Rockefeller: 'We are a much less safe country today'

Posted by David DeGraw at 1:48 PM on September 10, 2006.

Senator John Rockefeller, head Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, says that Bush 'deliberately manipulated' the American public on Iraq intelligence and because of Iraq 'we are a much less safe country today.'

Following the release of the devastating new Senate intelligence report, Rockefeller gave an interview to CBS News.

Video to the right -->>

For those of you who haven't heard about the report yet:

"A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.

Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda's overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said."

In response to these findings, Rockefeller came out strongly against the Bush administration's deliberate manipulation of public opinion in the run up to the Iraq war:

"The absolute cynical manipulation, deliberately cynical manipulation, to shape American public opinion and 69 percent of the people, at that time, it worked, they said 'we want to go to war.' Including me. The difference is after I began to learn about some of that intelligence I went down to the Senate floor and I said 'my vote was wrong.'"

When asked if the world would be better off if Saddam was still in control of Iraq, Rockefeller responds:

"Yes. Yes. [Saddam] wasn't going to attack us. He would've been isolated there. He would have been in control of that country but we wouldn't have depleted our resources preventing us from prosecuting a war on terror, which is what this is all about…. Because of Iraq we are a much less safe country today."

Rockefeller ends this clip by saying:

"I am profoundly shaken that this could happen in America…. I am outrage morally, because I do know a great deal more than I can tell you. I believe that they deliberately led the American people to war because they wanted to do that."

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David DeGraw is AlterNet's video blogger.