MTP Transcript for Oct. 29

MR. RUSSERT: You said it’s a mess. Did the Bush administration help create this mess?

LT. GOV. STEELE: I think that the Defense Department did not give the president the kind of strategy that he needed to prosecute this war. From the beginning we didn’t have enough troops on the ground, from the beginning there was no clear decision to, to win the peace here. We are right now, Tim, in a situation where we’re putting up conventional forces against a counterinsurgency, and that, in — just, in strategic terms, is a mismatch. So we need to step back and evaluate and make it very clear, what is the strategy going to be on the ground? That’s what frustrates the American people right now. They don’t have a clear sense of that, and we’re looking now to Iraq to say, “Help us finish this. It is on you. You voted for this, you wanted this, we’re here to bear with you, so that now we can begin to move back as you begin to move forward.”

MR. RUSSERT: Should Secretary Rumsfeld resign?

LT. GOV. STEELE: Well, let’s put it this way: He wouldn’t be my secretary of defense. And ultimately, that’s going to be a decision that the president of the United States makes.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe the war has been worth the price we’ve paid in lives and costs?

LT. GOV. STEELE: I think the war has been worth it to the extent that what we’re trying to establish there is a beachhead of democracy. We want — when we walk out of Iraq, when we — when the last soldier leaves — and this is the question everyone needs to ask themselves — what do we want? Do we want an Iraq that’s an ally of the United States, or do we want an Iraq that is an enemy of the United States? And I think we want an — want an ally, so it’s been worth it to us to establish this beachhead of democracy and, and an allow — ally in an area where we’ve had some trouble in the past.

MR. RUSSERT: Knowing what you know today, that Saddam Hussein did not have the stockpile of weapons of mass destruction we had been told, would you still vote to authorize the war?

LT. GOV. STEELE: Well, that, you know — that’s “woulda, coulda, shoulda,” that’s kind of past. In my view, that’s looking backwards. I wasn’t a member of Congress, I didn’t have access to the intelligence on all the information that the congressman have and so many others who voted to go into war.

MR. RUSSERT: But you said you would have voted for it.

LT. GOV. STEELE: But I — given what I knew, given what I knew what was supposed to be on the outside...

MR. RUSSERT: But what you — but what you know today, would you vote for it?

LT. GOV. STEELE: I think — I would think we’d still prosecute the war. And, and — but what I would do, if we’re going to do it, let’s make sure we have the right complement of personnel on the ground and that we are looking forward in this and not looking backwards. And that’s where I am right now: What are we going to do, what is our strategy to begin to move our soldiers home and have Iraqi government and leadership move forward and keeping what they want in Iraq?

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Cardin, in June you said this, you “called on the Bush administration to immediately begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and adopt a plan to pull American combat forces out of the country by the end of 2007.” What if Iraq is still not secure at the end of 2007? Still pull our troops out?

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