TOM SCHIEFFER, US AMBASSADOR TO AUSTRALIA: I think he's very deeply touched by the fact that Australians have raised their hand again and want to help in this very difficult situation and it's very much appreciated.

MARK DAVIS: Well this is something of an international rarity. Did he or you ever doubt that this support would be forthcoming?

TOM SCHIEFFER: I think both the President and the whole administration realised that Australia would make the decision on its own and that the Government would act in what it believed to be Australia's best interests and our hope was always that it would be in concert with what we did, but we were glad to get that help yesterday.

MARK DAVIS: In your discussions with the Australian Government, was there any reference to regime change rather than just disarmament of possible chemical and biological weapons?

TOM SCHIEFFER: I think everybody always focused on the weapons of mass destruction. Regime change has been a policy of the United States for more than one administration. That is the fact that we believe that the Middle East would have been better off a long time ago without Saddam Hussein. That was a policy that President Clinton first initiated and one that President Bush endorsed. But having said that, the focus of this discussion has always been on weapons of mass destruction.

MARK DAVIS: Militarily victory is likely to be yours and ours, for that matter. But what diplomatic damage to America have you seen here and around the world?

TOM SCHIEFFER: It's obviously been a very difficult time for all of us. It's a difficult time in Australia, it's a difficult time in the United States, it's a difficult time around the world. But I think that at the end, if what happens here is that this coalition is met as a group of liberators and not as conquerors - if the weapons of mass destruction are then produced for the world to see, and if we see the people who have been tortured, if they come forward now when the threat of violence against them is no longer there, and I think we will see a lot of those stories - I think if all of those things happen the whole tenor of this debate will have changed and it will prove to the world that this was action that needed to be taken.

MARK DAVIS: But internationally the casualties have already been extremely high. We've seen the UN consigned to irrelevancy in the words of George Bush. NATO and the EU are in disarray, the US relationships with Europe are in tatters, Tony Blair is quite possibly mortally wounded and yet a shot hasn't even been fired. This is an extremely high price that America has already paid for this war with an uncertain outcome?

TOM SCHIEFFER: It has certainly not been easy and nobody argues that it has been easy, but we're now moving from the realm of speculation to fact and proof of what this is all about.

MARK DAVIS: America's reputation has undergone a very rapid deterioration. You've recently noted a wave of anti-Americanism in Australia and within the Labor Party. It's the least you could expect, isn't it, when the world is becoming increasingly scared, not of Saddam Hussein, but of your country and its president.

TOM SCHIEFFER: Unfortunately this debate has focused a lot on the United States and not on Saddam Hussein. And I think as a result of that, we are where we are.

MARK DAVIS: But do you understand why that's the case?

TOM SCHIEFFER: No, I'm not sure that I do understand why that's the case. I think that had we had troops not just from Australia and the United Kingdom and the United States on the Iraqi border, but if those troops had been joined with troops from France and China and Russia and Germany, we might have had a very different outcome to this, but we didn’t and we reached a point where diplomatic…

MARK DAVIS: Of course, but why haven't you? Isn't that a diplomatic failure, an absolute diplomatic failure to make your case - the fact that those countries aren't with you?

TOM SCHIEFFER: It certainly is a diplomatic failure because we haven't had a diplomatic resolution of the process. I think that Saddam Hussein perceived this as a test of wills and that his will would be greater than the international community's…his will to keep weapons of mass destruction would be greater than the international community's will to make him disarm, and he was right about that because it did split the international community, and the problem that he was wrong about is where that would leave him, and where that leaves him today is on the eve of destruction.

MARK DAVIS: But is this Saddam Hussein's making or your own? Isn't it the case that you…

TOM SCHIEFFER: It's Saddam Hussein. Mark, you can't argue, and the world cannot argue that Saddam Hussein could not have brought a peaceful resolution to this whole process if he had cooperated with the United Nations inspections, and if he had given up the weapons of mass destruction. Now, one nation on earth…

MARK DAVIS: The world simply does not believe you. You have not made your case. I mean, it's a simple matter of the world was fairly open, America had the opportunity to lay down its case and people simply don't believe you.

TOM SCHIEFFER: Has anybody in the international community agreed that Saddam Hussein has complied with the United Nations request resolutions, that he has given up weapons of mass destruction? Not one country in the world makes that argument. It's his fault and now he's going to pay the price for that.

MARK DAVIS: A few weeks ago one of your colleagues, John Brady Kiesling, the political counsellor at the American Embassy in Greece, resigned in protest after 20 years of service. In his resignation letter, he claims that America has squandered the moral capital built up over generations and says we should ask ourselves why have we failed to persuade most of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. Is that a question you've asked yourself?

TOM SCHIEFFER: No, I think everybody has to make a choice as to whether they serve the government or not, and I have the highest respect for those people who disagree with what the government does and then they take the position of resigning. Having said that, every fault in the world is not the fault of America and a failure of diplomacy, a failure of France to recognise that this was a matter that had to be resolved is not a failure of America.

MARK DAVIS: Well on a more serious note perhaps, Kieling also claims that there has been a systematic distortion of intelligence and a systematic manipulation of American opinion regarding what he says is the baseless connection between Iraq and al-Qa'ida. Has the Australian government…

TOM SCHIEFFER: This is not true. That's just not true. Just to say that Iraq has no al-Qa'ida connections is just not true. Now the other thing that I think…

MARK DAVIS: He has seen similar intelligence to you at the least.

TOM SCHIEFFER: I doubt that he has. He's in Athens and he was, I think, a political counsellor there and I'm not sure if he's seen the same intelligence as I have. But whether or not he has is immaterial. These systems – a vial of anthrax or Sarin gas or even a nuclear device that can be carried in a suitcase - these are all things that can be very dangerous and very easily handed off to others - and that is the concern the United States has about the whole situation.

MARK DAVIS: Tom Schieffer, thanks for joining us.