MTP Transcript for Jan. 14, 2007

SEN. HAGEL:  I’m looking at all the possibilities.  I’m working with a number of senators on a resolution.  I think whatever we do must be responsible; it must have a bipartisan consensus.  This is not something that’s somehow gotten involved in a—in a policy debate with think-tank specialists.  And I might remind everyone here, too, Tim, it’s many of the same people—commentators, members of Congress, others—who were so anxious to go into Iraq four years ago, that were so sure of the results as to how it was going to come out, are so now sure again about the president’s Wednesday night proposal.  I said at a hearing with Secretary Rice, I think if this goes forward, it represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder since Vietnam.

We are projecting ourselves further and deeper into a situation that we cannot win militarily.  This is a war of attrition, if nothing else.  How are we going to win a war of attrition?  You cannot have an answer or resolution based on, on what we are going to do using military.  It is bigger and wider, and what we need is a framework for political settlement.  It must include the regional powers, including Iran and Syria, just as Baker-Hamilton said, and it must be international.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Kyl of Arizona, you support the president.  Why?

SEN. KYL:  I do.  First of all because everyone suggested we needed a new strategy.  The president agreed with that, and he’s now announced a new strategy, and it seems to me that, especially in matters of war, the country needs to be unified, needs to give this new strategy a chance.  Why was it criticized even before it was announced?  It doesn’t seem to me that that’s a good faith approach to try to win in Iraq.

And that’s the second point.  The strategies that you’ve heard discussed here today are either strategies for failure—in other words, if we’ve already lost the war, then obviously we ought to be leaving today, not wait for another six months.  The president doesn’t believe that we either have lost or can afford to lose in Iraq, to leave Iraq a failed state.  So he’s suggested an approach that is different, and it’s not just the addition of troops, as, as you know.  There are a whole variety of things that are added to this new strategy that should make it succeed.

Let, let me just give you an example.  Before, when we had a—the, the Iraqis would, would capture bad guys and they would put them in jail, and somebody with political influence would come and get them out of jail the next day.  We set up a curfew, and we set up checkpoints in Sadr City, and they were beginning to work.  But influential political Iraqis convinced us that that was hurting them politically.  It was causing three-hour delays in lines and so on, and the Iraqi people didn’t want that, they’d rather risk the death and destruction than, than suffer the inconvenience.  So we pulled out.  All of those things are going to be different now.  And we’re going to have, as, as Mr. Hadley said, the Iraqis and the Americans standing together with a common approach to the problem in Baghdad.  So this new strategy has a chance to win, and until you can create some semblance of peace and stability there, it’s going to be impossible to get this political settlement that everybody agrees would be a good thing.  But how can you get the political settlement when you have the degree of violence that’s occurring there today?

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Dodd, the challenge from Senator Kyl and Senator Lieberman to you is, how do you have negotiations of political process go forward without getting security first, and if you pull out quickly, what do you leave behind?  A failed state?  Ethnic cleansing?  A haven for terrorists?  Complete civil war?  Are you willing to take that on?

SEN. DODD:  No, no one’s suggested pulling out quickly here.  This is a Rubik cube we’re talking about.  We’ve seen this in other places in the Middle East.  The idea, again, is 17,000 young Americans injected into the city of Baghdad of six million people with Sunnis fighting Shias, Shias fighting Sunnis, where you have Baathists and you have insurgents and maybe some al-Qaeda elements, all of this competing for power in that country, and expecting this increase, what we’re talking about here, to solve that problem, I think is terribly misguided.

There is an alternative here.  There are—there are functions which our military can perform.  Every single officer I talked to in Baghdad three weeks ago, including the junior officers who’re on the ground doing the job every day, tell us that this is a huge mistake, that there are functions they can perform.  Border security, training in the Kurdish areas, the counterterrorism activities—these are jobs they can do.  As one young captain said to me from West Point, “I’m sending 19 year olds in a humvee down on patrols where their only mission is to get shot at or blown up.  There’s no other mission I have for them.” He said, “How can you sustain that much longer?”

MR. RUSSERT:  Would you start withdrawing troops this year?

SEN. DODD:  I would.  I think you can.  I think you can bring down those numbers.  We got a huge problem in Afghanistan, Tim.  Our military’s being hollowed out.  We’re, we’re talking about now huge bonuses or all sorts of attractive ways to keep people in the service.  We’ve got major problems in Afghanistan, major problems with the condition of our military.  They’re combat-ready in this...

MR. RUSSERT:  But if you take troops out of Iraq, don’t you make it less secure?

