MTP Transcript for Jan. 14, 2007

MR. HADLEY:  My understanding, Tim, at this point, and I have not checked on it this morning, is that they are still in custody.  They have—the Iranians have asked for their return, and, as in prior instances where this has occurred, we will be in consultation with the Iraqi government.

MR. RUSSERT:  Do you expect the Iranians to respond in some way for us taking their people in custody?

MR. HADLEY:  Well, it’s, it’s not taking their people in custody.  What we are doing is identifying, going after people who are engaged in activities that are killing our people.  And the Iraqis need to know that if they engage in activities that result in killing our people, we are going to protect our troops.

MR. RUSSERT:  The Iranians.

MR. HADLEY:  The Iranians need to know that.

MR. RUSSERT:  If they respond militarily, the Iranians, what do we do?

MR. HADLEY:  We will, we will—see.  I think, at this point, the Iranians would be unlikely to do so.  And that’s one of the reasons, of course, why you tend to increase your forces in a region, just to reinforce that message that this is not something the Iranians want to do.

MR. RUSSERT:  Stephen Hadley, we thank you very much for sharing your views this morning.

MR. HADLEY:  Thank you very much.

MR. RUSSERT:  Coming next, four United States senators, two in favor of the Bush more troops plan, two who are opposed.  They are next, right here on MEET THE PRESS.

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MR. RUSSERT:  Next up, a Democrat and a Republican senator who agree with the president, a Democrat and a Republican who disagree with the president, after this station break.

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MR. RUSSERT:  We are back.  Senators, welcome, all.

Senator Dodd, let me start with you.  You oppose the president.  Why?

SEN. DODD:  I just think it’s more of the same.  It seems to me we just—we’ve been rejecting or should reject this policy of just more military troops on the ground.  Everyone who’s looked at this issue, including our top military people, our top diplomats, the people who understand the issue the best have all concluded, including the Baker-Hamilton report, that we ought to be focusing our attention on diplomacy and politics inside and outside in the region if we’re truly interested, as we should be, in succeeding in Iraq.  Adding 20,000 more people, 17,000 of whom would be in Baghdad, a city of six million people where 23 militias are operating today, I think, is, is asking for a disaster, in my view.

MR. RUSSERT:  A few weeks ago, you were in Baghdad and talked to the press from there.  This is how your home paper, the Hartford Current, captured it.  “Dodd was in Baghdad Sunday [December 17, 2006].  ...  He met for an hour and a half with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.  ...  Afterward, Dodd told reporters in a conference call, ‘Show me some demonstrable evidence that they’re coming together as a people - Shias and Sunnis, sitting down and recognizing that they have an obligation to come together as a people - then I’d be willing to support some additional people if we needed it in order to get the job done.” You seemed to be open a few weeks ago.

SEN. DODD:  Well, no, what I was saying here was, “Look, at least we are moving here politically.” I mean, this is what George Will called this morning a dash to competency here.  The Maliki government said almost a year ago that they were going to control the militias, they were going to bring security in the country, they were going to deal with a revenue-sharing law, they were going to bring services to the people of that country.  All of these five goals they set out, none of—none of which have been even closely achieved in that period of time.  What makes us think at this particular junction that 17,000 more people, young men and women, injecting them in a city that’s being ripped apart by, by sectarian violence is going to sort that out?

We need to move to a different strategy.  The emphasis needs to be on robust, muscular diplomacy, deal with regional leaders, insist upon the kind of political leadership inside the country, and then ask our military people to do the border kind of security, the training that can be done, the counterterrorism activities, but get them out of these major urban areas and insist that the 300,000 Iraqis, those, those 10 divisions, those 36 brigades and 118 battalions which we’ve trained, to assume that responsibility in their own country.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Lieberman, you’re a fellow Democrat, fellow Nutmeg resident with Senator Dodd.  You disagree with him and you agree with the president?

SEN. LIEBERMAN:  I do, because there is so much on the line in Iraq.  We overthrew Saddam Hussein.  We, we have been working, and, as the president said the other night, a lot of mistakes, terrible mistakes, have been made, but we’ve been working in the larger context of the war on terrorism, the war against the Islamic radicals who attacked us on 9/11, the threat that Iran represents, to create in Iraq an alternative path to the future which is democratic, small D, self-governing, self-protecting.  And we’ve made some progress, but obviously there’s a terrible crisis because of the sectarian violence in Baghdad.  And it—this is a new plan the president has offered.  Nobody’s happy with where we are now, but this plan offers the prospect of the security which is the precondition to the political settlement and the economic development that we know has to happen for Iraq to take off on its own.

