'Factor' Exclusive: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Mideast Conflict
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Very nice to have you on the program this evening, Madame Secretary. I'm going to start right off with our reporters at FOX tell us the ground war in under way in southern Lebanon. What do you know about it and what do you think is going to happen there?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, clearly in southern Lebanon there has been a situation in which a terrorist group, Hezbollah, decided to launch an attack from Lebanese territory without the knowledge of the Lebanese government against Israel. Israel then exercised its right to defend itself. We think it's very important that after these events are over that we will not have a return to the status quo ante and so the United States is working for a cease-fire, for an end to the hostilities that will not allow a return to the status quo ante. And if we — if we don't work for a cease-fire that will be lasting and enduring, then we're going to be right back here in several months talking about another cease-fire.
So we've been laying those political conditions, and I think we're making progress, Bill.:spray:
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O'REILLY: ...after 9/11 and after the Iraq, you know, occupation, it
("Hezbollah capabilities" and "the influence of Iran in this region") troubles me as an American citizen. I didn't know Hezbollah had 15,000 rockets in Southern Lebanon. And it — we had the Israeli ambassador on last night. He didn't say so, but it looks like Mossad didn't know. It looks like the CIA didn't know. You had 2,000 U.N. peacekeepers there for two years, trying to enforce 1559. They didn't — either they didn't know or they didn't say anything. Doesn't that trouble you, that all of this armament was built up?
RICE: Well,
I'm not going to try to get into the intelligence. You know that, Bill.
I'm not going to try to get into the intelligence. But of course, it's troubling, the capabilities that Hezbollah has. But if you think about how these terrorist organizations operate, they burrow in with the population. They hide their capabilities inside of villages. They're very hard to detect. But we do know that this is more than just Hezbollah in Lebanon.
This is an extension of Iranian power through proxy war...