Dennis Fritz heads the Eisenhower Media Network, an organization of ex-military officials who offer critical commentary and analysis on the military-industrial complex. He is the author of book Deadly Betrayal: The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq, which dives into the historical record to understand the Bush administration's motivations for launching one of the most disastrous criminal wars of our era. It's well-known by now that the stated justifications (the search for weapons of mass destruction) were lies, as Bush officials misrepresented the available intelligence and misled the public about what the evidence said. But that raises the question: Why did they launch the war? Was it a war for oil? A war to secure our position in the Middle East? A sincere attempt to fulfill the dream of spreading democracy across the world? A war to punish Saddam Hussein's defiance? Fritz joins to explain how the public was convinced to support a war of aggression, giving us lessons that are vital to learn if we are to avoid being drawn into future wars.

nathan j. Robinson  

Could you start by telling us a little bit about your personal background so we can understand why this book exists and why you've written it?

dennis Fritz  

I spent some 28 years in the United States Air Force. Had two assignments on active duty in the Pentagon, actually, and then as a contract employee, I spent two stints at the Pentagon as well. The last 10 years of my career were spent advising general officers in the field on the morale, the welfare, and the training and the readiness of our forces. Let me just backtrack a moment and just tell you, as part of my advising duties to general officers, a number of them were four-star general officers, one being [Lt.] General Buster Glosson, who was the actual director of the air campaign in the first hostilities against Iraq. And I worked as his executive officer in the Pentagon once he returned from the theater, and also before he became the chairman. I still maintain a friendship and somewhat of a confidant relationship with General Dick Myers, who went on to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, previously the vice chairman. Before then, we spent some eight years together out in the field, first in Japan—then I was an advisor at NORAD and Space Command, which during that time, Space Command had the nuclear arsenal for the Air Force—and we were also together in the Pacific.

But if I could just jump to it, if you don't mind, after spending some 10 years—my last 10 years of service—advising and being confidants of general officers, when 9/11 hit, that was somewhat of a scare for all of us. We have never experienced anything like that in our lifetimes. We had the big attack on Pearl Harbor, which went down in history as something we always remember. Likewise, 9/11, for us. And at the time, being in the military, we thought it was only right for us to help defend our country because, after all, we had been attacked for the first time, really, on our mainland.

But after we went over and real quickly defeated the Taliban—not getting bin Laden, though, but we defeated the Taliban—we started hearing about going to war with Iraq, and none of us understood that. I just couldn't see myself sending troops off to war. I wanted to protest about us going to Iraq when none of us saw any reason for going to Iraq, and I retired so that I could speak out.

But somehow I ended up back in the Pentagon, and that's where the story begins. When the lies started happening, and there were no WMDs found, I started wondering, well, why did we go to war? And I call it divine intervention, where I end up in the Pentagon working with a guy, or really for him as a member of one of his teams, Doug Feith—you've heard that name before—and I saw then that we had been lying about the reasons for going to war.

And what really struck me—in deciding to write this book, having advised four-star commanders in the past and been a representative for the enlisted corps who took the brunt of all the injuries and, unfortunately, lives lost—I was in the Pentagon one day, and saw a number of wounded service members, and as I talked to some of them, I was saddened because none of them really knew why they went to Iraq. Think about that for a moment. None of them knew why they went to Iraq. That bothered me.

Robinson  

The core of your book is a discussion of what the true motives were for the war and the documentation of those motives. It is widely understood that the Iraq War was a catastrophe. Even many of the people who advocated for it admitted later that we shouldn't have deposed the Iraqi government, that it was a policy mistake. But what you do is to go into the reasons. What you're saying there illuminates the stakes of this and why it matters to understand the Iraq War. For many Americans, it may be in the rearview mirror, and you are bringing this back and saying, No, we have to discuss this. We have to look at it again. We have to grasp what we did and who we did it to. So expand on what you're saying about the stakes of this and why you're so passionate about it and why you think it matters.

Fritz  

That is a very good question. I like where you laid that out because the stakes are high with the current events that are happening in the Middle East right now. But as I laid that earlier foundation about my background, I wanted the audience to understand that what drives me in my role in my military time was the welfare and the morale of our enlisted force.

