State and the beginning of the iraq war. I want to begin with one of the rules one of your 13 rules published in parade magazine, this is the 13th and last. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. I find you the most optimistic person i have read in a long time. It is very important that rule had to be the summary of the 13 rules and it links to the first one that says things will get better in the morning. I start that description by saying that is not necessarily the case, but the attitude you should have. Things will get better and you should make them better. It is within your life to make them better. Force multiplier is a military term always looking for ways to enhance the power of our force, whether it is communications or supply lines or whatever it is, but we look for things that shout make the force more effective. I have found in working with human beings, and this book is about working with human beings. I have found if you convey an attitude of perpetual optimism, we can do it, we can do it, that will in fact an entire organization and it becomes a force multiplier that can do more than they thought they could do. Coming to roberts real question, as i go around the country, i see all the problems that are not discussed here in washington very often, the unemployment rate, the fact our economy is starting to come back, but not fast enough, the problem with overseas ventures we have been involved in and other crises around the world, arei also see people who hard at work, people in business and i talked to business leaders, financial leaders, mass audiences, i find people are optimistic about this country. They have confidence in who we are and what we are and almost reaganlike confidence. If there is one thing bugging them is they sense their leaders in washingtons dont understand how much confidence and optimism is out of there waiting for the elitists in washington to cut through the conflict and lack of compromise and get this country moving. I have always tried to be optimistic and convey an attitude of optimism. And i am optimistic about this country. So many people forget, in my lifetime for example, what it like from 1968 to 1964 1974. Bobby martin, vietnam war, race riots, counterculture, drug problems, racial problems, and the Vice President resigned in disgrace. We had to come out of the vietnam war and the president designed in resigned in disgrace. It was still a communist nation aligned against us. Through all of that, we never from e of confidence and a man who gave who doesnt get enough credit, gerald ford, came on scene in washington. He brought us back and president carter had difficulties with the economy, but he moved it around and Ronald Reagan shows up and says it is sunshine morning in america, here we go. A few years later, it is the soviet union that is gone, china that is trying to become a world power, not by invading anybody, but by selling to us. Imagine where we are now compared to the early years ago us stuffna is selling and the money we are paying them, they loan us to sell more stuff. This is our economic problem, ladies and gentlemen. Some americans have to be optimistic, it is what fuels us and makes us americans. Host i did not know until reading the book of the important text for you on the subject of confidence is the movie the hustler. Gen. Powell for those of you not old enough to remember the movie, it is a movie about pool by thed paul newman goes name of fast eddie felson determined to be the champion, he thinks he is the best in the world and goes into this pool york. N new the game starts and fast eddie is good, very good, but he has this manager or financer sitting in a chair watching all of this. His evening goes on and they are drinking and shooting pool and eddie is beating the devil out of minnesota fats and he is becoming desperate and keeps looking at George C Scott like what do i do . He says, stick with this kid, he is a loser. That kind of stuns anybody and they play more and he keeps losing and he thinks, i have got goesnd he excuses himself, into the bathroom and comes out a few minutes later and he is reaching for his coat, they think. As the attendant is about to bring his coat, instead of taking his coat, he smiles and puts his hands out and has talcum powder poured into his hands. Lets play some pool and he beats the devil out of them and fast eddie is crushed. He never gave up, perpetual optimism, he thought he could win and worked against Eddie Felsons weakness. As i say in the book, i loved that scene and many a day when i was in trouble, which was a frequent occasion in my life, and i had to testify in front of congress or face a hostile press , so help me, i would put my uniform on and go into the restroom and wash my hands and look in the mirror and say to myself, lets play some pool. I never watched the last scene. Paul newman is the star of the movie, so he has to beat fats at the end, but i dont watch that. I dont want to see it. Host you can turn it off early, in that case. I want you to relay a very touching story when you visited a Japanese School wants. It was a school of kids being prepared to succeed. Gen. Powell it was a private Japanese School in tokyo. Very intelligent, smart kids from welltodo families and i gave my speech to the students. I love talking to students. When i was through questions were ready and i noticed kids were lining up with their cards with their questions. I dont like that because these are the questions teachers looked at and proofed and made sure these for the honor roll kids. I took a couple of them and i looked out into the audience, anyone else have a question . A young lady in the back of the auditorium where i used to hang out when i was her age, she raises her hand and gets up and said are you ever afraid . I am always afraid, i am afraid every day. Are you ever afraid . I said i am afraid of something almost every day and i fail at something almost every day, if not every day. What you have to learn to do is understand that fear and failure are a normal part of human existence. You have to learn how to control it. You will never defeat it, but you can manage it. Be optimistic you can get out of the problem you are having and if it is a failure, figure out what you did wrong and correct it and move on. Take