MR. GINGRICH: It was, it was a war of choice in the sense that we believed that sooner or later he was going to hit us, and therefore I would argue that the only question was timing. But I believe it’s much harder to make the case that the United States would be safer today with Saddam Hussein in power.

MR. RUSSERT: Because...

MR. GINGRICH: But, by the way, remember Saddam was paying $25,000 dollars to the family of every suicide bomber. Saddam had a direct relationship with al-Qaeda, and if you read the recent joint forces command report, which is declassified and has been published, which goes through all the information we’ve learned from the Iraqi generals, it’s very compelling that this was a dangerous dictatorship and that we had a very good reason to be worried about it.

MR. RUSSERT: Has our involvement and presence in Iraq and the difficulties in that war, and the costs of that war, limited our options with Iran?

MR. GINGRICH: I think we’re only limited by our own psychology. I think we clearly have the capability if we need to, to replace the regime in Tehran. We clearly have the power and capacity in the region. I—it’s hard for me to understand why people think that an America too timid to take on Saddam would have had more support from the Arab world against Iran, that an America which has shown enormous endurance and enormous courage in doing what it has to do. And I think that Iran is, in fact, the centerpiece of our future, and Ahmadinejad, the current dictator, clearly intends to defeat the United States and to eliminate Israel from the face of the Earth. And people who are watching us ought to really think through what those words mean and ask yourself, “Do you prefer to wait until we lose Tel Aviv and Jerusalem or do you prefer to wait until an Iranian nuclear weapon is in New York harbor?”

MR. RUSSERT: So what do we do?

MR. GINGRICH: I think—first of all, I think Senator Santorum has the right approach, which is a bill which says we actively support every dissident element in Iran. We have an explicit goal of replacing the current dictatorship and we do it as—if it is at all possible over the next two or three years, we do it—we do it, you know, with, with, with the kind of things we did for example in, in Poland where we very—or in Ukraine or in Hungary or in Romania where we’ve been very successful allying with the people. Remember this is a very...

MR. RUSSERT: But if that doesn’t work, will you...

Story continues below ↓

MR. GINGRICH: Ultimately, if you have no choice there may be a morning you have to replace the regime militarily. That’s the last step, it’s not the first step. But you can’t read what Ahmadinejad says—and this is not a CIA analyst problem. He says this stuff publicly on television.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think the American...

MR. GINGRICH: You can’t read that and not...

MR. RUSSERT: ...people would support another war? And do you—how would the world respond to the U.S. invading another Muslim country?

MR. GINGRICH: Well, first of all, I mean, you just jumped past two or three years of trying to replace the regime peacefully.

MR. RUSSERT: No, but these are options that people policy...

MR. GINGRICH: I believe if, if the world under—is forced to confront the degree to which Ahmadinejad—first of all, why is the, why is the United Nations still allowing Iran to vote? Here you have a regime that says publicly, “We want to eliminate a fellow member of the”—you know. And he talks about “eliminate from the face of the earth.” He talks about catastrophic attack. He’s the—this—Ahmadinejad is very clear, and he’s a religious fanatic, and there’s every reason to believe he means this. This is not idle bluffing, that the morning they get nuclear weapons if he—if it’s—if he gets his say, he’s going to use them.

Now, if the American people come to believe that’s true—and all you got to do is, one, watch his speeches, and, two, watch the nine-minute cartoon they ran on television recruiting 10-year-olds to be suicide bombers—this is on Iranian public television—I think the American people faced with that would say, very sadly, “Get rid of that government. We hope you do it peacefully, we hope you do it diplomatically, but we will not accept you coming back and telling us you didn’t do it.”

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to domestic programs. 2001, the Republicans took control of the White House, had control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. And here’s the record on federal spending. It has gone from 1.9 trillion to 2.6 trillion, up 37 percent, nearly three times the rate of inflation. The budget had a $281 billion dollar surplus, is now $336 billion dollar deficit. That’s a swing of $617 billion dollars. The debt is nearly $9 trillion dollars. Gas prices have gone from $1.47 to 2.91, an increase of 98 percent. Why shouldn’t voters say they’ve had enough?