Now, with that said, 4,500 of that enlisted force died in the Iraq War. Why is it important now? Well, as we see what's going on in Gaza right now between—and I'm not going to call it a war with Hamas because the war is on innocent Palestinians in Gaza. This war that is going on now, or conflict, actually started with our invasion in 2003 of Iraq. And that's why I see it as important. What is about to happen is that we're going to be drawn into another conflict in the Middle East with Iran, and that is what war hawks are pursuing right now. Now you say, Dennis Fritz, why do you say that? As you will see in the book, one of the reasons for going into Iraq, at that time, was actually to fight a war on behalf of Israel. Bibi Netanyahu has been wanting for decades what's happening right now, and the Bush administration did not want that to happen, and they thought and felt that we had a better way to do this. We could not take the pushback, as is taken right now, of the innocent killings that have happened with the Palestinian people. And so the Bush administration decided that, instead of you going in directly and killing innocent women and children, we're going to take out the governments that are funding Hamas and Hezbollah.

By the way, we're accustomed to fighting wars with the military and not going into urban environments where there is the risk of killing many women and children, which is happening right now. And so our government decided that we were going to go in and attack Iraq first. Why? Because under the Clinton administration, there was a regime change policy—it gives us the right to have a regime change policy for another country. Think about that for a moment. And so we figured that the American people would understand there's a regime change policy, which I don't understand why we would understand that, and it will give us justification to go in to take out Iraq on behalf of Israel. Why? Because at the time, Saddam was doing a lot of funding of the Palestinian people, in particular, Hamas and Hezbollah. And if we got rid of Saddam and the then the Iraqi government, that will cut off some of the funding of Hamas and Hezbollah. And then, by the way, the next country will be Syria because they were doing likewise, and we're going to do it under the guise of them having chemical weapons.

And then finally, the hardest one was going to be Iran. The goal was to keep from what's happening right now in Gaza—instead of going to war directly in Gaza, in Palestinian territory, we were going to take out those countries that we thought were supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. We want to take out that arms piece of it, and then that way the Palestinian people have no choice but to make peace on Israeli terms.

Robinson

With the case that you make in the book, first, let's get to what the stated justifications for the Iraq War were. You're attempting in this book to explain what the true thinking of the Bush administration was and why they launched this war. But of course, it differs greatly from the presentation of the reasons that were given to the public and to members of the armed forces for what they were doing.

I think we know some of the basic outlines of it, that supposedly it was because Saddam Hussein posed a threat, the smoking gun was going to be a mushroom cloud and what have you, we were going to find weapons of mass destruction, and also, we cared so deeply about bringing democracy to the people of Iraq and wanted to liberate them from their vicious dictator. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about the stated justifications for the war and why we know that those justifications were false.

Fritz

I'm going to first say this. When the Bush administration came in January 2000, they already had a goal of attacking Iraq, but they had no justification and reason to be able to do that, none whatsoever. And so they spent months and months trying to figure out, what can we do that could justify us going in to Iraq initially? But there was no justification, none whatsoever. Even if we said they had WMD, that was not justification to go to war. And so they were trying to figure out all kinds of ways before they came up with the WMD justification for going to war. We had what we call two missions going on at the time. We had northern watch and southern watch after the first Gulf War. The southern watch was to protect the Shias in the southern part of Iraq, and the northern watch was to protect the Turks and the oil fields in the northern part of Iraq, and we were looking for justification to say that Saddam was attacking those particular factions of Iraq as an excuse to go to war. We were looking at something you alluded to earlier on.

Let me just mention this. There were a number of agendas for going to war in the Middle East. There were different factions within the Bush administration. If you look in the book where I quote General Wesley Clark, where he was at the Pentagon and said, [in] the Pentagon, [they’re saying] we're going to war in the Middle East, where we're going to attack seven countries in five years, where each faction within the Bush administration had an agenda. When you mentioned the part about democratic peace there, that was Bush's agenda. George W. Bush really believed in democracy. He really believed that if we can create democracy in the Middle East, that would create peace throughout that area of the world. But, once again, that would be no excuse. You cannot justify going to war for democracy. And they knew that. And so I got to be quite frank with this, and this is going to probably be the most exposed thing I say. There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there that say it was an inside job. I never saw it. I always tell individuals that I speak with assumptions—I may give an opinion, but then I can give you facts. Now I can give you a fact right now that I don't know if it was an inside job, but you can take this to the bank that those in the Bush administration, particularly the Pentagon, were glad—sadly and unfortunately—that 9/11 happened. That gave them then the excuse to be able to use WMD as a justification for going to war because, in fact, we did not want another 9/11 to happen again.