your failure, roll it up in a ball, throw it over your shoulder and forget about it. And iom was deadly still think everybody had that thought on their mind, kids are afraid and they have to be taught how to manage and overcome fear. It was the most moving moment for me and if i could regress, most of the book is like this. We will get to the tough, hard chapters about my time at secretary of state, but this is a book of parables and reflections and memories and kind of a fun book as well and that is why it does not have an index. Short chapters. Give me a break, read the book. This isnt heavy lifting, it will take three hours. Some of the chapters are a page and a quarter long. I think the longest one is 8 or 9 pages. Just 40 four stories. Host and some readers can decide they wont read the last chapter. Kid,her when you were a you say you were hanging around the back of the classroom, you were not the obvious ball of fire likely to be most likely to succeed. Gen. Powell that is right. I came from an immigrant family. My parents came here with a lot of my other relatives and they settled in new york after bouncing around a little bit and they all had children. There were lots of cousins in the family and we were all simply taught we have expectations for you, we did not come to this country to have children that are going to stick something up their nose or not get an education. We have expectations for you and dont ever do anything that shames the family. That was a killer argument because if any of us got in trouble, we begged to be beaten rather than have somebody give us that shame the family bit and the third thing we were taught, mind your manners, mind your teachers, mind your adults. This embracing family expected us to go somewhere in life. My cousins became doctors and lawyers and judges and i sort of hung around rolling a straight c average through high school and city college of new york. I am not sure how i got in, but i graduated with a low average years later. I was great in rotc. I found my calling. I wanted to be a soldier. Se Administration rolled my a into the gradepoint average and that brought me up to 2. 0. They said good enough for government work, get him out of here. Is now i amrt considered one of the greatest scholars the city college of new york ever had. They named a center after me. My professors are rolling over in their graves. What i say to kids when i tell the story is it is not where you start in life, it is where you end up and what you did along the way. Your past is not your present and not your future. Your past is your past, always be growing. Never think you cannot make it. My family, one of the problems we are having in our country is Graduation Rates are not where they should be and when i was a kid growing up and got bored with school, if i had ever gone home and told those two immigrant people or my parents, they were short people, if i had ever gone and said to every one i think ine of them will drop out, they would say we will drop you and go get another kid. It was not going to happen. There is a chapter in a book called we are mammals. I love the hustler and animal planet, national geographic, wild kingdom, i love watching lions and tigers raise their cubs and all that and what i get its eyess a cub opens and it is allowed to start moving a little away from mom and out of the den, but only so far. If he steps outside at the wrong ager is not ready for it, grabbed behind the neck or hit with the paw. As they gain experience, go a little further. Other than that, he does not do much, he is just around. The point is that i watched this and when they are two years old, they are sent out on their own. What has happened in that two year period . They learn from their siblings and cousins and females and the pride and the role of the male pride. Themhave passed onto generations of what it is to be a lion. How can we imagine we dont have that same imaginative requirement to pass on the experience we have as human beings to our children . There are too many children in america not having that experience passed on and if you dont see the good things in life you are supposed to be doing, you will find the bad things in life. When we spoke last week, i told you i had been in jamaica doing the story about the sprinters. We recorded two jamaicans talking to each other. I could not understand a word they were saying. You grew up bilingual. Caller all of might gen. Powell all of my relatives spoke with a heavy jamaican accent. My mother and father were not too bad, but i have a couple of aunts i could hardly understand at all. Them and slipth into jamaican if i need to. I was telling robert there are certain things in the language t you have to understand how are you doing question mark not bad, not bad. That means he is doing good. How are you doing . Not so good, that means it is bad. You have to understand this reversal they have in their lexicon. I loved my upbringing. All of us have a special feeling for the family we are a part of and the place we came from or they came from and it was tightknit. My neighborhood in the south bronx was all tenements and i had aunts in other buildings and when i walked home from school, they were all hanging out the window leaning on a pillow on the windowsill. They never left. They did not cook, they did not go to the bathroom, they were always there, watching. If any one of the cousins did anything wrong or were caught misbehaving, it was instant retaliation. You talk about the speed of the internet, nothing compared to et in the of the auntn south bronx area of the city. We were there greatest treasure. Fail. Ould not let us we have too many children in america today, particularly our inner cities and some of our indian homes on reservations where children are not being raised to not fail. Denver akid in hispanic kid from a poor family, went to a private school and became valedictorian of his class. He was the first person in his family to have such an honor. He was being interviewed and the guy said how did it happen . I was never given the opportunity to fail, they would not let me. Anytime something went wrong, they were there, i was never allowed to fail and if they felt that way about me, i had to feel that way about me and i am the first one in my family to