MR. GINGRICH: Well, I think this is part of why the Republican leadership has a window of a few more months to change. And I will say that I thought, as I mentioned, that I thought Speaker Hastert’s recent statement that the Senate bill is so outrageously too big that the House won’t even conference on it was exactly right. I think the Senate should be challenged to pass the supplemental bill at 92 billion. I think that the recent announcement by Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman and by Congressman Dave Reichert in the House that FEMA needs to be totally replaced and looked at from a totally new angle is, frankly, the right kind of approach to real change. I believe that the amount of spending increase you just cited is further—is proof we don’t need a tax increase, we need to control spending. That’s why, that’s why conservatives want to do what we did, you know, when we got to a balanced budget, the first four balanced budgets since the 1920s, we did it by controlling spending, reforming welfare, reforming Medicare, and we did it while cutting taxes to increase economic growth.

So the idea that liberal Democrats, that Nancy Pelosi and others have, that if only we had a big tax increase, that would help things, is exactly wrong. First of all, I think it would lead to a recession and there would be fewer jobs and lower income. Second, it would just feed big government. This government has more than enough money to do everything it needs to do, and the challenge is to fundamentally overhaul it. And I would just say our track record in the late ‘90s was pretty darn good. We actually managed to balance the federal budget while cutting taxes, while reforming welfare, while cutting...

MR. RUSSERT: But, Mr. Speaker, in all candor, 2001 till now, complete Republican control, hasn’t the welfare state grown?

MR. GINGRICH: I just said to you a minute ago, I think they have to have real change. I’m not, I’m not defending the current spending, I—your numbers there.

But let me take your second part, which is there’s an enormous opportunity which I think would get substantial support to take the challenge of gasoline prices and the challenge of relying on dictatorships, whether Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Russia—I mean, there are a lot of unstable governments—Iraq is not a dictatorship—but there are a lot of unstable governments out there that are currently the heart of our energy strategy. And at a time when India and China are growing in their demand for energy, the need for a national strategy—and I’ve strongly supported on a bipartisan basis the concept of 25 percent renewables by 2025.

I think that Congressman Nussle’s bill on alternative fuels is exactly the right direction. The need to go to—the ability to subsidize gas stations to open up an E85 pump so you can have ethanol in large amounts. There are things you can do. I mean, my only point to Republican leaders is there are things we can do in the age of television in May, June and July that change the nature of the debate in September and October.

MR. RUSSERT: But you did say that your fellow Republicans stopped being reformers, reverted to being normal palls. And that in terms of talking about Jake—Jack Abramoff, that any effort to push this under the rug, to say this is just one bad apple, that’s baloney. You believe there’s culture of corruption.

MR. GINGRICH: I think there’s a problem in both parties. Remember, you just had the, the leading Democrat on the Ethics Committee have to step down because of allegations in millions and millions of dollars of corruption. You just had Congressman Jefferson’s chief of staff plead guilty to accepting bribery, a Democrat from New Orleans. I think that there are problems in both parties. I’ve advocated, for example, lifting any limit on contributions back home but banning fund-raising in Washington, because there’s no reason for incumbents to raise money in Washington from the lobbyists they’re working with. And I think we need a very different approach than we’ve had, frankly—I think the McCain-Feingold censorship bill actually compounds the current problems. And I think that there are—there need to be fundamental changes, and the recent reform bill did nothing in the direction of serious reform.

MR. RUSSERT: As you well remember in 1997, you were reprimanded by the House and paid a $300,000 dollar fine for not telling—sharing truthful information with the committee looking into some of your activities. Do you believe that would be an impediment to you if you decided to seek higher office?

CONTINUED

< Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Next >

Discuss Story On Newsvine
Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh
Email
Instant Message
Print