MTP Transcript for Oct. 8

(Videotape, Monday):

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: There’s a difference of opinion in Washington. If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democrat Party, it sounds like, it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is wait until we’re attacked again.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Talent, do you agree with the president that some Democrats believe the best way to protect the American people is to wait until we’re attacked again?

SEN. TALENT: Well, I think there are some people in Washington and some people who would like to go to Washington who’ve taken positions of weakness pretty comprehensively in the war on terror.

MR. RUSSERT: That they want us to be attacked again?

SEN. TALENT: Oh, no. I don’t think—and first, I don’t speculate on people’s motives in general, but I do talk about their record and their positions. And the state auditor’s got positions in the war on terror that are comprehensively positions of weakness. She opposes a terrorist surveillance policy that goes back to the Carter administration; she supported the Hamdan decision, which put a stop, at least temporarily, to our interrogation of captured terrorists abroad. And we had CIA agents buying liability insurance policy because they were afraid of being sued. She supports the release of classified information by The New York Times. She said, “Well, it’s OK because the terrorists knew about it anyway.” Well, I mean, you can’t do that with classified information. And she supports an artificial withdrawal, withdrawal date from Iraq, which is like sending notice to the terrorists that we’re going to quit. I mean, weakness is something we cannot show in dealing with the terrorists. It invites attacks, it encourages them to be even more relentless in coming after us.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re saying she’s weak on terrorists?

SEN. TALENT: I’m saying her positions are positions of weakness comprehensively in the war on terror, yeah.

MS. McCASKILL: You know, playing politics with this issue is not making us safer. I absolutely support surveillance. As somebody who has handled very tough criminal cases, I understand the importance of aggressive surveillance within the framework of laws. And frankly, if they were more concerned about tough surveillance and not about election year politics, they would have gotten a bill through that would have allowed us to have the tools we need to go after terrorists around the globe.

You know, Iraq is a mess. We can either stay the course or we can change course. And obviously, even the leader of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner, probably the most respected Republican on the Iraq war in Washington, has now come back from Iraq and said, “You know what? This is a mess and we need to re-examine what we’re doing here.”

This—asking questions—you know, this is Harry Truman’s Senate seat. When he was in the Senate, during the war, a war that was over the fight of our civilization, the fight for freedom, he asked questions about war profiteering and he was called brave. In this climate right now, they would question whether or not he was a coward. We need to be asking the questions, we need to have a plan, we need to have accountability. What is going on right now is absolutely not working in the Middle East.

MR. RUSSERT: But Ms. McCaskill, you did say, and I want to quote this, “This war will not be won on the battlefield, it will be won through sophisticated criminal investigations.” Is that your view, that we don’t win militarily, that criminal investigations will win the war on terror?

MS. McCASKILL: I believe there are two issues here. One is the war in Iraq, a failed policy where we’re mired in a civil war, where we are losing lives every day and innocent Iraqi lives; and then our effort worldwide to begin to be effective against terror. Terrorist cells are popping up. We are creating more terrorists around the world with this failed policy in Iraq. We need to focus on worldwide surveillance, human intelligence, wire surveillance, Internet surveillance, support our intelligence community—clearly, we’ve had trouble with good intelligence in this administration—and go after terrorists, capture them and hold them accountable. But to mix the two is confusing the American public, trying to confuse the American public, and trying to roll all this in into an election year effort to make Democrats, who want our country to be safe, look weak. And we’re not weak.

MR. RUSSERT: But you came out against the president’s eavesdropping program.

MS. McCASKILL: I said we should give the president the tools he needs. Only in Washington would they delay and obfuscate for 10 months instead of passing the law that gives the intelligence community the tools they need to catch terrorists.

SEN. TALENT: Tim, she said the program is illegal. I mean, this is a program every president’s used since Jimmy Carter. She supported the Hamdan decision, which as you know, put a stop to our interrogation of foreign terrorists because our CIA agents were afraid of being sued. She supported The New York Times release of classified information. She’s recently said, to a group of her supporters in Paris, she...

MS. McCASKILL: Now, I...

SEN. TALENT: ...said to them she’s deeply concerned that we haven’t granted habeas corpus privileges to captured terrorists, which is—would allow them to sue us because they’re not getting high-speed Internet. You know, she supports an artificial timetable for withdrawing from Iraq. It’s not a question of politics, it’s not a question of people’s motives, it’s a question of what’s going to win this war. And positions of weakness are not going to do it.

