Something Powell said on Nightline on 12/30/04:

[Carl Brennan]

Powell was being interviewed by Stephanopolous and he said something like: "first we heard a wave was coming then it hit the beaches".
Did anybody else see this.


I have been unable to get the video working at Nightline webpage:
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/

If somebody can capture that video I would really appreciate it.

[seemslikeadream]

1. Interview on Nightline With George Stephanopoulos

Is this it?

Interview on Nightline With George Stephanopoulos

Secretary Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
December 30, 2004

(12:15 p.m. EDT)

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us.

SECRETARY POWELL: My pleasure, George.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Today the death toll has climbed above 100,000.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: It's going to continue to climb. Are you confident that the U.S. aid effort matches the magnitude of this disaster?

SECRETARY POWELL: It's not just the U.S. aid effort, it's an international aid effort. And it's going to take a while to generate all of the assets necessary to deal with this catastrophe; 110,000 is the last number I heard and it will probably rise some more; 5 million people who are without shelter right now, and a lot of people who are injured and in need, and economies that have to be restored and homes that have to be rebuilt, schools, and whatnot.

So we are scaling up our effort and we will do what is necessary to show that the United States will be a leader in this effort. You have to remember how this came about. On Sunday, we all learned of this disaster. We immediately started to disburse funds; our ambassadors did so. By Monday, we started to get a sense of how significant a disaster it was. I spoke to the President at noon and went out and announced that the United States would be putting some $15 million down. On Tuesday, as it really started to grow, we added another 20 million, for a total of 35. But we know, clearly, right now, that it's going to be a lot more than that that's going to be required from the United States and from the international community.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: You say you spoke to the President that Monday. Why did it take so long for him to come out publicly?

SECRETARY POWELL: I didn't think it took long. He was public right away with statements coming out of the White House that the United States would be involved. And when I spoke to him on Monday at noon, which was just about 24 hours after we had really started to ramp up and understand the nature of the disaster, the President was involved all along. And so, by Tuesday afternoon, when it really became clear what was going on and we had made our contribution and we decided to form the core group, the President came out on Wednesday morning and made his statement.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But you remember what the President's critics have said, they said that this was a missed opportunity to show compassion.

SECRETARY POWELL: It is not a missed opportunity, George, and let's not, let's not, get down this road. The United States is the most generous nation in the world with respect to dealing with these kinds of emergencies, and the opportunity has not been missed. In fact, we are working with the countries in the region, with the countries that are affected.

We have our disaster teams there. We have rescue teams heading out from Los Angeles and from Fairfax County, who have skill. We have planes that are landing with relief supplies. The President has spoken to the heads of government and state of all of these nations. I have spoken to all of their foreign ministers within the first 24 hours. There is no missed opportunity here. The United States is responding, and we're responding with money, we're responding with our military forces.

Yesterday, you saw Under Secretary Grossman with the General Conway of the Joint Staff and Administrator Natsios of the USAID, busy describing what we're doing: aircraft carriers are on the way; amphibious groups are on the way; helicopters are on the way; food is on the way.

One of the problems we're going to have is -- can we get this material distribution when it arrives because the people are in very remote areas?

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: I was going to ask you about that.

SECRETARY POWELL: This is going to take many, many millions of dollars, not only from the United States, from the international community. It's going to be a significant cost to us and to the international community, and we have demonstrated in the past that we will meet these obligations.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm surprised you stopped at millions. I mean, when Hurricane Mitch hit in 1998, the U.S. gave almost a billion dollars.

SECRETARY POWELL: George, George, no, George. I'm not stopping anywhere. It may well be billions, but I don't know what yet the United States' contribution will be, and what we have to do is make a needs assessment and not just grasp at numbers or think we're in some kind of an auction house where every day somebody has to top someone else.

The President has made it clear to me, and we have had discussions with our people in OMB, and I will start making congressional calls today, that we have to be prepared to make a significant contribution. I don't know what that contribution will be yet until we have a needs assessment. And so, I cannot tell you whether it's hundreds of millions, or whether it's billions, or how much the whole international community will put down on the table for this.

