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Cronkite: Questions not being asked over Iraq
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As the debate in Congress continues over the Bush administration's position on Iraq, one critic of the president's policy is a man who has been called the most trusted man in America, the legendary CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite. A journalist for more than a half-century, Cronkite saw war up close as a battlefield correspondent during World War II and the Vietnam War. This week, he added his name to an advertisement questioning the administration's moves on Iraq. He spoke with CNN Anchor Wolf Blitzer from New York. BLITZER: Walter Cronkite, thanks for joining us. Let's get right to the issue at hand. Your decision to sign that ad that appeared in The New York Times raising questions about a possible U.S. war with Iraq. Why did you sign it? CRONKITE: I signed it, Wolf, because I feel that we probably have not faced a crisis like this in our history, certainly not in our recent history. And it is most important that people express themselves about this matter. Let Congress know that what their feelings are about it. And then Congress should stand up and have the courage to ask the questions. This article by Common Cause, this ad, does not urge a course of action precisely. It suggests some of the questions that should be asked to determine that course. And this is what we are missing because, perhaps, it's an election year, because of a lot of other complications. It appears that our congressmen, particularly our senators, where this debate should be taking place, it seems to me, are not standing up and asking these important questions. BLITZER: What is the most important question, in your mind, that they should be asking the president? CRONKITE: Well, the most important one right now is, What is the rush? Since the president is urging that action be taken right away, the question really is, Don't we have time to really think this thing over? And talk it over. We all know that there is a danger, certainly, in Iraq, of these horrible weapons. That we don't doubt that saying they've certainly made some of them. How many does he have? That's what we really need to know. How serious is the threat? Apparently the administration has information to that degree that it claims is part of its intelligence that it cannot reveal to the people. It seems to me ... in a question as important as this one, whether we go to war, for heaven sakes, we should be entitled to some information about just what it is that the administration knows that it has not shared with us. BLITZER: As you know, there's a very famous quote from LBJ, President Johnson, in 1968, who said this upon your return from doing some reporting in Vietnam. He said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." Has President Bush right now lost Cronkite? CRONKITE: No, I wouldn't say that he's lost Cronkite. And I wouldn't suggest at all that I have that kind of power that Johnson seemed to think I had at that moment. After all at that moment President Johnson himself was already making the decision to get out of the war, and I just put one more little needle on the haystack, I think. But right now, what I'm urging in allegiance here with the Common Cause, and elsewhere, is that we get the question settled now. For instance, there are many things hanging that bother me, and a lot of other people. I hear this all the time. We read it in the papers all the time, from an occasional member of Congress and certainly from columnists and other pundits. The question, I think, a primary question is in the resolution that the president wants Congress to pass, which would give him the right to go to war at any time he wants, at his own volition and nobody else's. This resolution gives him that right, right on his desk. It's there. And all he's got to do is say, "Send in the troops." That doesn't seem to me to be constitutional. And the eighth section of [Article I of] the Constitution says that Congress shall [have the power to] declare war. It seems to me that at the moment that it's necessary to send the troops, that Congress should be at that time advised again and given the opportunity. BLITZER: So you want a formal declaration of war, which of course ... wasn't passed before the first Gulf War 11 years ago, but that's a debate, obviously, for another time. Walter Cronkite, let me read to you an e-mail we got from Jim in California on a sensitive subject, one that you're very familiar with, historically speaking. He writes this: "I am shocked to hear our government promote the assassination of the head of state -- no matter how repugnant he or she may be." [He is] referring to comments from Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, yesterday [Tuesday] raising the possibility that one bullet could end this -- could end this crisis with Saddam Hussein right now. What's your sense of that? CRONKITE: I think it was a boo-boo by our spokesman. ... It was almost kind of light rhetoric, it seemed to me, rather than a statement of our national policy. But that is one of the questions that the Common Cause didn't have the opportunity to ask in this ad today [and] should be asked now: Is this the policy of the United States? The whole situation here, Wolf, is that Congress has to get out of its chair and begin to ask the questions of the president of the United States and his administration as to what is going on. What are we really doing? What is the administration really thinking? This is so vital to us. We need these answers. I think that in this case Congress should be asking the president today, Is this your policy? And if it is your policy, the Congress should debate it. It should not be the policy, I think, personally, but that is not whether I like it or not. It's a question of such importance that it should be debated, not just automatically declared by an administration ... without any consent of Congress at all. BLITZER: Walter Cronkite speaking out as he always does, forcefully and articulately.
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