SEN. DODD:  Not necessarily at all.  I think, again, this is the false assumption here, that, that somehow more troops bring you more security.  In fact, General Petraeus made this point earlier.  More troops—secure—more troops on the ground doesn’t make you necessarily any more secure.  I think you need to get away from that premise.  The president set it up very well the other night.  He said, “Look, this isn’t working.  Secondly, the Iraqis need to take responsibility.” Why, at that point, didn’t he announce a permanent envoy to the area that’s going to be on the ground day in and day out to try and deal with this problem politically and diplomatically in the region, then talking about a new role for our military over there that they can perform and do it well, and then insist that we’re going to start drawing down.  That’s the one way, I’ll promise you, that you’re going to get the kind of political decision-making inside Iraq that you’re not going to get by delaying, delaying it.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Lieberman, let me show you the latest poll on all this about American attitudes.  Support of the president sending 22,000 more troops to Iraq, 36 percent, opposed 61.  Is it possible for a commander in chief to conduct a war where two out of three Americans, nearly, oppose his latest initiative and now believe that the war is not worth fighting?

SEN. LIEBERMAN:  Well, it makes it harder, that’s for sure.  And, and, you know, this is the great challenge because this is a different kind of war, Tim, as you well know.  These are not armies massed on a battlefield or ships at sea.  This is unconventional.  It’s terrorism.  And when the people see suicide bombings on TV every night, they get frustrated, they get angry.  And, and I wish what they did is got angry because those suicide bombings of people signing up to be Iraqi police officers show how evil the enemy is.  The fact is that, in matters of national security, we all, including the president, have an obligation to do what we believe is right for our people.  And that I think is what the president is doing.

Look, we all want to bring our troops home as soon as possible.  We all want to find the right exit strategy.  But my own sense of history tells me that in war, ultimately, there are two exit strategies.  One is called victory; the other is called defeat.  The president offered a proposal the other night that holds the hope of victory in a critical battle for the Iraqis and for us.  With all respect, the other proposals represent the beginning of a retreat, of a defeat.  And I think the consequences for the Middle East, which has been so important to our international stability over the years, and to the American people, who have been attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy that we’re fighting in Iraq today, supported by a rising Islamist radical super-powered government in Iran, the consequences for us, for—I want to be personal—for my children and grandchildren, I fear will be disastrous.  That’s why I want to do everything I can to win in Iraq.  And, and, and I think that’s what my, my oath of office requires me to do.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Hagel, talk about that if you would.  Are you advocating retreat and defeat, and do you believe we are fighting the same people that brought about September 11^th?

SEN. HAGEL:  First, as I said before, I am not, nor any member of Congress that I’m aware of, Tim, is advocating defeat.  That’s ridiculous, and I’m offended that any responsible member of Congress or anyone else would even suggest such a thing.  Senator Lieberman talks about his children and grandchildren.  We all have children and grandchildren.  He doesn’t have a market on that, nor do any of my colleagues.  We’re all concerned about the future of this country.  But we have an honest disagreement here, and that’s what democracies are about.

Now, the fact is we can talk all we want, and we can go to all the specialists in the world, the fact is, the Iraqi people will determine the fate of Iraq.  The people of the Middle East will determine their fate.  Now, when we continue to interject ourselves in a situation that we never have understood, we’ve never comprehended, and I think after four years it’s becoming quite clear of that, that tells us something very, very clearly.  And we now have to devise a way to find some political consensus with our allies, especially the people in the Middle East, that is going to require to find a political framework for some progress with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.  It’s going to require listening to our allies in the Middle East.

You know, Tim, I hear this talk about generals and military involvement.  The two top American generals in Iraq in November and December, the last 60 days, both in open testimony and interviews took exactly the opposite approach of what President Bush was talking about on Wednesday night.  Now, someone is, is not listening here.  There is a major disconnect.  And we talk about the future for our country.  The future of the Middle East as a region is in play now at a very, very defining time.  That’s what we should be thinking about.  We need to get out of the bog of where we are of tactical thinking.  Of course 50,000 troops in Baghdad are not going to turn that around.  That is a tribal sectarian civil war, and we need to do everything we can with some smart thinking.

Let’s just take one thing.  Why not take American troops, put them on the border?  I hear a lot from this administration about this border being porous, all the terrorists leaking in there.  The terrorist problem isn’t the biggest problem today in, in Iraq.  Are terrorists there?  Yes.  It is Iraqis killing Iraqis, Tim.  It’s Shias killing Shias.  That’s the biggest problem, that’s not going to be solved by the American military.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Kyl, if this surge doesn’t work—and Secretary of Defense Gates says we have a few months to see how it plays out.  If it doesn’t work, then do we say, “Time out, time’s up, we’re coming—we’re getting out?”

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