Robinson  

Well, the argument that comes across in the book is not that the Bush administration had any direct involvement in 9/11, but that they had warnings about what Al-Qaeda was planning to do, and simply showed no interest in actually protecting the country. And then when the 9/11 attacks happened, instead of there being accountability for that—it's kind of like the October 7 attacks, a little bit. Netanyahu didn't arrange the October 7 attack, but certainly, they had ample knowledge that exactly this kind of attack was happening, but not really any interest in preventing it. Because ultimately, that kind of attack, for certain people in power, is very convenient because it allows you to carry out your existing agenda. I forget if it was Donald Rumsfeld, or who it was, that had a note from the day after 9/11 saying, we need to explore whether we can hit other countries at the same time, whether we could use this to take out Saddam as well. In their documentation immediately after 9/11 they were thinking, how can we use this as a way to implement a preexisting plan to reshape power in the Middle East?

Fritz  

Nathan, you're exactly right. And as you were speaking about, it was really Paul Wolfowitz who was really pushing that. But let me just say you also mentioned October 7 as well. As I stated earlier, this is something that Bibi Netanyahu has been wanting to do all along, and October 7 gave him the rationale and so-called justification to be able to do that. Now, as you mentioned, previous to 9/11, they were getting warnings. Absolutely, they were getting warnings. But, however, that was not their focus at the time. As I said earlier, Nathan, their sole focus coming into office was taking out Saddam. That was the first agenda, taking out Saddam. They were not focused on Al-Qaeda. They were not focused on the warnings that they were getting before 9/11 because, quite frankly, they didn't care. They didn't think it was reality, but when it actually happened, in their minds, sadly, it was a gift for them to be able to justify what they always wanted to do.

Robinson  

You have in the book the extraordinary quote from George W. Bush, where, after not catching Osama bin Laden, he says, basically, oh, I don't care. I don't care about Osama bin Laden. And actually, I think, later on, he denied that he had said that, but he did say that.

Fritz  

Oh, it's quoted. Documented.

Robinson  

It's extraordinary.

Fritz  

One of the things I did in the book is to use their own words against them. Now, here it is. Remember, President Bush was saying dead or alive. Our goal was not to go to war with the Taliban in Afghanistan—allegedly, our goal was to get bin Laden, dead or alive. Well, how do you go in and then months later say, I really don't care about it? Oh, I really don't even think about him, when that was supposed to be our mission and objective? The reason we went into war, allegedly, in Afghanistan, was because of the fact the Taliban would not give up bin Laden. So how can you go to war with a mission of getting the mastermind, if you will, of 9/11, and yet months later, we have men and women on the battlefield going into that objective to get bin Laden, and you don't care anymore?

Robinson  

Now, one of the important points in your book that, I think, is too little emphasized is that the Iraq War, first off, was a war of choice—it's avoidable. But you mentioned an incident in the lead up to the war where Saddam Hussein essentially, when it became clear that the U.S. was bent on invading and deposing him, sort of frantically tried to do diplomacy or send out feelers to indicate that he was willing to make concessions. As you point out, the architects of this war were hell-bent on going to war. There was a plan to reshape power in the Middle East. It's not a conspiracy. It's what they literally say. They actually have been saying since the 1990s, we just need to invade and overthrow Saddam Hussein, no matter what—weapons, no weapons, no matter what concessions that he makes. So you know, you point out that we have ample documentation that the war was avoidable, that the existing justifications were lies, and that the war was planned, regardless of 9/11.

Fritz  

Exactly. Well, I talked about an individual who they knew was credible, Hage. They knew he was credible. Richard Perle actually met with him in Europe to say, Saddam is willing to do anything we want, now that he knows we're serious about war. He didn't know what it was about, but he said, if it's oil, I will give you mining rights. He literally told us that. If it's about peace in the Middle East, I will do that for you. So think about that, Nathan. He was willing to give us anything we wanted to prevent war. But why did they do it? If you look at earlier chapters, they talk about credibility. Rumsfeld was always concerned about our so-called credibility, that we were weak if we did not do what we said we were going to do.

