MTP Transcript for Mar. 4, 2007

MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: The Democrats say U.S. troops should leave Iraq within six months if the Iraqi government does not reduce the violence. With us, Congressman John Murtha, Democrat from Pennsylvania. The Republicans want a surge of more American troops and dare the Democrats to cut off funding for the war. With us, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina.

And in our political roundtable, 42 years ago, the civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. Today, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama journey to that city.

And Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney address the Conservative Political Action Conference. But not John McCain.

Insights and analysis from John Harwood of CNBC and The Wall Street Journal and Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post.

But first, an original supporter of the war in Iraq, he has now become an outspoken critic of it. With us, Congressman John Murtha.

Welcome back.

REP. JOHN MURTHA (D-PA): Thanks, Tim. Nice to be back.

MR. RUSSERT: What are the Democrats going to do to try to stop the war in Iraq?

REP. MURTHA: Well, the, the details haven’t been released yet. Until the members see it, we’re not going to talk about the details of what’s going to happen. That will be released tomorrow. But let, let me talk about what, what I think needs to be done. The other day, General Pace said, the chief of the Joint Chiefs said, look, you’re going to hurt the troops deployment overseas if you do what Murtha wants to do, what he’s recommended to the committee. And I said what he didn’t talk about was our strategic reserve, what he didn’t talk about, we’re sending troops back without a year at home, what he didn’t talk about was the fact they’re going in without the equipment they need to fight in combat. That’s unconscionable, and the Congress is going to stop that. The White House is finally beginning to recognize they don’t have the troops, as I predicted they wouldn’t have, to sustain this deployment. They certainly don’t have the troops to increase and to have a surge without breaking every rule that they set, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: But you believe that, unless the violence subsides, our troops should come home within six months.

REP. MURTHA: Yeah. They’re, they’re in a civil war. We’re caught in a civil war. Any way you look at it, it’s a civil war. There’s no way that we can continue our troops in harm’s way in a civil war. I supported an extra 200,000 troops in Vietnam when I came back from Vietnam. It didn’t work. This is not working. It—it’s, it’s one of those things. When I was over in Iraq just a month ago, I said to the prime minister, “Mr. Prime Minister, we’re not going to put more money in—I’m not going to recommend that a committee put more money in unless you step up yourself.” Well, he said, “Well, we’ll go to someplace else.” Well, he may have spoken out of turn. But then he said, when I came back, they put an extra $7 ½ billion themselves into equipment for the Iraqis. Now, that’s what I like to see. We need to give them benchmarks. We need to give them an incentive. They need to take over. This would be internationalized, and, and the Iraqis need to take over this effort. We can’t solve this ourselves.

One other thing, Tim, that’s so important. When, when you talk to the generals over there, they think the Iraqis aren’t up to standards yet. Let me tell you something, they don’t need to be up to our standard. They know the culture, they know the geography, they know where the, the al-Qaeda is, so they don’t need to measure them by our standards. And a surge just won’t work. And that’s what we believe, and, and I think, in the end, this is what you’ll see will happen.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think most Democrats support bringing home the troops in six months?

REP. MURTHA: I, I think they—most of the Democrats do. I think most of the public supports that. The public spoke in the election. They said, “We want this thing to end; it’s not working.” There’s been too much rhetoric, there’s too much optimism about this whole thing. We need to get this thing out of the way. And, and this next election, if they don’t it over, it’s going to be all about what’s going on in Iraq. And I’m convinced only the Iraqis can do it. We need—we’re finally talking to Syria, we’re finally talking to Iran. Those are the type things they should have been doing a long time ago. Direct calks—talks with North Korea. This is international. This is more important to the Europeans—and you saw the British pulled their troops out. Tim, the British pulled their troops at a time when we’re surging. Does that make any sense at all? And they’re putting more troops in Afghanistan. Well, I think we need to pay attention to Afghanistan. That’s where this whole thing started, and where we should’ve kept our attention.