graduate high school. I have changed the history of my family. Host one chapter of your book is called tell me what you know. You write about rules you developed for your intelligence staff. Tell me what you know, tell me what you dont know, then tell me what you think and always distinguish which from which. This brings us to iraq. I guess my big question is in how . Pital letters, specifically whom we identify with caution and the use of military force, never going in life, weighing our obligations carefully, being very much the realist in foreign policy, tell me about the decision made to go to war in iraq, how you figured in it, and your presentation to the u. N. . Gen. Powell in the first year of president bushs administration, george w. Bush, iraq was an issue. Planess shooting at flying over. For the most part, they were contained, but the sanctions regime was starting to break down and we were watching carefully to see whether we could allow the u. N. Sanctions regime to break down and iraq is free to do whatever it wants to. Weapons and used them against their own people. They fired them against iranians. It is not a figment of our imagination these people have the ability to do it and we thought they had them. Host they used chemical weapons. Gen. Powell chemical weapons, and also playing with programs that were not that far along and we had a good idea they were playing with biological weapons as well. Along comes 9 11 and the president is faced with the challenge of bringing the country together and fighting this conflict we are now in, brought to us in afghanistan by al qaeda. We go to afghanistan and we get that what seems to be under control, did a terrific job although it did not stay under control and then the president s attention turned to iraq because his regiment concern was there could be a nexus between the weapons of mass destruction iraq has and could develop and terrorism. The president started asking his military authorities to give him plans. 2002, i sensed the president is receiving military information, but we have not put it into a broad military context. I went up and had dinner with the president and we went into his private study and i said, you need to understand if we need to use military force and take out this regime, we become the government of this country, international law. If you take out a regime and there are 25 million, 29 Million People standing there, you are in charge. We talked about it for a while, what the implications could be and he said, what do you think we ought to do . Lets go to the u. N. , they are the offended party and see if we can get them to act and get a resolution that will put the inspectors back in and see if he wants to play with the rules and turn over everything he has. The president agreed and in september of 2002 he went before the u. N. And made the case for the u. N. To get engaged and militarys back and resolutions. We got a resolution early november from the u. N. Putting saddam on notice. That test and i made it clear to the president if he passed the test, you might still be stuck with Saddam Hussein in power. If it made clear to him was necessary to move use military force, i would be supportive because we tried to avoid the war. To speed this up, in late january none of us were satisfied with the response or what the u. N. Had been able to fully recover. By the middle of january, the president decided the force would be necessary. At the end of january he said we need to present our case to the united nations, to the world and i would like you to do it and do it next week. I had 4 days from the time he told me to the time i had to make the presentation. I was not concerned because the case was being worked on by the National Security council, we all thought. Then when i saw the case they were working on, it wasnt what we needed. It did not connect to the intelligence, i asked the director of Central Intelligence, how did it get like this . We provide the information to the nsc and they took it from there. I was concerned i could not get any change in time because the president announced i would be there on the fifth of february. I was not worried because there was a National Intelligence estimate that had gone to congress the previous fall and based on that National Intelligence estimate, congress had overwhelmingly passed a joint resolution saying to the president , try to solve this diplomatically, but if you cant, we will support you going to war to read almost four months before, congress had already said to the president if you have to do this, we will support you. It was not a close vote. Pull it could altogether together from the National Intelligence estimate cia four dayse and four nights with my staff pulling it together. With the combined wisdom of 16 intelligence communities that came together for the nie so we pulled it all together and i tossed a lot of it aside because there were not enough sources for it. The things in the presentation i was assured were very well sourced and they could stand behind it. Brought chartsk, and a slide with me and had a presentation vetted by the cia. Every word was attested to. With the intelligence the president had, he had been using it. My colleagues had been using it. That is what i presented and thought it went off rather well. The british and Spanish Foreign ministers joined in agreeing and others, such as the french and russian and others were not in agreement, but that is where we were. About a month later, the present decided to look president decided to launch military action and it was within a few weeks nobody was finding anything over there. Over time, it started to emerge a little bit at a time that some of the sourcing we had been assured of, congress acted on and the president acted on, we all acted on, some of the sourcing was not reliable and i was taken aback when i thought of we had been getting information and had never talked to this guy. The presence of what was mass of weapons of mass destruction started to fall out completely. We still thought they had the capability to development develop them. That saidwe presented they were there turned out not to be the case. A lot of people agreed with the case and bought into it. Cia stuck by it. 6 months later the cia said we still support the judgme