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Interviewer: President Bush, There has been much criticism by some who believe you and your advisers made the decision to invade Iraq too hastily and had not thought through a plan to extricate our troops once Saddam was deposed. They say that we should have had patience and proceeded along the path that the UN, Germany and France advised. Today, we have no real evidence that weapons of mass destruction ever existed, the country is war torn and fragmented, Iraq has become a magnet for terrorists, we are amassing a gigantic Federal deficit to fight this war, we have no timeline for bringing our troops home. We have opened a Pandora's box that we may not be able to close and every day people are dying. How do you respond to this? President Bush: My advisors and I had very good intelligence reports that pointed toward Saddam having developed weapons of mass destruction. After all, hadn't he proven himself to be the doer of evil with his past actions. We have seen what he had done to the Kurds, we all know how he kept many of his countrymen impoverished and imprisoned. We saw his invasion of Kuwait and there was always the potential that he would attempt to repeat those acts. It was time to act! Saddam was an evil that had to be stopped for the good of mankind. My advisors had good reason for this invasion based upon the intelligence that had been gathered. It would have been grossly negligent not to. Interviewer: President Bush, I would like to address another issue and that is of your decision to withhold Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research beyond the cell lines that had been developed up to that point in 2001. You are being criticized because many scientists and Nobel Laureates have good reason to believe that embryonic stem cells have the promise and potential to cure some devastating diseases. They have seen these cells develop into muscle cells, neurons and organ cells. They have done laboratory studies that have shown improvement in animals after transplantation of these cells. They say it is time to act! They have good reason to believe this science should go forward based upon the intelligence that has been gathered. It would be grossly negligent not to. And every day people are dying. How do you respond to this? President Bush: Well, you see, the point of this issue is that work with embryonic stem cells involves the destruction of a human life. How could our government ever finance or condone such a thing as that? We cannot be hasty. We have no real evidence that this science will ever benefit mankind. We must think through what the ramifications of this science could bring: Hatcheries for spare body parts, the creation of embryos just for lab experimentation. We could be opening a Pandora's box which we may not be able to close. Interviewer: That concludes our interview. Thank you Mr. President. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn