Nixon clearly broke the law in the cover up of Watergate and hush money payments. That was all criminal activity. With these guys, we're not talking about the kind of common crimes that Nixon committed. I can't tell you whether they are technically breaking the law, but basically, the American government has been hijacked by neoconservatives. They are taking an awful lot of national security operations into the White House.

I don't know whether God talks to him or whether he's trying to undo what his father did. But he believes in the mission. The body bags aren't going to deter him. Public dissent isn't going to deter him. He's going to go ahead. And that's more frightening.

The general assumption, which I think is a valid one, is that a lot of the major media were on their heels a little bit and prone to share the grief of the nation and to give Bush all the support it could.

It doesn't matter what a majority of Americans say. George W.Bush is going to do what he thinks he must do. And history may be tough on him in the next ten years but I guess he rationalizes that in fifty or 100 years they'll bless us because there will be - maybe not in his lifetime, but someday-a democratic Iraq emulating the United States in its liberalism, in its fair-mindedness, and that democracy will spread to Iran and Syria, and that whole part of the Middle East will be happy, and terrorism will be gone, and the Israelis will be flourishing, and the oil will flow. That's his vision.

Few knew in 2000 that Bush was going to end up with neoconservatives all over the place. And once 9/11 happened, I think it's fair to say that eight or nine neocons have had an enormous influence. The whole solution to every problem was to go after Iraq. This had been a neoconservative mantra for ten years. There was no secret about it.

At a meeting in her office in the late summer of 2002, months before the war in Iraq, prisoner abuse at Guantanamo is discussed. Condoleezza Rice brings in Donald Rumsfeld for a meeting, and they all agree they have to do something. Nothing gets done. Did everybody understand we were going to be as tough as we could be people we thought were Al Qaeda? Is there a better way to get information, get their trust, establish rapport, try to change their views? Nobody wants to think about that. It's just, let's beat them up. And that attitude was widespread throughout the Administration.

Is there anything more dangerous than an ideologue who doesn't know he's wrong?