Transcript for Sept. 3

SEN. SANTORUM: That makes, that makes it more complex. The fact that not only do the Sunnis and the Shia, the, the radical Sunni terrorist groups, as well as nation-states, Shia nation-states like Iran, want to defeat the United States—and we’ve seen that very clearly, articulated just yesterday about submitting to, to their rule. And this was...

MR. RUSSERT: But, but stay on Iraq, Senator.

SEN. SANTORUM: I’m coming back to it. But we can’t—you can’t ignore the fact that we are, we are fighting this war on multi-fronts, and Iraq is simply a front. And Iran, which is, which is the principal stoker of this, this Shia/Sunni sectarian violence, would love nothing more to see than the Iraqi democracy fail because of that. This is a tactic of Iran to disrupt the—our, our efforts in Iraq by, in fact, trying to defeat the Sunnis. So there’s, there’s no question, this is a very complex war.

But understand, at the, at the heart of this war is Iran. Iran is the, is, is the problem here. Iran is the one that’s causing most of the problems in, in Iraq. It is causing most of the problems, obviously, with Israel today. It is, it is the one funding these organizations. And is the, is the country that we need to focus on in this war against Islamic fascism.

MR. RUSSERT: So Iran now has more influence in Iraq than they did before Saddam Hussein?

SEN. SANTORUM: Just understand.

MR. RUSSERT: Is that true?

SEN. SANTORUM: I would say that they have influence in, in, in a free country where you have an opportunity to express yourself, if you will. Yes.  You can probably do more...

MR. CASEY: All right let, let...

SEN. SANTORUM: ...in that country than they would within a dic—a totalitarian regime.

MR. CASEY: ...let me respond to that. Can I have a few minutes to respond?

MR. RUSSERT: Please.

MR. CASEY: Couple of things. First of all, what you just heard was Senator Santorum’s long answer, which basically says, “Stay the course in Iraq.” It’s a completely different point of view. I think we’ve go got to change the course and, and have new leadership. Part of that is that, that accountability I’ve talked about.

MR. RUSSERT: But stop there—stop there Mr. Casey.

MR. CASEY: OK.

MR. RUSSERT: I think there’s an evolution in your thinking. Let me go back to April of ‘05, the Philadelphia Daily News said, “The key thing now is to finish the job.” That’s Bob Casey, quote/unquote. October, “Some people think that pulling out is a good idea and a timeline is a good idea - I don’t agree with that. We’ve got more work to do to make sure that we get it right.” Then in June of ‘06, Bob Casey said, “He doesn’t believe U.S. troops should be removed from Iraq immediately but should be by the end of the year. He said the country has a new government and that it’s time for the Iraqis to take a greater role in defending themselves.” Should we finished the job? Or should we remove the troops by the end of the year?

MR. CASEY: Tim, I’ve never favored a deadline in, in, in this whole campaign. Because we have to do everything we can to, to hold the administration accountable. And when you’re—when it’s not going well, you, you see the, the Pentagon report this past—just in the last couple of days, this thing is headed toward civil war. We don’t know if it’s there yet. We hope it’s not. But when you have it heading in the wrong direction, you’ve got to have a new course. And, and...

MR. RUSSERT: So, so when John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004, introduced legislation which says, “All troops out by July of 2007,” Bob Casey votes no.

MR. CASEY: Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Santorum, leading up to the war. In October of 2002, this is what Rick Santorum said, “Saddam Hussein’s regime, is a serious and grave danger to the safety of the American people.” “Given the threat posed to he world by his weapons of mass destruction programs...” Would you now acknowledge that that was not correct?

SEN. SANTORUM: What I would say is that we have found weapons of mass destruction, they were older weapons, but we have found chemical weapons. The report was just released not too long ago that, that said that there were over 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, the president has accepted the report of his two task force and said, “That the chief weapons inspector has issued his report. Iraq did not have the weapons our intelligence believed were there.”

SEN. SANTORUM: Well, there were all sorts of weapons that our intelligence believed were there. They thought that they were new weapons. So far we, we did not—we have not found any new weapons. But we have found old weapons, weapons from the Iran/Iraq conflict, and we found over 500 and the report says that there were more.

MR. RUSSERT: Was...

SEN. SANTORUM: That’s the—that’s a fact.

MR. RUSSERT: Was Saddam a serious and grave danger to America?

SEN. SANTORUM: I believe that Iraq was a serious and grave danger to America. I believe...

MR. RUSSERT: Based on what?

SEN. SANTORUM: Well, based on the fact that they were working—and we have certainly lots of information about the fact that they were working with other terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, and that they were, in fact—had camps that they were—while they were training Baathists, they were also training terrorists to be used. The...

MR. RUSSERT: President Bush said that Iraq had “nothing to do with September 11^th.” Do you agree with that?

SEN. SANTORUM: As far as we know, that’s, that’s the case. But that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have a working relationship with a variety of different terrorist organizations. In fact, the Saddam Hussein government was giving bounties for killing Israelis, giving terrorists bounties for killing Israelis.

MR. RUSSERT: But knowing what you know now about the weapons of mass destruction, the primary rationale for the war, would you believe that the Iraq war was a war of choice or a war of necessity?

SEN. SANTORUM: I believe that it was a war of necessity because it—they are a—they were a threat. It is important that we are in the, the Middle East right now and, and confronting this broad war that we are involved in against Islamic fascism.

The bottom line is that we are now five years, almost, from September 11^th.  No one gives anybody credit for the fact that we have not had a serious—any kind of terrorist attack in this country. The reason we haven’t is because we’ve taken it to them where they are. We’ve taken it to them. We’ve disrupted their networks, not just in Afghanistan, but we have—remember, the president’s speech on the, on the night several weeks after 9/11 talked about we were going to go after terrorist organizations and sponsors, state sponsors of terrorists. There is no question Iraq was a state sponsor of terror, and we went after them. We had legitimate reason. The United Nations said that they weren’t complying. We thought at the time that they had weapons programs. We had bad intelligence. But you know what? I’m not—I don’t play Monday morning quarterback. That’s not, that’s not what you do here in Washington, D.C. You take all the information you have, you make the best decision you possibly can. And based on the information we had, there is no question that Iraq should, that the Iraq war should’ve commenced.

MR. RUSSERT: In ‘04, after the war, you said, “the Bush administration deserves a lot of credit for getting it right in Iraq.” Do you believe the Bush administration is still “getting it right” in Iraq?

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