Here's the transcript of the first Palin interview with Charlie Gibson: Transcript Of Sarah Palin With Charlie Gibson From Thursday . What I saw on television must have left out parts of the interview, since I don't remember seeing certain details that I just read. In the transcript, Sarah doesn't look as much like a war-monger who wants to take on Russia with military force. She proposed sanctions as an alternative to war. And she doesn't want to second-guess Israel on taking out Iran's nuclear facilities, the way it did with Iraq in the 1980's. Maybe that doesn't leave Israel with a blank check to do anything it wants. At the same time, I wonder how Israel will discover where Iran is making the weapons. I wouldn't want innocent people to die if it guesses wrong. Yet, how many will die if it doesn't try to take the facilities out?
I also like this quote by Palin: "They see that the only option for them is to become a suicide bomber, to get caught up in this evil, in this terror. They need to be provided the hope that all Americans have instilled in us, because we're a democratic, we are a free, and we are a free-thinking society."
She repeats a lot of the typical Bush mantra about the 9/11 hijackers: that they hate American ideals, etc., etc. Yet, she acknowledges that they may have seen the evil they did as their only option, and she desires a political system that can give Arabs hope. This may be important, since one reason many Arabs allegedly hate us is that we have propped up dictators in the Middle East for our own economic interests, dictators who oppress their own people and leave them impoverished. Hopefully, allowing them to pick their own leaders can solve that problem. But there's always the possibility that we can manipulate a democracy as well.
Another note: the transcript flows more smoothly than what I saw on TV.