Imus and Congressman Harold Ford, JR. (D) TN talk about the war in Iraq.Congressman Harold Ford, Jr.: "You've asked me on the show a few times about the evidence to go to war, and I've made clear all along..."
Imus: "Do you think the Vice President lied?"
Ford: "Don't know. I..."
Imus: "You think it's possible that he lied?"
Ford: "I don't think there's any doubt it's possible. I know this, I don't think he lied prior to, I don't know if he lied prior to the war. I do know that since evidence has surfaced that they didn't shoot straight with the American people, didn't share everything with the Congress, I think he's not told the truth about two things. Number one, he indicated that he did not say early on that this is the first certainty that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, or he had reconstituted his weapons program. He said he didn't say it, and once they presented him with his own words on Tim Russert's show, he came back to say, 'Well what I meant to say was x, y and z.' Two, the Vice President indicated that Democrats were completely, that we've lost our memory. And that we, because we saw the same thing the President did. I mean that's just not true. The President of the United States sees something very different than what Democrats see, what Republicans in the House see. That's not a partisan thing. Congress and the President see different things when it comes to his daily briefing, so I don't think he has been honest, totally honest about that. I don't believe the President would take a country to war without believing that the reasons we were going were justified. But it's clear now that the main reason for war, possession of weapons of mass destruction, that wasn't necessarily true."
Imus: "The link to Al-Qaeda."
Ford: "Exactly, the link to Al-Qaeda, and they knew, it appears that they had evidence suggesting that was not true early on, and they didn't present that to the country. The President owes us an explanation if nothing else on whether or not he received information that Al-Qaeda and Iraq had no relationship. And if he did receive that information, why did he tell us that they did have a relationship? He at least owes us at a minimum some kind of explanation on that."
More: Watch the interview and read more of the transcript here!
