COLMES: You answered the question in less than a minute, so it could have happened a few days ago. Let me move on to some other things here, because when the Iran NIE report came out, you said they're undoubtedly intent upon nuclear weapons. You said, I don't care what the latest NIE says, that's foolishness, you said, that represents our inability to get a handle on it, more than anything else.
If you're president, are you not going to care what 16 different intelligence agencies say on any particular issue?
THOMPSON: I'm going to concentrate on improving our intelligence capabilities. As you probably know, I served on the Intelligence Committee. I have met with foreign leaders. And I've met with CIA officers in far away places dealing with questions such as this. We have a real problem with our intelligence community. It's created confusion and inconsistency. We now have a report dealing with one of the most important issues facing our country that's totally inconsistent with one that came out just two years ago.
The Israelis don't believe it. The British don't believe it. They have pretty good intelligence agencies. And we're concentrating on the wrong thing in this report. Whether or not Iran today has a weaponization program is not the important point. The important point is they continue to enrich uranium. That's the most difficult part of the process. Once they have enriched uranium, and it's enriched sufficiently, the weaponization will take a short period of time, and I don't trust the Iranians to make the right decision in the future.
COLMES: The reports show though that they're not nearly as far along as some people thought, and the rhetoric coming out of the administration, which was very close to war mongering, from my point of view, seemed to be discounted by what this report actually said.
THOMPSON: Well, you're not paying close enough attention to what I just said, Alan. To start with, we don't know how far along they are. None of our estimates have ever been precise. None of them have ever pretended to be precise. But the point is that everybody agrees they continue to enrich uranium. And in the future, with a turn of a screw, they could turn it into a weapons program. And it depends on their intent in the future.
That means that we need to continue the policies that we have, of being tough on them and making sure our allies join us in the appropriate kinds of sanctions.
And once Mr. 'Can I get a round of applause here' shows where the Iranians represent a threat to our borders and have declared war on this nation (not a loose band of terrorists, but the Iranian government itself) perhaps Freddie can get the war he so much hopes for.
As that is not the case however the best course of action is to trade with all and maintain conversations with all.
Unless of course someone can explain even in the depths of the Cold War it was possible to trade with and maintain some form of relationship with the Soviet Union and China....