, what might be missing?

(CROSSTALK)

KENNEDY: This is the—this is the wrong prescription for our senior citizens. Our senior citizens should not be required to give up their family doctor to qualify for the president's prescription drug program. This president relies on HMOs. HMOs are part of the problem, not the part of the solution. That is what this administration doesn't understand. Democrats are committed to a good prescription drug program that is tied to the Medicare system. We have good hospitalization for our seniors, we have good attention to their doctor's needs, now we should have the third leg of that school, prescription drugs. That's the way to go. No ifs ands or buts.

ZAHN: And the debate will continue. Senator Ted Kennedy. Thank you very much for dropping by, appreciate your spending a little time with us this morning.