Transcript for Sept. 24

PRES. KARZAI: He is not in Afghanistan, I can tell you that for sure.

MR. RUSSERT: Is he in Pakistan?

PRES. KARZAI: Probably he is there, that’s, that’s what the reports say now, that we—that come across us.

MR. RUSSERT: The RAND Corporation did a study, and this is part of their report, and let me read it with you. “‘The evidence suggests the [Pakistani intelligence] is involved in [assisting Taliban insurgents] in several ways.’ ... Pakistani intelligence agents have provided intelligence to the Taliban about coalition plans and tactical operations, he said, tipping off Taliban forces and allowing them to flee. Western military forces have intercepted the tips and know they are from people connected to Pakistani intelligence, [Seth Jones, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation] said ... ‘The U.S. government also believes they have given monetary assistance and maybe weapons [Jones], said.’” Do you agree with that?

PRES. KARZAI: We have a serious problem in this regard. When I said we must go to the sources of terrorism, where they are trained, where they are equipped, where they are given money, where they are given motivation, and sent to kill international coalition forces—engineers, doctors, Afghans—that’s what I meant.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re talking about Pakistan.

PRES. KARZAI: Wherever the source is.

MR. RUSSERT: But President Musharraf just signed an agreement with the tribes in Pakistan to, in effect, create a sanctuary, to allow the people to stay there and conduct their business, which would allow them easily to go in and out of Afghanistan.

PRES. KARZAI: That is what he mentioned to me, President Musharraf when he was in, in Kabul. The first item in that agreement with those terrorist networks there in Pakistan and Waziristan area of Pakistan, is asking the, the terrorists not to cross over into Afghanistan for operations. Now, if that is implemented, we’ll be very happy. But unfortunately, right after the signing of the agreement, we saw that two tribal chiefs in Pakistan were killed in that area by the terrorists, by the Taliban. And an Afghan governor in the neighborhood of that area was assassinated, killed by a suicide bomber. So the trend since then is not good. But we’ll have to wait and see as to whether the truth as it is agreed upon is going to be implemented, or will be violated. If it is violated, then we’ll be very skeptical, and that will exactly mean a sanctuary for terrorism in that part of Pakistan.

MR. RUSSERT: The last question: Did you not give President Musharraf intelligence information as to where al-Qaeda and perhaps Osama bin Laden may be residing?

PRES. KARZAI: We have provided from time to time for the past so many years information to our friends, our brothers, our neighbors in Pakistan about sanctuaries, about training grounds, about personalities associated with terrorism.

MR. RUSSERT: And what was their reaction?

PRES. KARZAI: They came back to us to say that some of the information was old, but that it was true sometime before that. And that—we hope that more action will be taken in this regard.

MR. RUSSERT: Could the Pakistanis capture bin Laden if they wanted to?

PRES. KARZAI: I, I, I don’t have so much information to speculate on that, but if you all tried collectively, he would not be able to hide.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President, we thank you again for joining us, and have a safe trip home.

PRES. KARZAI: Welcome, sir. Good to talk to you.

MR. RUSSERT: Next up, a discussion of the upcoming elections, and the influence of conservative Christians with former Republican Senator John Danforth, author of “Faith and Politics: How the Moral Values Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together.”

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back, joined by former Senator John Danforth.

Welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

MR. JOHN DANFORTH: Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT: You are a former United States senator, a former ambassador to the United Nations, an ordained Episcopal priest, and you’ve written a book on “Faith and Politics.” And we take particular note of it this morning because of things that you have said. Let’s share that with our viewers. “By a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube. Standing alone, each of these initiatives has its advocates, within the Republican Party and beyond. But the distinct elements do not stand alone. Rather they are parts of a larger package, an agenda of positions common to conservative Christians and the dominant wing of the Republican Party.” You’re suggesting the Christian right has taken over the Republican Party?

MR. DANFORTH: Yeah, I think it has. This is the base of the Republican Party, and the nature of politics in America now is to appeal to the political base, to the exclusion of everybody else. I think that’s what’s—it’s happened in both parties, the Democrats have their base, our base is the Christian conservatives.

MR. RUSSERT: Why has this happened, and shouldn’t the Christian conservatives be saluted for standing up and exercising their democratic franchise?

MR. DANFORTH: Well, they certainly have the right to speak out. And I, I would hope that everybody who speaks out from the standpoint of religion would do so with, with some degree of humility, recognizing that they don’t have a monopoly on truth. But the problem is, when a political party becomes a sectarian party, when it becomes the party of one branch of one religion, and I think that that’s what’s happened to the Republican Party. And I, I would hope that the Republican Party would get back to its moorings.

MR. RUSSERT: You write with real conviction, senator, this is what you say, “When Christians claim special knowledge of God’s truth, when they advance wedge issues, when they divide America between ‘people of faith’ and their ‘enemies,’ Christians become not the means of peace but the cause of conflict.  In that case, Christians are far from being powerless. They are powerful contributors to what has gone wrong in American politics.”

MR. DANFORTH: Well, I think that that’s true. And I mean, to me, one of the messages of religion, in fact, the, the meaning of the world religion has to do with holding people together. It’s the same root as, as the word that “ligament” comes front. But I think, in fact, religion in various part of the world—Iraq, for example—has become the means of division and, and bloodshed.  And in our own country, when it’s used politically—and we’ve always seen this, our founding fathers saw it when they wrote the Constitution—religion has the capacity to divide us. So if it—if religion is presented as sort of, “My way is God’s way and your way is not, you’re, you’re against God,” there can be no more divisive factor in politics than that.

MR. RUSSERT: Christian conservatives who step forward and say, “However, senator, I believe that abortion is the taking of a life. I believe that there is a life in that petri dish and that’s why I’m against stem cell research. I believe that the Bible teaches me that homosexuality is immoral.  How can you ask me to compromise on those kinds of life and death and moral issues?”

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