WTF Is It Now?!?

Actually, CNN has just posted the transcript -

Wolf, you ignorant slut

BLITZER: [L]et's bring in the man himself, Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector, joining us now from Albany, New York. Scott, as you take a look right now at what Charles Duelfer has reported, David Kay has reported, the fact that no significant stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have been found, what goes through your mind looking back on what you went through personally, how you were hammered before the war?

RITTER: Well, I try to keep myself out of the debate, because it's not about me. It's about the United States of America and the decisions that our elected officials make in our name. Look, I said what I said. I wasn't guessing. I was basing it upon factual data derived from seven years experience in Iraq. If you read my book that I write in 1998, "Endgame," it's almost a mirror image of the report that Charles Duelfer just produced. It's the same data. We used the same facts. The problem is, in 1998, I was willing to embrace these facts. Unfortunately, it's taken us five years and a war and over 1,060 dead Americans before government officials have come to the same conclusion that was very reachable in 1998, indeed reachable in 2002 on the eve of war.

BLITZER: Well, what is your interpretation? You came up with the right conclusion before the war. The administration came up with the wrong conclusion. You didn't have access to the latest intelligence reports. You had access to information you had collected years earlier.

RITTER: Well, let's keep in mind that I acknowledge that all of the analysis that I made was derived from seven years of accumulated data that I had not updated the database since I left in 1998. And I made it clear in my discussion since 1998 that unless someone can demonstrate that there is a new stream of intelligence, that there is new data out there that significantly alters what I knew to be the case in 1998, then I would stick to the data that existed. No one could provide any hard substantive data to sustain the assertions made by the Bush administration post-2001 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It simply wasn't possible.

BLITZER: Scott, one final question. I want to cut this relatively short, because we have breaking news coming out of the Middle East in Taba, Egypt, as you know. There was a suggestion from Charles Duelfer in his report saying that if the sanctions were lifted, Saddam Hussein would then go ahead, his intention was to reconstitute a weapons of mass destruction program. Do you accept that one?

RITTER: Absolutely not. First of all, Charles Duelfer in his report acknowledges that this assessment is based on fragmentary speculation. He doesn't have a confession from Saddam. He doesn't have a confession from any of the senior leadership. He doesn't have any documentation to back this up. This is political spin. Charles Duelfer, a nice guy, I like him a lot and I respect him, but he's a political appointee whose task is to spin this data to the political advantage of the president, and that's all this issue of intent is.

BLITZER: Well, if that was what he was intending to do, to spin it for the political advantage of the president, he certainly didn't do it in that 1,000-page document, most of which contradicted dramatically what the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense were saying on the eve of the war, so you have to give him a little bit more credit than that.

RITTER: Jebus, Wolf, get your damn tongue out of Karl's cheesy fucking scrotum, will ya? No , you fucking twat. Christ . Again, the issue of intention provides the Bush administration a convenient out. Witness the statements made by the president and the vice president just today, where they say that because Saddam Hussein intended to have his weapons, this war was justified. That's a dramatic, you know, new approach to why we went to war with Iraq, and I don't think the American public or the American Congress should buy it in the least. We should demand that the data used by Charles Duelfer to derive this conclusion of intention be declassified, so that we all could be privy to why he believes Saddam Hussein had such intentions.

BLITZER: Scott Ritter joining us today -- Scott, thanks very much. We're getting these reports, breaking news, three -- not one, not two, but three separate explosions in Egypt There are significant casualties. We'll continue to follow this breaking news story for you, get some more information. Also, a very important story right here at home, flu shot fallout.

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That's right - he cut this important interview off to comment about flu shots.