MTP Transcript for Oct. 1

SEN. DeWINE: Look, Tim, one point, just one point.

REP. BROWN: ...towards the Cold War and not towards the war on terror.

MR. RUSSERT: All right, hold on. Hold on. All right, Mike...

REP. BROWN: We wanted to see a shift in our intelligence focus...

SEN. DeWINE: Give me 60 seconds.

REP. BROWN: ...and Mike sat on that committee and failed to do it.

MR. RUSSERT: OK. All right. All right.

REP. BROWN: So we had to try to do it on the House floor. I ultimately voted...

MR. RUSSERT: Time out. Time out, time out, time out, time out, time out.

REP. BROWN: I ultimately voted every time for those intelligence budgets, and he knows that.

MR. RUSSERT: All right. Ask him one question and then I want to move on.

SEN. DeWINE: The majority of times of those 10 times where Sherrod Brown voted to cut our intelligence spending, he was the minority even of his own party. In addition to that, Tim, we passed the Patriot Act. We all came together, passed it, 98-to-1 in the Senate. That means Ted Kennedy voted for it, John Kerry voted for it. Sherrod Brown in the House, was one of 66 members of the House to vote against the Patriot Act, and he continues to vote against the Patriot Act, to deny our law enforcement the tools they need to go against terror.

MR. RUSSERT: All right. I’m going to give him 30 seconds to respond to that, then I want to move to the future.

REP. BROWN: Well, the, the—again, the—on the intelligence, the intelligence...

MR. RUSSERT: But you voted against the Patriot Act?

REP. BROWN: I did vote against the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act had a lot of good things in it, but it, it, it went too far. And it’s, it’s not—the Patriot Act is law now, but we’ve not done what we should do in Afghanistan.  We’ve not done what we should do to protect the United States of America. And clearly his focus has been “stay the course” in Iraq, the status quo in Iraq, and that has caused all other parts of the war on terror—it’s undermined all other parts of the war on terror, coupled with the fact the intelligence experts are saying the war in Iraq is making us less safe, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: Here’s two...

REP. BROWN: As you know.

MR. RUSSERT: Here’s two poll questions that I think caught the attention of a lot of Americans. Let me start with Senator DeWine.

“Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout.” “Most Iraqis.” “A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.”

And then this poll. “Iraqis back attacks on U.S. troops. About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces ... [according to] the poll done for University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes.”

Senator DeWine, if they want us out, and they’re in favor of attacking us, why are we still there?

SEN. DeWINE: Tim, I was shocked by that as well. But you know, on reflection, this is their country. There’s a lot of things going wrong. You blame someone who is there. Still does not change that we’re not in Iraq primarily for the Iraqis. We’re in Iraq for us. We’re—have to do what we have to do, and it goes back to what the three generals—three military leaders said. It would be a total disaster for us to leave. It is in our self-interest, the interest to protect American families, that we are in Iraq.  That’s why we’re there.

REP. BROWN: I, I guess I’m surprised that Mike DeWine is shocked by that.  He sits on the Intelligence Committee, sat there 12 years. He’s shocked that the Iraqi people think it’s time to—that, that, that troops be pulled out of Iraq? We’re in the midst—we’re—what we’re doing in Iraq now, all intents and purposes is we’re refereeing a civil war. That’s why we need to push the Iraqi military forces and police forces to build their own security units to protect their country, to make themselves more secure. And that’s the, that’s the solution, not “stay the course,” not just status quo.

MR. RUSSERT: Let’s assume that in a year, year and a half, the Iraqis become more secure in terms of the military operations, police operations, we redeploy, and then civil war breaks out. What do we do?

REP. BROWN: Well, civil war is broken out there now. I mean, it’s, it’s—with the Shiites, the Sunni—you know what’s happened in, in Anbar; you know what’s happened in, in central Iraq...(unintelligible)...

MR. RUSSERT: So if it’s a failed state, what do we do?

REP. BROWN: Well, if it’s a failed state, we—maintaining the status quo is getting us nowhere except more American lives, $2 billion a week, and a loss of focus on Afghanistan, which is in much worse shape than it was two, three, four years ago, and a failure to protect our ports, and a failure to protect our nuclear facilities.

MR. RUSSERT: But could Iraq become the next Afghanistan?

REP. BROWN: We don’t know. But it’s clear that the status quo’s not working, and we need to begin to say to the Iraqis, “You’ve got to do it on your own.” If they think we’re going to stay as long as Mike DeWine does, and George—Condoleezza Rice said we might be there 10 more years, President Bush says it’s going to be up to the next president. Our embassy in Iraq sits on, on 100 acres while the average U.S. embassy around the world sits on 10 acres. So they don’t think we’re leaving. As long as they don’t think we’re leaving, any time as far as the eye can see, there simply is not the incentive for them to, to compromise—the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds—and there’s not the incentive for them to build their security forces in spite of the pleas of President Bush to build your security forces.

MR. RUSSERT: Bob Woodward’s new book, “State of Denial,” has this in it.  “[Outgoing White House Chief of Staff Andy] Card was enough of a realist to see that there were two negative aspects to Bush’s public persona that had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance. ... Maybe unfair, unjustified in Card’s opinion, but there it was. He was leaving. And the man most responsible for the postwar troubles, the one who should have gone, Rumsfeld,” the secretary of defense, “was staying. ‘It’s Iraq, Iraq, Iraq,’ Card told [his successor Josh] Bolten,” the new chief of staff.

Senator DeWine, looking back at the number of troops involved, the judgment made about sectarian violence, the judgment made about the costs of the war, the judgment made about weapons of mass destruction, should President Bush have replaced the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld?

SEN. DeWINE: I’ve already said, Tim, I don’t have confidence in Rumsfeld.

He’s made major mistakes in this war. There’s absolutely no doubt about it.  The decision to put Rumsfeld in was made by the president, and that’s his decision to keep. I was not elected president of the United States, the president was. That’s why we have elections.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, in order to...

SEN. DeWINE: Ultimately, I, I don’t have confidence in him, no. I’ve already said that.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you urge the president to replace him?

SEN. DeWINE: I think by saying I don’t have confidence, it makes it pretty clear what I think.

MR. RUSSERT: That you’re urging the president?

SEN. DeWINE: I, I don’t, I don’t think that, you know, he’s done a, he’s done a good job. I think...

MR. RUSSERT: Who would you put in there?

SEN. DeWINE: I think history...

MR. RUSSERT: Who would you put in there?

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