MR. RUSSERT: Besides setting the deadline of six months and bringing troops home, you’ve also said that a U.S. soldier should not spend more than a year in Iraq, this whole notion of the stop-loss, where young men and women are kept in the service after they serve in Iraq. You also talked about the level of preparation that a soldier should have before they’re sent to Iraq. And you referred to Peter Pace. He responded to you, and this is what he said before the committee on Tuesday: “If the one year rest at home, the no-extensions in the battlefield and the no stop-loss were implemented,” we’ve “done our homework on that ... if those are the rules, that instead of being able to have the 20 brigades on the ground in Iraq that we require, ... we would have somewhere between 14 and 19 brigades, at most. ... It would have enormous effect on the battlefield with regard to what’s required versus what’s available. ... I can simply tell you what the effect is. And the effect is damaging on the battlefield.” He’s saying that you are going to damage our ability on the battlefield.

REP. MURTHA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What, what he’s saying, in answer to a leading question by a Republican senator—they kept badgering him to answer this question. Now, what is he doing? He’s violating every rule, every, every rule they set up for themselves. The troops have to be home for a year. Is it wrong to insist they have equipment? Is it wrong to insist they have training before they go into Iraq? And the other thing that I’ve said, and everybody’s lost sight of, we’ve lost our strategic reserve. We could not respond to a threat to our national security, China or Iran or any other country that were to threaten us, we couldn’t respond, because we’ve completely depleted it and it’s readiness. You saw an article in The Washington Post the other day, National Guard, 90 percent of the units are, are below the readiness level to be deployed. It’s almost exactly the same in the regular forces. We have no active reserve, no ground forces that can be deployed. So he’s breaking all his rules by, by reducing the standards, taking people and keeping people in, and then sending them back without equipment. The public agrees with me, we should not send troops into combat if they don’t have equipment and if they don’t have the training they need.

MR. RUSSERT: You are going to withhold the money unless those troops were—had readiness or were prepared, but now you’ve changed your view. You will allow those troops to go to Iraq in that situation or condition, as long as the president certifies that. Correct?

REP. MURTHA: Well, he’s got to certify that—at least this is what I’m recommending to the committee—he’s got to certify that these troops are equipped, and they are trained, or it’s in the national interest. I am absolutely convinced the public and I agree, and the Congress agrees, we don’t send one troop into combat that doesn’t have the training they need.

Now, let’s, let’s talk about what happened at Walter Reed. Why did that happen at Walter Reed? It happened because the resources are so much in, in Iraq. They’ve spent so much money over there, ignored the very thing that’s so important to our troops at home.

Abu Ghraib’s another example, untrained troops in that area. They’re talking, Tim, about taking 2500 Air Force people to guard the prisons who will be untrained to handle the prisons in Iraq. We’ll have the same type of a problem we’ve had before. So we can’t send troops into combat without training, without equipment, and, and we can’t send them more than a year. We had a psychologist come in before the committee in a hearing, he said four months in intensive combat is too much. They, they can’t stand this, it’s too hard on them. We’re going to have all kinds of psychological problems and emotional problems when they come home.

MR. RUSSERT: But if the president certifies that they are prepared, you will not withhold the money.

REP. MURTHA: I don’t think the president will certify that. I don’t think the president will say that—I don’t think he’ll send troops back into combat that aren’t trained and aren’t ready. I, I am absolutely convinced he’s not going to do that.

MR. RUSSERT: Let’s talk about a withdrawal. The national intelligence estimate came out in January and said this: “If Coalition forces were withdrawn rapidly ... we judge that this almost certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of sectarian conflict in Iraq, intensify Sunni resistance to the Iraqi Government, and have adverse consequences for national reconciliation.

“If such a rapid withdrawal were to take place, we judge that the [Iraqi Security Forces] would be unlikely to survive as a non-sectarian national institution; neighboring countries ... might intervene openly in the conflict; massive civilian casualties and forced population displacement would be probable; [al-Qaeda in Iraq] would attempt to use parts of the country—particularly al-Anbar province—to plan increased attacks in and outside of Iraq.” Are you prepared for that?

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