Sir Denis Healey
Please note "BBC Breakfast with Frost" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used
DAVID FROST: The Telegraph has got Labour fury as Blair backs Bush plans for war in Iraq, he didn't in fact go as far as that...quite...
DENIS HEALEY: Quite the reverse in fact, according to quite a lot of the stories he's been trying to dissuade Bush from turning out another attack because the last attacks on Iraq killed a lot of innocent civilians and enormously strengthened Saddam Hussein. Because a dictator can always blame the death of civilians on the foreign power rather than on himself, and my own view is that to continue that type of action is not going to help unless it's very, very carefully targeted - and you go simply for what you know for certain to be targets where they are actually producing these weapons.
DAVID FROST: But not a, not a wide scale invasion or anything...
DENIS HEALEY: No not the sort of thing we had last time which strengthened Saddam and didn't weaken him.
MARIELLA FROSTRUP: Also I think it just increases the Arab nations' opposition to America, and hatred of America.
DENIS HEALEY: Well I think the most worrying thing about George Bush, the present one, is that he is now seen, throughout the Muslim World, as the Great Satan, and he described what he is doing as a crusade. Now that is a Holy was against another religion, so the Muslims inevitably respond with a Jihad, which is a holy war against Christians...
MARIELLA FROSTRUP: Which just ups the temperature...
DENIS HEALEY: ...and the result is that you are getting now, growth of anti-Americanism, and anti British because we support the Americans, everywhere from - really from - Morocco to the Philippines.
MARIELLA FROSTRUP: It also makes it near impossible to have a sensible discussion about the situation because everyone's temperature has been raised to such a degree...
DENIS HEALEY: That's right. At the moment fighting begins, reason, well it doesn't necessarily fly away but, it diminishes enormously, for certain.
END