We have been in contact with Secretary General Annan. I spoke to him just a few moments ago and we are very well knitted up with the United Nations and with the international relief organizations, and the American people can be very pleased at the way in which their government has responded to this crisis. You know, it started out as an earthquake and a tsunami that was heading out, and then within a few hours the tsunami hit, and some initial numbers came in which were shocking. But over the next three days, the numbers just escalated beyond anything anyone had anticipated and we have been ramping up along with the needs as the needs have become known.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Have you ever seen anything like this before?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, and I have been through many of these. I have been through these kinds of earthquake problems and flood problems and hurricane problems, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a commander of forces, as a National Security Advisor, and this tops anything that I have ever experienced -- ten countries. The two most affected countries, and we have to focus on this, is Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

I just left the Indonesian Embassy a little while ago, and the number there right now is 45,000 people have died in the northern part of the country, in Aceh. I've never seen these kinds of numbers before. And this is half way around the world and these are people who are in villages who are going to be hard to reach. So even if you had all the food in the world sitting at an airport, how do you get that food to people that need it in villages all along the coastline for hundreds of miles?

So this is going to be a massive relief effort and we're going to be participating in it. I'm pleased that our friends in the European Union have called for a donors conference. I'm pleased that the United Nations is so involved. I'm especially pleased that average Americans are coming forward to make contributions because this will be funded, to a large extent, by private donations that come out of a generous American public.

QUESTION: Chancellor Koehler of Germany has talked about a debt moratorium. Is the United States open to that?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes, we should look at that. I haven't gotten into the details of it yet, but we should look at debt relief, debt moratorium. We should look at humanitarian aid. We should look at reconstruction aid. We should look at redevelopment loans, how to help their economies that have been so hard hit. And so this is a time for the entire international community to come together and help these people in need.

QUESTION: You mentioned Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world, how important is it for the United States to take this opportunity, if it hasn't been missed, to prove to the Muslim world that we are on their side?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think it will have that effect. But, you know, it's not just because they're Muslims that we're on their side. We're on the side of people who are in need. And we have come to the assistance of Muslims repeatedly in years past, in recent years past. In Kosovo we helped Muslims who were being oppressed. We rescued Kuwait that had been invaded by a fellow Muslim nation. We did the same thing in Afghanistan and rid the Afghan people of this terrible Taliban regime. And now in Iraq we're trying to help Muslim people find a path to democracy.

So we have nothing to apologize for with respect to what we have tried to do to help Muslims over the years, and this is another example of our willingness to help. But we're doing it because we are a compassionate people, a generous people, a giving people, and not to try to get political advantage because we're showing off to a particular group.

Indonesia is a friendly nation to the United States. All of the countries that were hard hit are friends of the United States. Some are allies of the United States, such as Thailand, and this is an opportunity for us to help our friends and allies.

QUESTION: Secretary Powell, we'll just take a quick break and we'll be right back. We'll be right back.

(Break.)

QUESTION: And we're back with Secretary Powell. You know, I can tell you bristle at this notion that the United States hasn't done enough or it was too little too late, and this idea that we've been stingy. But when you look at all of the developed nations in the world, as a percentage of our GDP, we still are the lowest. Should we have a goal of increasing that?

SECRETARY POWELL: George, I would like to see much more money available, but we are the most generous nation on the face of the earth. Now, if you measure it as a percentage of GDP, you can make the case that no, we're not as high as others. But as you measure it as actual money going out the door to help people, we are the most generous nation on the face of the earth. And in this Administration over the last four years, the President has increased the amount of money going to development assistance. He has created something called the Millennium Challenge Account, which is going to send billions of dollars to help nations that are in need.

QUESTION: You still haven't sent the money out yet.

SECRETARY POWELL: But, George, you know, as well as I do, the money is here, the money is appropriated, contracts are being written and the money will flow. It takes time. This program is just about a year and -- it'll be two years old in January, from a dead start when the President announced it in State of the Union Address, and countries have been identified, contracts are being written and the money is going to flow. It will flow. And I hope Congress will continue to be generous, more generous than it was last year. I hope they'll give us more money.

This is also a nation -- the United States -- that has given some $15 billion committed to HIV/AIDS relief. All of that is part of our development assistance.

So this Administration has significantly increased the amount of money we are providing to the developing world and we have been the leader in the amount of money that is given out for particular crises that come along, humanitarian crises. Last year, as we heard the President say yesterday, $2.4 billion was given by the United States in response to tragedies that come along. Earlier this year when the hurricanes swept the Caribbean, we went and made assessments. Everybody said you're not doing enough, you're not doing enough. We put a few million dollars out, and when we got a good assessment of the need, $120 million has gone out. We found money within State Department and USAID accounts and we went back to Congress to get more money.

