Transcript for March 19

REP. MURTHA: I, I think definitely the House. Now, whether they will in the Senate or not—but if you go back to ‘74, you’ll see a big change in what happened there.

MR. RUSSERT: After Watergate.

REP. MURTHA: After Watergate. I was one of the first ones elected during a special election. That fall, there were 43 incumbents got defeated; 36 were Republicans. There were 13 Republicans retired. We won every single seat. The American public is not going to be fooled by, by what, what’s happening in Iraq, and the rhetoric will not—he’s got to get back in his office and start to talk to people and find out what’s going on. It’s not—to go out and make speeches to the American public’s not going to win this war.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you expect an October surprise from the administration dealing with the war?

REP. MURTHA: I’ll tell you what they’re going to try to do. They’re trying to do this right now. They’re trying to blame the military, they’re trying, they’re trying to put the whole onus on the military for what happened in Iraq, and then they’re going to say, “Well, we’re, we’re going to have a plan for withdrawal.” You heard it already, you’ve heard them say, “OK, here’s the goal for withdrawal.” A benchmark, they call it. Just like they called the insurgency “dead end kids,” then they call it sectarian violence—it’s a civil war. And, and they—they’re trying to find—“The brigades are going to be better, they can take over 75 percent of the country, we can start the withdrawal.”

Now, I don’t know how many they’ll withdraw, but here’s the problem with the plan they have vs. my plan. My plan is redeploy as quickly as possible to protect our troops. Their plan is you draw out the withdrawal, which means you’ve got less troops on the ground that are more vulnerable to attack, because the IEDs and the convoys are the ones where—are being attacked. So I’m, I’m convinced that, that my, my plan is the only plan that, that will work and protect the American troops.

MR. RUSSERT: But you expect by November there’ll be significant troop withdrawals?

REP. MURTHA: I expect them to announce significant withdrawals. And I think—I, I say there’ll be withdrawals. But there’ll be—for instance, you’ll see in the spring they’ll start to announce withdrawal and you will see what they call benchmarks, what everybody else calls a timetable. But I tell you, we have to convince the Iraqis—we have to say to the Iraqis, “This is your war, this is no longer our war. This—you’ve got an elected government, this is up to you now to settle this thing.” And then we’ve got to say, say to them, “You start to work this out yourself. We’re going to, we’re going to redeploy our troops as quickly as possible.”

MR. RUSSERT: Americans are overwhelmingly against immediate withdrawal; 30 say yes; 66 say no.

REP. MURTHA: Well, it depends on what you mean by immediate withdrawal. I, I say we, we should say to them, “OK, Iraqi government, here—here’s your incentive. We’re going to start to redeploy our troops as quickly as we can.” And when I say as quickly as we can, I, I don’t know what the timetable should be. Six months, seven months, something like—we could do it in six months. And I think we’d be better off, the troops would be better off, the country’d be better off, we better off financially and human resourcewise.

MR. RUSSERT: If the president decided that military action in Iran was necessary, should he come to Congress first?

REP. MURTHA: He—there’s no way he’s going to take military action in Iran.

Iran is, is three times as big geographically, there’s 58 million people vs. 26 million people in, in Iraq, and, and there’s no way. A fanatical government—I mean, the, the president of the United States does not have a military option. He can say he has a military option; he does not have a military option.

MR. RUSSERT: But he should come to Congress if he is...

REP. MURTHA: Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, we, we have allowed our, our influence, our, our separation from, from the president to be—in the last couple of presidents when it goes to war. The, the Congress is the only one that can authorize to go to war. He has to come to Congress before he does anything, let alone go to war.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat from Wisconsin, said the president should be censured for eavesdropping on telephone and computers of—by Americans. Would you support such a censure?

REP. MURTHA: Well, if it were illegal, it, it’s certainly something we have to look at. I, I think there’s—I, I don’t know enough about the issue. Even though we have complete responsibility for, for oversight and, and funding, funding it. I had a briefing the other day, I’m satisfied the safeguards that are in place are significant, but we have to look at whether it’s illegal or not. I, I’m hesitant to say the president ought to be censured before a committee looks at it and really investigates it and comes up with some real conclusions.

MR. RUSSERT: Congressman John Murtha, we thank you for sharing your views.

REP. MURTHA: Nice to be here, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: And we’ll be right back.

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And how about those Boston College Eagles? On to the Sweet 16. Go Eagles!

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