Transcript for May 14

MR. RUSSERT: But what...

MR. GINGRICH: Now—then what I would do is very straightforward, I would require—and by the way, this can all be done with—at less cost than the Senate bill. I would require everyone who’s here to go home long enough to apply legally to get a card with a biometric, to sign a contract that says, “I will obey the law, I will pay taxes, and I can be removed from the United States in 48 hours if I break the agreement.” By the way, the Senate bill requires paying a fine which is larger than the cost of going home.

MR. RUSSERT: But Mr. Speaker, many of those people have children here who are American citizens. Do they leave their children behind?

MR. GINGRICH: I—there are a lot of things you can do.

MR. RUSSERT: What do you do?

MR. GINGRICH: Look, if...

MR. RUSSERT: It’s a real issue. It’s a real human issue.

MR. GINGRICH: You go home long enough to obey the...

MR. RUSSERT: Without your children?

MR. GINGRICH: In every case, you can find ways to make accommodations. The Senate is requiring them to pay a fine to the government larger than the cost of flying home. Remember, I’m saying to people who came here illegally, “We’re going to allow you to legally go home. We’re going to allow you legally to apply for the card. But we are not going to allow people to start their career in America by breaking the law.” And I think—I, I can’t tell you how strongly I feel that if we set a pattern that breaking the law pays—and by the way, the Senate provision says you—if you—it’s going to create an entire forgery industry, because it creates three classes of people. If you’re here less than two years, you have to leave. If you’re here two to five years you can stay, but under certain circumstances. If you’re over five years you get to stay. For the first time in history, we’re going to create a forgery industry to prove you’ve been breaking the law longer...

MR. RUSSERT: But if you...

MR. GINGRICH: But just think...

MR. RUSSERT: If Hispanics are listening to you today, Latinos, and Newt Gingrich is saying mother and fathers have to go home, and break up the families...

MR. GINGRICH: I didn’t say break up the family, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: What happens to the kids?

MR. GINGRICH: I didn’t say anything—I didn’t say anything about that.

MR. RUSSERT: What happens to the kids?

MR. GINGRICH: I didn’t—first of all, in the age of jet airplanes—you, you, you phase this in over three years. The—there are ways to do this that can be humane, they can be compassionate, they can be caring. But I think for you to take the, the most difficult possible case, you can decide on humanitarian grounds to have a handful of exceptions.

But for you to establish the principle that we’re now going to reward those who have broken the law the longest, we’re going to create an entire forgery industry so people prove they’ve been here as long as possible, breaking the law, and you don’t think we’re going to send a signal to the entire planet:

Show up in the U.S. for the next amnesty. It was three million last time, it’s going to be—the estimate, by the way, which I think will come out from the Heritage Foundation tomorrow is that the bill in the Senate is between 30 and 50 million people ultimately allowed to become citizens under the extended family provision in this bill. Thirty to 50 million people. You don’t think 10 years from now we’re going to face another wave of illegals who are sitting there saying—I—by the way, 53 percent of all Hispanic-Americans, people who have citizenship, agree with the provision, that you should enforce the law. Because remember, many of them have relatives who’ve been sitting at home, waiting and obeying the law, hoping to get a legal visa. And now they’re about to be told that somebody who has been breaking the law for 11 years has a better place in America than somebody who waited back home to obey the law to come to the U.S. legally.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq. This is what Newt Gingrich said back in 2002, when Congress was thinking about voting for the war, and this is how he approached the issue: “The question is not, ‘Should we replace Saddam?’ The question is, ‘Should we wait until Saddam gives biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to terrorists?’ We should not wait until Saddam has the full capacity to create terror around the planet and is able to blackmail with nuclear weapons. Waiting is not an option.”

And then about a year later you were on MEET THE PRESS, I asked—six months into the war—and I asked you about it, and this is what you said:

(Videotape, December 22, 2002):

MR. GINGRICH: Those people are truly evil, and we have to finish hunting them down. And until we finish that, we shouldn’t say another word about an exit strategy. We are there to stay till the job’s done.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Two years later, in ‘05, this is what The New York Times said you—reported your quotes: “Any effort to explain Iraq as ‘We are on track and making progress’ is nonsense.”

And then in your book, “Winning the Future”: “We should be clear: There are a lot of problems. Iraq is a mess. It is going to remain a mess for a long time.”

And then last month: “Gingrich ... claims to be ‘mystified’ by the Bush administration’s incompetence since Baghdad fell in 2003.”

And then in South Dakota in one speech: “It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. ... We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it.” Later that day you said that we have to—we’ll be there for a long time. Knowing what you know now, do you believe going into Iraq was the right thing to do?

MR. GINGRICH: Well, let me start with the, the South Dakota quote, which, in fact the newspaper retracted the headline on. What I’ve said is very consistent. Saddam was very dangerous. If you ask me is America safer with Saddam in jail than it was with Saddam in charge of the government, I think we’re much safer today than we would have been, because it’s very clear from United Nations reports, and as you know I co-chaired with Senator George Mitchell a task force on, on reforming the U.N., it’s very clear from the United Nations information that sanctions were breaking down. The French and the Russians, basically, were, were being increasingly bribed to allow all sorts of loopholes. So if, if Saddam were still in power today, there’s no doubt in my mind the sanctions regime would be gone, and the Middle East would be in much worse shape than it is.

Second, the initial war was, was a brilliant campaign. Tommy Franks’ campaign, in 23 days, eliminated the government, the dictatorship, created the opportunity for us to do exactly what we’d done in Afghanistan, which is turn the country back over to an interim government. We did it in Afghanistan in three weeks. The ambassador, Khalilzad, who is today the ambassador in Baghdad, did a brilliant job in Afghanistan. For reasons which—this is why I said I was mystified—I cannot, to this day, tell you why Ambassador Bremer thought it was his job to create an American-centered system to give speeches on Iraqi television, to be clearly seen as the guy in charge. Ambassador Khalilzad did it exactly right in Afghanistan. We’ve had a much less difficult problem. It has been much more successful. We are very slowly getting back to that position today. It’s exactly where General Abizaid wanted us to be all along, and I think we will eventually win the campaign in Iraq. But it has been much longer and much harder than it needed to be, largely I think because of the mistakes that were made when Ambassador Bremer was in charge in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: And the president?

MR. GINGRICH: Well, the president’s commander in chief. I mean you can’t...

MR. RUSSERT: But...

MR. GINGRICH: ...say the president’s commander in chief except when it goes wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: ...but knowing no weapons of mass destruction, knowing the level of insurgency resisting—resistance, knowing the sectarian violence, knowing the cost, do you believe it was still worthwhile and do you believe it was a war of choice or necessity?

MR. GINGRICH: Look, I believe that the president was exactly right in the State of the Union in 2002 to say there is an “axis of evil.” I think he was exactly right to say North Korea, Iran and Iraq are very, very dangerous. I think historians are going to look back and say that they are more troubled by what we have not yet done to figure out North Korea and Iran, both of which have made progress towards getting nuclear weapons in the following four years, than they are going to be by Iraq.

Iraq has been painful, we have learned some very difficult lessons, we are better prepared today if we have to do something than we were four years ago. But if you were to say, again, because all of history is looking forward. I would—I read the—as you know I’m on the Defense Policy Board—and I went—I read the initial report, the 100-page report the president got. Knowing what the intelligence community—not in the U.S., in Russia, in France, in Italy, in Britain—knowing what they believed in 2003, it would have been irresponsible not to have eliminated Saddam’s regime in 2003.

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