Interview by Alan Nathan of Radio America

QUESTION: [How long will it be before the President tires of the shenanigans of the UN Security Council?]

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Well, the President and the Secretary of State have both spoken, just said that time is running out. I would look for some action no later than the end of next week in the Security Council.

QUESTION: (Unrecorded.)

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Yeah, that would be my best guess.

QUESTION: (Unrecorded.)

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Yeah.

QUESTION: We are often referred to as unilateralist when we're just asking for compliance to UN resolutions. How does the world get away with describing us that way?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: I think the moniker "unilateral" is applied to us by nations primarily who are jealous of the fact that at this point in history we've got power, prestige, influence, and clout beyond that of any nation in the world, in the history of the world, and further, that we've got a President who wants to use those gifts wisely and well; so, in jealousy, they call us unilateral.

The comments, the preparatory comments you made about the nations who described us as unilateral wound like State Department talking points.

QUESTION: [We're surprised by the State Department. We hear that 9/11 victims wishing to sue the government of Saudi Arabia are not being assisted by the State Department; rather, the State Department is backing the government of Saudi Arabia.]

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Well, I don't accept your reference to the State Department being an impediment. That's absurd and ridiculous. Millions of your countrymen each year benefit from the activities positively of the Department of State.

On the question of Saudi Arabia, look, it's fine to bring a suit against a government, but you're not going to find that government guilty of this. The citizens, primarily Saudi, were responsible for causing this horror in our country, and we ought to keep our eye on the ball and the root of the problem and rip it out, root and grass. That's not the government of Saudi Arabia.

QUESTION: [Clearly, the State Department is falling down on the job. One of its programs, Visa Express, made it possible for the 9/11 hijackers to come into the country. The State Department was in denial for months about this.]

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Yeah, I think there was some denial, but I think, to be fair, you might take a look at the number of letters the Department of States gets from Members of Congress each year, in the hundreds, asking us to give special consideration to people for visas, et cetera. So you're caught in the middle, one way or the other.

(Commercial Break)

QUESTION: [Your boss (the President) has it right on the war on terror and the war(!) on Iraq. We get criticism for promoting containment and isolation, yet there are plenty of examples of breaches. (The host names some.) How many breaches have to happen before the world understands the importance of containment?]

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Well, I'm delighted, first of all, that you could find some merit in the Department of State, after the criticism earlier, and it was indeed --

QUESTION: [You do well, but you also screw up.]

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Come on, it's my turn. It's my turn. It's my turn. The question was, how long do we wait. We don't wait. The President is not going to sit back and have another 9/11, and that's why he said, if we have to do it ourselves, we'll do it ourselves. We're tired of waiting. We're not going to be hit again first. We're not going to give people that opportunity. That's why the urgency on Iraq.

QUESTION: [Some long-time friends seem most troublesome right now. For example, France. They don't want a resolution that includes consequences for non-compliance. That's not going to fly (with this administration), is it?]

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: No, it's not. We're not interested in empty gestures, and no resolution or no amount of diplomacy which is not backed by force can succeed.

QUESTION: [The House and Senate passed a resolution that strengthened your boss, Secretary Powell's, hand.]

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Well, I don't think there's any question about it.

QUESTION: [Some UN members loathe us. What was the reaction to the passing of the resolution (by Congress)?]

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Well, I think -- I don't know if it's loathing. It certainly is jealousy.

Secretary Powell and the President were delighted with the Senate vote. Both spoke publicly about it. It dramatically strengthened our hand internationally and made it very clear that this public, which was recently struck a year ago by the horror of terrorism, is not going to sit back and let it happen again.

The British have joined us. They are right with us, cheek-by-jowl, and the President has said, even if we have to go outside a UN Security Council resolution, we will have a coalition of the willing, and certainly our British friends and others will be there.

QUESTION: (A question regarding former President Clinton.)

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Look, Mr. Clinton has to live on his own record. We've been in the job a year-and-a-half. I'm not interested in criticizing him. I'm interested in making sure that we do a job that's not able to be criticized.

QUESTION: A Washington Times article says Saddam Hussein was surprised that he could try to murder a (US) president and get off so easily.

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Yeah, but I'm not in the mind of the Iraqi leader. Maybe we should have done a lot of different things in 1990-91. The point of the matter is, we are onto him now, and we're not going to let him wiggle off.

QUESTION: There's a claim that Muslim countries can't be turned into democracies and that the removal of Hussein could result in something worse.