And by the way, you'll probably see something about Germany and France. They did not want us going to war in Iraq, and we kept that information from them, that Saddam was offering anything we wanted to keep us out of war. They kept that from France and Germany because they felt that France and Germany would take that to the United Nations to stop the war. That's how bad they wanted war to prove our so-called dominance of the world, and when we said we were going to war, that meant that we were going to war, and there was no going back. The war could have been prevented because, in fact, Saddam was willing, and that is documented as well.

Robinson  

Elaborate on this idea of credibility. You talked earlier about the feeling that U.S. policymakers had that it was very important to eliminate the enemies of our ally Israel in the Middle East and to eliminate all possible threats to Israel. But you identify in the book the other major [reasons]—that's not the sole justification for war. In fact, some critics of Bush might think you're too soft on him here, because you say that there was some genuine desire, genuine belief, in bringing democracy on the part of Bush. But you say that the motives were mixed. There's the advantage that is brought to Israel if you eliminate enemy states in the region and replace it with compliant regimes. There is whatever Bush's sincere beliefs are about democracy, and you emphasize this very important justification, this idea that the world's only superpower has to maintain credibility when others defy it, and that Saddam defying the United States was sort of intolerable.

Fritz  

Made us look weak. Rumsfeld truly believed in America's exceptionalism, that we're really the true power of the world. And you've noticed in the book where I mentioned Lebanon, where Marine barracks were bombed; in Mogadishu, where some of our military members were dragged through the streets; and Vietnam, where we ran away when the so-called tough started getting extremely tough; where we were perceived as being weak and really, truly not the superpower that we allege ourselves to be. And so, even though, as I stated earlier, the war could have been stopped, Rumsfeld was not going to do that because of the fact, in his mind, that it really made us look weak, because of the fact that we are the so-called true superpower of the world.

Robinson

Tell us a bit more about Douglas Feith. You have an entire chapter on him.

Fritz  

Well, the reason I talk about Feith is because, first of all, when I arrived in the Pentagon as a contract employee, I was under his leadership, and as I went through the thousands and thousands of documents—and let me just first say this: one thing I will say about Rumsfeld, he truly believed in preserving official documents, the National Archives. And so that's why, if you ask, why was so much left there? Well, I have to give him that he truly believed in that, that he really did. He wanted everything—

Robinson  

Helpful to write this book!

Fritz  

Exactly. So I just want to lay that out there. First, he truly believed in preserving official documents, and so that's why so much was out there. Now, with that said, Feith was truly the real mastermind of all the pre-planning board documents. For some reason, Rumsfeld had a lot of faith in Feith. And he really was the mastermind of all the planning, with his direct assistant.

[...]

Now, the reason I did a full chapter on Feith—there were a lot of the descriptions of Feith. He was not well liked. I think you probably remember general Tommy Franks said he's—I don't want to curse, but he was the blanking stupidest person in the world. There were many criticisms of Feith. So I did a lot of studying of him, and I had a number of interactions with him as we were doing our work. And I described Feith as a very smart guy, but he's cunning. He is very deceitful, and he wrote a lot of the policy pre-planning documents and was very convincing to Rumsfeld. The reason I spent a chapter on him was because in the many stories about us cherry-picking the intel, well, Feith was so smart and deceitful that he decided he was going to be the first one out of the administration to write this big, huge manuscript defending the war and defending himself. Feith became our number one client in asking for our documents, and by the way, he was one of the primary guys that was declassifying [documents]—even though he had been fired by that time, he still had access to the Pentagon. He had an office with us, within a suite, and he was coming in and out of the Pentagon at will, reviewing documents that we had declassified, and also requesting other documents to be classified. And I just thought that was criminal, and that's why I decided to spend an entire chapter on him. Because the original guidance was for us to declassify based on the controversy of the war and the significant historical significance of the war—there were going to be plenty of Freedom of Information Act requests.

But then, as we started our work, we realized our job and our particular team looks as though it was created just to help Feith with documents as he cherry-picked intel. And so that's why I spent a chapter on him. He was really the mastermind of the pre-planning of the war.

