IBC
07-10-2007, 12:00 PM
Tell me again how there were WMD's in Iraq?
Published on Monday, July 9, 2007 by the Denver Post
Rove Faces Cynics in Aspen
by Troy Hooper
ASPEN, Colo. - A polarizing figure, presidential adviser Karl Rove is accustomed to criticism. He is also used to getting laughs. Speaking in liberal Aspen at the annual Aspen Ideas Festival, Rove encountered his share of cynics.
But Rove expressed no regret about the widely unpopular war in Iraq.
0709 04“I make no apologies,” Rove said when an audience member asked how personally responsible he felt for the war. “It was the right thing to do. The world is better off with (Saddam Hussein) gone. We all thought he had weapons of mass destruction. The whole world did. He didn’t. …
“In the aftermath of the removal of the regime, al-Qaeda decided to make its stand in Iraq. And we have got to, in my opinion, fight ‘em and beat ‘em there; otherwise we are going to face them somewhere else.”
Conducting an onstage interview, Aspen Institute president and chief executive Walter Isaacson asked whether the Bush administration would withdraw troops next year.
“We will be redefining the mission because the goal of the surge was to get us to a place where we could redefine the mission,” said Rove, who would not commit to a timetable for a withdrawal or troop numbers.
Rove was also grilled about his role in the CIA leak case involving Valerie Plame, who is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson - an Iraq war critic.
“My contribution to this was to say to a reporter, which is a lesson about talking to reporters, the words ‘I heard that too,”‘ he said about Plame’s identity as a secret U.S. agent.
Last week, President Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who had been convicted of obstructing justice in the Plame case.
Another member of the audience asked Rove about the controversial detention camp the United States keeps in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“The president would like to close Gitmo,” said Rove, who also declined to give a timetable for the camp’s closure, saying it is holding “bad people” who will have to be detained elsewhere.
He downplayed the poor treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo that has been widely publicized.
“Our principal health problem down there is gain of weight, we feed them so well,” he said as many in the audience shook their heads and groaned in unison.
Rove acknowledged the tough times he receives in Aspen.
He told a story about a man who scowled at him and yelled, “Go home!”
“I am!” Rove said he shot back.
Rove was born in Denver and spent part of his childhood in Arvada and Golden. His father was a geologist at the Colorado School of Mines.
Published on Monday, July 9, 2007 by the Denver Post
Rove Faces Cynics in Aspen
by Troy Hooper
ASPEN, Colo. - A polarizing figure, presidential adviser Karl Rove is accustomed to criticism. He is also used to getting laughs. Speaking in liberal Aspen at the annual Aspen Ideas Festival, Rove encountered his share of cynics.
But Rove expressed no regret about the widely unpopular war in Iraq.
0709 04“I make no apologies,” Rove said when an audience member asked how personally responsible he felt for the war. “It was the right thing to do. The world is better off with (Saddam Hussein) gone. We all thought he had weapons of mass destruction. The whole world did. He didn’t. …
“In the aftermath of the removal of the regime, al-Qaeda decided to make its stand in Iraq. And we have got to, in my opinion, fight ‘em and beat ‘em there; otherwise we are going to face them somewhere else.”
Conducting an onstage interview, Aspen Institute president and chief executive Walter Isaacson asked whether the Bush administration would withdraw troops next year.
“We will be redefining the mission because the goal of the surge was to get us to a place where we could redefine the mission,” said Rove, who would not commit to a timetable for a withdrawal or troop numbers.
Rove was also grilled about his role in the CIA leak case involving Valerie Plame, who is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson - an Iraq war critic.
“My contribution to this was to say to a reporter, which is a lesson about talking to reporters, the words ‘I heard that too,”‘ he said about Plame’s identity as a secret U.S. agent.
Last week, President Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who had been convicted of obstructing justice in the Plame case.
Another member of the audience asked Rove about the controversial detention camp the United States keeps in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“The president would like to close Gitmo,” said Rove, who also declined to give a timetable for the camp’s closure, saying it is holding “bad people” who will have to be detained elsewhere.
He downplayed the poor treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo that has been widely publicized.
“Our principal health problem down there is gain of weight, we feed them so well,” he said as many in the audience shook their heads and groaned in unison.
Rove acknowledged the tough times he receives in Aspen.
He told a story about a man who scowled at him and yelled, “Go home!”
“I am!” Rove said he shot back.
Rove was born in Denver and spent part of his childhood in Arvada and Golden. His father was a geologist at the Colorado School of Mines.