Ray Suarez (PBS Newshour) had an interesting segment on 1/30 focusing on President Bush's Axis of Evil theme from his State of the Union address last night.

After excerpts from the President's speech, there were additonal backgrounders on Tom Daschele's follow-up, and reactions from spokesmen in Iraq, Iran and N. Korea to help set up the debate between James Woolsey and Charles William Maynes.

Unfortunately, PBS screwed up the transcript of the debate. I've already written to them about this, and I'll include the corrections below, but I really recommend listening to the RealAudio, especially since it includes the backgrounder stuff, while the transcript does not, and has a lot of minor transcribing errors in addition to the three major goofs I've noted. Both transcript and RealAudio at above link.

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Well, I've burned up my energy budget sorting this out, but I knew something was off when I first read the transcript. I got an automated response from PBS, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to fix it.

In the meanwhile, I'll certainly chime in if anyone picks up on this thread, but for now I'm pooped and dinner is ready!

Ciao, or should I say Chow!

Enough.
sp

-----letter to PBS-------

Dear Sir:

The transcript of the Maynes-Woolsey dialogue from 1/30 Ray Suarez piece contains several errors, including three that are serious:

Corrected passages follow my boldface comment:

1. You left out Ray's referral to Maynes, and the transcriber misattributed the quote to Woolsey.

RAY SUAREZ: Bill Maynes, By lumping these three countries together as an axis of evil, rhetorical or otherwise, do you lose some of the daylight in between them?

Are they different from each other and would they respond to different approaches when you finally get down to moving against what the American government finds offensive about these regimes?

CHARLES WILLIAM MAYNES: Already because Iran and Iraq feel that they might be in the cross hairs they are getting closer together.

There's been a visit by the Iraqi foreign minister. Both sides have shut down the activities of the resistance groups inside each country that was acting against the other. They have exchanged -- they have begun to exchange some prisoners of war. There's a warming in the relationship. I suspect that if they feel they are in danger of imminent attack; that will be even greater.

I think one of the problems of waging a war against Iraq in the foreseeable future, it's not an ethical question; it's a prudential question. The chief of staff of Turkey has spoken out against it. The head of intelligence in Saudi Arabia has spoken out against it. The reason is that very few people in the region believe that this is a policy that would serve their interest.

And that is something that the United States, if it wants to do this, is going to have to turn around.

2. The following passage was misattributed to Maynes

James Woolsey: I think that Turkey would be able to be persuaded if we get it the right incentives, and it is the country I would admit that we need.

But most of other countries and after all --outside Israel and Turkey --that the Mideast is populated mainly by vulnerable autocrats and pathological predators -- and the vulnerable autocrats express fear of the pathological predators and they say, "oh, please, don't mess with Saddam and listen to us, Saddam, hear us say this? We're telling the Americans not to mess with you."

But if we succeed -- and I think if we decided to do it we would succeed-- in deposing the Iraqi regime and bring a far more decent regime and system of government to power in our Iraq throughout the Middle East and especially in Iraq itself we would be among the most popular people in the world.

3. Finally, Woolsey's parting comment was omitted.

James Woolsey: Special Pleaders.

Sincererly (sic - yep)
sp