Robinson  

Now, what you just said about about cherry-picking intelligence is very important. A lot of the people who would defend the Bush administration would make the argument that we were not drawn into the war by lies, but by a sincere, mistaken apprehension on the part of the Bush administration. They had felt that their intelligence was telling them that Saddam Hussein was a threat and had weapons of mass destruction, but that this turned out to be wrong. But you noted there the critical fact that, within the administration, the intelligence was being manipulated and massaged. They had everything they needed to understand that what they were saying publicly was wrong. They were misrepresenting what they understood.

Fritz  

You can take that to the bank. Yes, we had no idea if Saddam truly had WMD, and you just said something key earlier: they were hopeful that he had it so they could be vindicated. When we say cherry-picking intel, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the intel arm of the Pentagon, was telling them that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found—even the CIA was telling them there was no intel to be found. But they were hell-bent on finding somebody to say that Saddam had WMD, and they were using such people as Curveball, who has since passed away, whose real name was Alwan al-Janabi. Do you remember those names? Curveball was an agent that was being interviewed and interrogated by the Germans, and the Germans told us that he was not a credible source, but because he said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz said, we're going to use that as factual intel.

Let me just say this again: the Germans, who had Curveball, were telling us that it was not a credible source, but we used them anyhow. Likewise, with Alwan al-Janabi, who saw himself as one day being the leader of Iran, he was telling us a bunch of lies as well, that he had intelligence sources. I think it's in the book that only three of the many sources that Alwan al-Janabi provided were actually somewhat credible, but not credible enough, especially when you're going to go to war. In the intel community, you have to have at least two reliable sources, just for normal intelligence. But then you talk about going to war, and you’re using a guy, Curveball, who we were told was not credible. Those were the sources.

And I know, as a person who does this as a profession, you also heard that there was an intelligence cell in the Pentagon. Well, that's against the law. They created an intelligence cell under Feith to find so-called justification and intel that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and they couldn't find it either. And so they were using such liars as Alwan al-Janabi to justify a war.

There was a good friend of mine, Larry Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell's chief of staff. Larry spent over a week or more over at the CIA making sure that, before Powell did his presentation at the U.N., the intel that we had was really legit. They gave Larry and Colin Powell bad intelligence. Powell was really the only credible person at the time. The only credible person, and they used him. And Powell went to his grave saying that that was a stain on his life and career. And Larry felt bad because, as his chief of staff, he was supposed to protect his boss. That's why he was over the CIA. But the CIA was just beaten down to say—you ready for this? You heard this term—you're going to find that smoking gun. And [CIA Director] George Tenet was just beat down so badly. Okay, we will use your intel cell at the Pentagon, which is against the law because they're not funding this to do intel work like that. But they were.

Robinson  

I just found a quote I had been looking for in your book. We were talking about this idea of credibility and the fact that there was a preexisting plan that was then given what they call a post hoc justification: you've made the plan, and then you find the justifications for the plan after the fact. And you have this extraordinary quote from July 27, 2001, before 9/11, when Donald Rumsfeld sent a memo to Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, saying

"a major success in Iraq would enhance U.S. credibility and influence throughout the region. If Saddam's regime were ousted, we would have a much improved position in the region and elsewhere."

And you note, and this is critical, Rumsfeld says nothing about national security, only emphasizing credibility. And one of the themes that comes through in your book is the difference between what these people see as U.S. interests and the actual interests of Americans: the soldiers that you talk about, and the rest of us—our security, our peace. You point out that credibility and influence throughout the region does not translate into the well-being of America and Americans.

Fritz  

Wow, Nathan, I had a meeting this morning, and I talked about how our national security actually is killing us. That's a statement I gave to somebody this morning.

Robinson  

Which sounds paradoxical when you say it.

Fritz  

The irony of that? Think about that. Our national security. Now, think about the reason I went out of my way to emphasize that the Pentagon is really the Defense Department—the Defense Department, not the offensive department. Not starting war department, but the Defense Department.

First, let me just say this: Saddam was not a threat to the United States of America, and you'll see a quote in there from General Hugh Shelton saying he was no threat to us. It was about personal agendas. So that's why I went out of my way to say it was all about America's credibility, America's strength in the world, and America's power. What Rumsfeld was saying then was, we had to put fear in the rest of the folks in that area of the world, that if you don't do as we say, we will come after you. Going after Saddam was the first stage of that.