And so it's a matter of making a good assessment of the need and then going and get the resources. And the President has made it absolutely clear to me that we have made a good start, but it is not enough. We know it's not enough. Thirty-five million doesn't even come near enough. And we have to work with the Congress to make sure that they understand what the magnitude of the need might be and then to eventually get the money.

QUESTION: One member of Congress, Senator Leahy of Vermont, said that you ought to consider taking some of the unspent reconstruction money from Iraq and devoting it to this disaster assistance. Are you open to that?

SECRETARY POWELL: No. The needs in Iraq are clear and Senator Leahy has the same concern I have. Are we going to provide the funds needed to respond to this catastrophe? And the answer is yes. Now, what the source of those funds will be remains to be seen, reallocation within current accounts, or supplemental funding from the Congress.

QUESTION: How about this issue of knitting together all of the different aid efforts, all the different international efforts? Jan Egeland said coordination is going to be key. Who should take the lead here? Should it be the U.S.? Should it be the United Nations? Which institution?

SECRETARY POWELL: I just got off the SVTS conference, or a television conference, with Jan Egeland and the Secretary General, where we talked about this. The reason the President directed the formation of a core group yesterday was because we wanted to get those nations in the region that had assets and experience -- Japan, India, the United States, Australia -- as a core group to start working in the region. That core group will expand and other nations will join it.

And we made it clear to the Secretary General and to the World Food Program head and to UN Development Program head and to Jan Egeland this morning on our television conference that this is going to be complementary of the UN's efforts. So many international organizations have capacity that they can bring to bear: the United Nations with all of its UN agencies; private NGOs that have such capacity; the European Union is taking the leadership on a donors conference; G-8, they'll be looking at debt relief in response to what Chancellor Schroeder said. So there are lots or organizations out there, but we believe with our core group concept and working with the United Nations we can make this a coordinated effort.

What we don't want is everybody suddenly sending canned goods to an airport and it costs more to deliver the canned goods than they're worth and they're not needed when they get there. This is the time for private citizens and governments to contribute money to the agencies that know how to deliver these services.

And where I bristle, George, is the suggestion that we made a trivial contribution. It wasn't trivial. Within 48 hours we had put down $35 million worth of taxpayer money and we made it clear that this was just a down payment on a much larger bill that was coming along. And so to read all of this and to hear from people that we're being stingy is just not right, and we shouldn't accept that hit because we have demonstrated last year $2.4 billion and we are anything but stingy. And we will demonstrate again this year and in 2005, in response to this current crisis, that this Administration and the American people will be as generous as is necessary to deal with this horrible tragedy that has hit South Asia.

QUESTION: I know you've got a lot more phone calls to make, but tomorrow is a big night for you as well. You're going to be in Times Square letting down the ball.

SECRETARY POWELL: I'm going to be Times Square letting down the ball.

QUESTION: When you send it off, what's going to be your wish for 2005?

SECRETARY POWELL: The wish that I have every year: that we can find peace in so many of the troubled spots of the world; that we can continue to help Afghanistan on its path to peace and democracy, we can do the same thing in Iraq; and that we can bring peace to places like Sudan, where I hope we'll have a breakthrough in the next day or so on the north-south problem that we've been working on for so many years; that we can continue to convince countries around the world, or have them convince themselves, that moving toward democracy and respecting the rights of their citizens and moving toward open economic systems where the market dictates and where free trade is really the solution to so many of our problems, that the world continues to move in that direction.

When I think about where I started senior public life, let's say 20 or 20-odd years ago with a Soviet Union and the threat of communism taking over the world and where we are now, so many good things have happened. Yes, there are still problems and challenges. I want to see the Middle East move forward toward the creation of the Palestinian state that can live side by side in peace with Israel. But these are difficult problems. They take time, they take energy, they take political determination and they take patience. But I think 2005 gives us an opportunity to solve many crises. Libya has given up its nuclear weapons. Iran and North Korea are under the spotlight of the international community because of their nuclear weapons program. It may be an opportunity in the Middle East with new leadership coming in place.

And so I'm an optimist, and as that ball comes down tomorrow night at midnight, I will look to 2005 with a spirit of optimism.

QUESTION: And as you head into private life, are you going to be making any New Years resolutions?

SECRETARY POWELL: Not yet. And I've always kept New Years resolutions to myself. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you, George, and Happy New Year to you and your family.
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/40142.htm