I, I say to my colleagues who are opposed to this:  Any alternatives that I’ve heard ultimately don’t work.  They’re all about failing.  They’re all about withdrawing.  And I think allowing Iraq to collapse would be a disaster for the Iraqis, for the Middle East, for us, that would embolden the Iranians and al-Qaeda, who are our enemies.  And they would follow us back here.  So I think this is a—this is a reasoned approach, and I wish my colleagues would give it a chance to work.  We’ve got a new general going over, Dave Petraeus.  We know him.  He’s brilliant.  He’s, he’s passionate about how counterinsurgency movements can be effective.  Let’s give him a chance with the personnel the president wants to give him, along with additional personnel from the Iraqis to stabilize this country and win.  We can win, and it will be critical to the future security of the American people.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is going to author legislation, introduce legislation which says, “Don’t cut off funding for the current deployments in Iraq, but any new deployments to Iraq, there will be no new funding.” If Congress adopted that, should the president abide by it?

Senator Lieberman:

SEN. LIEBERMAN:  Well, obviously, that’s up to the president.  I, I hope he wouldn’t abide by it, and I think anybody who’s going to follow that course then has to accept the consequences.  If you cut off funding for these additional troops, then you’ve got to accept the consequences of what I fear will be failure, collapse, full-blown civil war, ethnic cleansing on an enormous level, Iran dominating half of Iraq, al-Qaeda setting up a base in the Sunni area, and our allies throughout the region, Fatah among the Palestinians, the, the government in Lebanon, the moderates taking a beating because of the loss of Iraq to, to the radicals.

This is a big conflict in the Middle East between the moderates and the extremists.  If we let Iraq collapse, the extremists win and we lose, and all of our allies in the region lose.  And that, that, that means, ultimately, we’re probably going to come back there in a few years in a much more difficult and large conflict.  Let’s try to win it now, and I hope we can pull together to do that.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Chuck Hagel, you are a Republican who votes regularly with the president, of his own party.  On this issue, you are strongly opposed to the president.  Why?  And are you willing to accept Senator Lieberman’s formulation that, unless you support the president, you risk the collapse of the Iraqi government, it becoming a safe haven for terrorists, ethnic cleansing, and on and on?

SEN. HAGEL:  Let’s be clear about one thing at the beginning of this debate, Tim.  No one in Congress that, that I’m aware of wants a collapse of Iraq.  Everyone in Congress that I know of, and I think most of the American public, if not all, is very much aware of the critical stakes that are in play.  That’s not the issue here.  The issue is whether an escalation of military involvement in Iraq, as the president proposed, not just 22,000 more American troops, but the escalation regarding carrier strike forces and Patriot missile batteries, and more threats, and pursuing the Iranians and the Syrians, is that the appropriate, responsible course of action to take?  I don’t believe it is.

Let—let’s start with some alternatives.  Seventy-nine recommendations made by the Baker-Hamilton Commission report.  One of them focuses right on what I’ve always believed will, in the end, be the result of Iraq and the Middle East, and that’s a political settlement.  That means some kind of effort be made—and I didn’t hear much about this on Wednesday night in the president’s speech—to try to focus our efforts on a political accommodation, resulting in a political resolution, resulting in a political settlement.  The Middle East is in more trouble today, more combustible, more dangerous than at any time since World War II.  And you can measure that in, in Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian states, Iran, Syria.  And to say that we are going to feed more American young men and women into that grinder, put them in the middle of a tribal, sectarian civil war, is not going to fix the problem.

The other part of this is—and David Broder mentioned this in his column this morning—no American foreign policy can by sustained without the support of the American people.  The president, in his course of action that he has pursued the last four years, and now what he’s talking about more of, is without the support of the American people.  It’s without the support of our allies.  Are any of our allies putting more troops in Iraq?  No, they’re bringing them all home.  Also, the Maliki government, which you talked about with Mr. Hadley, they have been strangely silent on this.  They are divided on this.  Now, how in the world do we think we can pursue a legitimate policy that’s going to work, that doesn’t continue to consume more of our young men and women, continue to erode America’s standing and respect in the Middle East where we’ll have no hope to have any influence other than bog down further in an unwinnable situation.  That’s a very dangerous strategy that will not work.

MR. RUSSERT:  Will you support Kennedy’s—Senator Kennedy’s effort not to provide funding for new troops?

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