We have this term “peace through strength” that hawks use in the United States of America—peace through strength. We should be focusing on “peace through diplomacy,” but we say “peace through strength.” Why do we say that? It’s to put fear in the minds of others that if you don't do as we say, we will come after you. And so that's why I went out of my way to say, as a military member, when we discuss my credentials, or whatever the case may be, we go into the military thinking that we're going in to defend our nation, not to be used as pawns in foreign policy. And that was another reason why I wrote the book. I have to emphasize this again. Four thousand five hundred individuals lost their lives based on lies and deceit. Went into the military thinking we're going to defend our country, our nation, not keywords that we play with called interest. We didn't join to defend interest. We joined to defend our nation.

Robinson  

In the conclusion of your book, you have this important passage explaining some of the reasons why we have to revisit this. I'm just going to quote this passage because I think it's important.

"In 2003 the George W. Bush administration deceived the American people into supporting a needless attack on Iraq. Four thousand five hundred U.S. military members perished in the conflict. More than 100,000 were injured for life."

Fritz  

For life.

Robinson  

That's also very important. It's not just the deaths, it's also the people who are suffering for the rest of their lives, and a trillion dollars was wasted in an oops-no-WMD-but-hey-we-got Saddam war. As you say, "our service members went in thinking they were defending our country. Tragically, they were wrong. This is the ultimate betrayal."

And you say that some pundits would claim that we should move on and not look back on the Iraq War, but you disagree because if we are not careful, history could repeat itself. This is not just about accountability for those responsible for the deaths and injuries in this war. This is about protecting the lives of those who would die in a future war, and why we need to understand how wars are sold to people.

Fritz  

Exactly. And you stated something earlier, and I alluded to it: history can repeat itself. It's about to repeat itself now. If you look at the latest news articles where the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Charles Q. Brown, a Biden administration official, is being quoted now as saying that we're going to support Israel if Hezbollah and Israel get into a one-on-one fight, that we'll be there for them. Likewise, if Iran joins in—and see, this is the long strategy right now, to have a war with Iran. We have pundits in Israel, and we have pundits right here, that are promoting that, and it is what drove me with the hope—my odds are against me, but I hoped to get this out as soon as I could to stop what is happening right now. I hoped to get this information out here.

I was at an event Sunday night, and somebody asked a question about accountability. How do we hold these folks accountable? And that's the key question. The key thing will be you and me. It's going to be the American people. Sadly and unfortunately, we can't count on our news media. We are so scared to use certain terms, but I'm past being afraid to use certain terms now, like how our Congress, our media, is bought and paid for. They're giving us disinformation, and that's why I believe in social media and podcasts like yours to help get the information out there.

Robinson  

Before we conclude here, could you tell our listeners and readers about the Eisenhower Media Network and what you do there?

Fritz  

That's a great question. Thank you for asking that. The reason we came about, as I stated earlier, is that we can't count on the mainstream media anymore. It's perceived in the American public that general officers are credible. At one time, the military was considered the most credible part of the U.S. government. And there are others that saw that as well. It became obvious to me during my time in the Pentagon of the Bush administration that we were using former military members as well to justify going into Iraq. And that bothered me. That bothered me, and I always looked for a platform to be able to speak out, not only me, but for others to tell the alternative story. We needed military members to be able to tell the alternative story of not talking about war strategy all the time, but about peace and diplomacy. Because, in fact, that's what we should stand for: not war, but peace and diplomacy.

We are former national security experts, and we're asking, how do we look at it from a peace and diplomacy perspective, versus peace through strength, the war mentality? We need to be able to tell the alternative, to tell the truth. Also, telling the truth that we could have not had the war in Iraq if we had taken Saddam for his word at the time: “I'm willing to work with you to do anything we can to stop this war.” Then that's when peace and diplomacy should have come into play. But we wanted war, and that is the story that is being told: that it takes war to meet our objectives. We in the Eisenhower Media Network say that it should take peace and diplomacy, and only when the United States of America is attacked should we go to war.

Transcript edited by Patrick Farnsworth.