MR. RUSSERT: All right. Let’s focus specifically on the war in Iraq. And Senator Talent, this is what you said just three short months ago. “I think the mission is going well. I think we’ve made an awful lot of progress.” Do you believe, in Iraq, the mission is going well?

SEN. TALENT: I think we have made progress. I think we have a level of sectarian violence now that’s unacceptable short term, and unsustainable long run. But let, let’s go back and look what...

MR. RUSSERT: But when you say to the American people the mission’s going well, is that not misleading the American people?

SEN. TALENT: Oh, well, I don’t—no, I don’t think so. Let’s go back and...

MR. RUSSERT: Here’s the headline in today’s paper: “U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rise Sharply.” The number of people, American troops being killed and attacked every 15 minutes, and you’re saying it’s going well?

SEN. TALENT: Let’s go back and look at what the mission was, OK? The mission was to remove Saddam, and the threat that he represented, replace him with a democracy in Iraq that would be an ally in the war on terror, that would be able to defend itself alone, as we—it now has to defend itself in partnership with us, and whose very existence would be a rebuke to the terrorist vision of—for the Arab-Islamic world. Well, Saddam is gone, and the threat he represented is gone. The government in Iraq is not threatening Kuwait, it’s not trying to restart a nuclear weapon program, it’s not using oil revenues to sponsor terrorism throughout the Mideast, it’s not competing with Iran to dominate the region. We do have a government of national unity that represents all sections. We have trained up a highly capable army.

Now, what part of the mission remains to be done? That’s the progress. The part of the mission that remains to be done, that requires large numbers of American troops, is finishing the seasoning of the Iraqi army and appropriately sizing it so they can defend themselves alone, or without large numbers of American troops, without having to defend themselves in partnership with us. So yes, we have made progress in getting this far. But we have to finish the mission, then we’ll be able to come home. And what the national intelligence estimate said was that if we complete the mission in Iraq, it’s going to be a huge victory for us, and a huge setback for the terrorists.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Warner, as Ms. McCaskill said, came back from Iraq—now, he’s the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Republican, voted for the war, supportive of President Bush—and this is what he said: “I assure you, in two or three months, if this thing hasn’t come to fruition and if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function, I think it’s the responsibility of our government, internally, to determine: Is there a change of course that we should take? And I wouldn’t take off the table an option at this time.” Do you agree with Senator Warner?

SEN. TALENT: Well, he also said, of course, he’s not supporting an artificial timetable for withdrawal. Yeah, I think what—and I have talked with him. He’s my chairman, I’m—I’ve been on the Armed Services Committee in the Senate all four years—I think what he was saying is that the level of sectarian violence is not sustainable long term...

MR. RUSSERT: What he’s saying is the Iraqi government has 90 days to stop the violence, or he may, in effect, advocate a change of course, and everything’s on the table.

SEN. TALENT: Well, he also said he doesn’t want an artificial timetable for withdrawal, Tim, because that would be a—sending a notice to the terrorists that we’re going to quit. The level of sectarian violence can’t be sustained.  The Maliki government needs to deal with it. Now, I talked about our part of the mission, and the part that requires large numbers of American troops.  What they’ve got to do is confront the militia, they’ve got to use a classic counterinsurgency techniques, you know, the sweep-hold-build techniques.  They’ve got to make political democracy and economic reconstruction real on the ground to the Iraqis, and they got to hook up the sewers and the electricity, Tim, particularly in Baghdad.

But, the more effective the army is, the greater level of—the greater time and the greater margin they’re going to have to be able to effect the political and economic reconstruction. That’s mostly the Maliki government.  It doesn’t—it’s not going to require large numbers of American troops.

MR. RUSSERT: How long will you support having 145,000 American troops in Iraq?

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Nov. 8: Casey, Barbour, Rendell, roundtable, Brokaw Nov. 1: Tim Geithner, David Plouffe, roundtable Oct. 25: Cornyn, Schumer, Burnett, Sorkin, roundtable Oct. 18: Jarrett, Dodd, Kyl, Shriver, Podesta Oct. 11: Levin, Graham, McCaffrey, Myers, roundtable Oct. 4: Ambassador Susan Rice, roundtable Sept. 27: Bill Clinton, Paterson, Kyl, Webb Sept. 20: President Obama, Sen. Graham, Rep. Boehner, roundtable Sept. 13: Durbin, Cornyn, Dean, Gingrich, roundtable Sept. 6: Axelrod, roundtable Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: