Transcript for Sept. 3

MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: Only 65 days until the midterm elections. The Democrats must gain six seats to take control of the U.S.  Senate. This fall we will once again present debates between the candidates in some of the hottest Senate races across the country, and this morning we kick off our 2006 SENATE DEBATE series with one of the most closely watched races of the year, Pennsylvania, where incumbent Republican Senator Rick Santorum faces off against Democratic challenger, State Treasurer Bob Casey.

Rick Santorum, Bob Casey, welcome both to MEET THE PRESS.

MR. BOB CASEY: Good to be with you, Tim.

SEN. RICK SANTORUM (R-PA): Thank you, Tim.

MR. CASEY: Thanks.

MR. RUSSERT: Let’s go right to it: the war in Iraq. Mr. Casey, you’re the challenger, you told The Philadelphia Inquirer August 2005 the following:

“Casey said he would have voted for the war considering the evidence at the time, and supported the spending bills that funded the effort.” Knowing what you know today, would you still have voted for the war?

MR. CASEY: Tim, before I begin my answer I just want to make a note of a loss in Pennsylvania. Mayor Bob O’Connor, in the city of Pittsburgh, passed away. We want to express—I think we share that here today—we want to express our condolences to his family.

Tim, on the war in Iraq, if, if, if a lot of Americans knew now—if they knew then what they know now, they would, they would have thought that this war was the war that shouldn’t have been fought based upon the misleading of this administration.

Here’s what I think has to happen in Iraq today.

MR. RUSSERT: So you would not vote for it today.

MR. CASEY: Based upon the information that we have now, I think that, that a lot of Americans would have serious doubts. I’m not sure there would have even been a vote on Iraq that early in the...

MR. RUSSERT: But in ‘05 you said you’d vote for it. Would you today in ‘06 vote for it?

MR. CASEY: Based upon the evidence that was presented then, yes, which I think has been—was misleading, and I think it was faulty. The intelligence was faulty.

MR. RUSSERT: But today, today is no. Today you would vote no.

MR. CASEY: Today—if we knew then what we know now, sure. I think there wouldn’t have been a vote and I think people would have changed.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me also ask about the funding. Earlier in the week I had said that Democrats had not sought to cut off the funding. In fact, Congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and 17 other Democrats have called for the End the War in Iraq Act of 2005 to cut off funding for the war. Would you vote to cut off funding?

MR. CASEY: I don’t think we can, Tim. I’m not ready to abandon this mission; I think a lot of Americans are not, either. What has to happen in Iraq is what you’ve, you’ve not seen. We need new leadership. We don’t need a deadline—a timeline; we need new leadership. And part of that leadership, I think, involves a couple of things. Let me just go through four of five of them.

One of them is a question of accountability. Our troops have been accountable with their lives, and yet a lot of politicians in Washington haven’t been held accountable. You know the, the work of Thomas Ricks, who wrote a book recently based upon his, his work at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. In that book he lays the blame squarely on the Congress failing to hold the Bush administration accountable. Accountability, I think, means replacing Donald Rumsfeld—Rick and I disagree on that—it means finding out how and whether we were lied to with regard to intelligence.

The second thing we need, I think, in Iraq, in terms of a new direction is to make sure that we have clear and measurable benchmarks. Not just from the president, but from the Iraqis as well. What is the plan that the president can tell us about with regard to disarming the militias? What is the plan to bring oil production above the pre-war levels? All of that kind of accountability and clear benchmarks.

And thirdly, I think what’s happening in Iraq should tell us that we need to transform the mission on the ground. There’s no reason why American soldiers have to continually lead, lead on the ground, and, and go ahead of the Iraqis.  The Iraqis need to take over and take on some of these street patrols, patrols in Baghdad and so many other places.

And I think also, Tim, I’ll conclude with this: We need to rebuild the American military. We need to have more Special Forces. I’ve called for a doubling in the number of Special Forces. Senator Santorum apparently doesn’t agree with that. It’s the right thing to do.

And I would just ask Senator Santorum: Donald Rumsfeld, I’ve called for him to be replaced, Rick. Where do you stand on that?

SEN. SANTORUM: I’ll be happy to start there. I think Secretary Rumsfeld has done a fine job as the defense secretary, and the problems that we are confronting are problems of an enemy that’s a very potent enemy—much more potent than I think anybody ever anticipated. You know, we have a great game plan. We go it just like a football team. You go in there, you do your best, but the enemy has a vote, the enemy can react and change its tactics, and they have, and they’ve been very, very effective. We need to go out there and continue to fight this war on Islamic fascism. Not just, as my opponent likes to focus on, just the war in Iraq. That’s a front of a multi-front war in which we’re fighting against an enemy that’s a very dangerous enemy.

As you know, Tim, I’ve been giving speeches not just in Pennsylvania, but here in Washington, talking about the importance of focusing the American public on the terrific potency of the enemy that we face. This is an enemy that uses a tactic that is a very effective tactic against us, called terror, because they don’t care about life, and we do. And so when you have—when you match up those forces, people who don’t put on uniforms, people who are willing to die for their cause, and want to die for their cause, makes it a very difficult enemy to fight, one that we have not successfully fought in the past—or I shouldn’t say successfully, one that we haven’t fought in the past.

So we have a very difficult enemy. We have an enemy that now is trying to get nuclear weapons in, in, in the form of Iran, and one that—you know, we can ask all these questions about process and procedure, most of which I would argue have been answered already. The real tough questions is how do you win this war? How do you go out and, and, and prosecute a war that—successfully?  And I’ve laid out a very clear vision on that, and my opponent has not.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me talk about a Pentagon report on Friday. Our ambassador to Iraq has said the principal problem is not foreign terrorists, it’s sectarian violence, Sunni vs. Shiite. The Pentagon report on Friday said this: “Sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq and the security problems have become more complex than at any time since the U.S. invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report said. ... ‘Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife.’ ... ‘The last quarter, as you know has been rough,’ [Asst. Secretary of Defense Peter] Rodman said.  ‘The levels of violence are up and the sectarian quality of the violence is particularly acute and disturbing.’”

This is Shiite vs. Sunni, Iraqi vs. Iraqi.

SEN. SANTORUM: Yeah. This is...

MR. RUSSERT: What do you do about that, stay the course?

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