CNN.com - Transcripts

CNN.com - Transcripts:

"GREENFIELD: Further, the idea that Bush has been committed to the removal of Saddam for a very long time has been raised before. Among others, by former treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill and by former White House terrorism chief, Richard Clarke.

But what about the substance? It is true that all through the last months of 2002 and the first months of 2003, the president was publicly insisting that war was not inevitable, that he was looking for a way to pressure Saddam peacefully.

BUSH: I think a lot of people are saying, you know, gosh, I hope we don't have war. I feel the same way.

War's not my first choice.

I made the decision to go to the United Nations because I wanted to try to do this peacefully.

WOLFFE: We had no idea that he had really decided to go to war, which is what this memo says. All of the public comments were that the president had no war plans on his desk.

GREENFIELD: But the memo's account of the past is not the biggest Iraq dilemma facing the president. It's what's happening now: the continuing violence, the absence of any near-term likelihood of a conclusion, and the financial drain.

Iraq and Afghanistan will now cost some $400 billion. And a just released ABC News/'Washington Post' poll shows a clear public shift. For the first time, more than half believe the Iraq war has not made America safer. Two thirds say the United States is bogged down and nearly six in 10 say the war was not worth fighting. More than 40 percent now see Iraq as something like another Vietnam. "