MTP Transcript for Mar. 4, 2007

REP. MURTHA: Well, let me say—tell, tell you something, Tim. They said this about al-Qaeda in Iraq, they said they have weapons of mass destruction. The same intelligence agency—we’re, we’re spending more money than all the other intelligence agencies in the world—came to the conclusion that it was in our national interest to go into, to Iraq. Now they’re saying this. The public in Iraq says the opposite. They say we’re the ones that are inciting riots—demonstrations. We’re the ones—they, they want us out of there; 64 percent of the public in Iraq wants us out of Iraq. The, the world wants us out of Iraq, because we’re focusing on, on—caught in a civil war. So it—there’s going to be instability. They’re, they’re going—but they have to settle it themselves. What I’m saying is we can’t do it ourselves. The Iraqis have to do it. The international community has to get involved. Sure, there’s going to be some problems. But it’s not going to be any worse than it is now.

MR. RUSSERT: Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said this in The Wall Street Journal: “Congress’s overall efforts are misguided for one fundamental reason: We cannot yet be sure that the situation in Iraq is totally hopeless. It is” “bad”—“indeed bad, very bad. ... But there still may be a glimmer of hope—if not to ‘win,’ then at least to achieve some minimum level of stability.” Do you believe it’s totally hopeless?

REP. MURTHA: Tim, I, I believe that we can’t win this militarily. I believe it has to be done diplomatically. That’s why I think redeployment is the first move. I suggested to the administration they ought to get our troops out of the palaces, Saddam Hussein’s palaces. We ought to bulldoze Abu Ghraib, we ought to close Guantanamo. Those are the kind of things that get worldwide attention because of what happened in those tragic incidents. So it’s a matter of, you can’t win it militarily. It has to be done internationally; it has to be diplomatically. And in the meantime, we’ve lost our ability to respond to a threat to our national security down the road. And that’s just as important as what’s going to happen in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: But to the point, why not take the chance, the glimmer of hope?

Or do you just think it’s totally hopeless?

REP. MURTHA: I, I don’t see any chance of us winning this militarily. I think they’re going about it the wrong way. They’re finally starting to change. They’re talking to Iran. That’s what’s going to—going to prevail there. That’s where you’re going to have stability. You’re going to have international communication. This is just as important to the Europeans as it is to us. But why did the British pull their troops out? Because they came to the conclusion, in these kind of wars, you can’t win it militarily. You have to win it diplomatically, and you have to use the international community.

MR. RUSSERT: Vice President Cheney weighed in on your thinking. He said, quote, “I think, in fact, if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we’ll do is validate the al-Qaeda strategy. The al-Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people—in fact, knowing they can’t win in a stand-up fight, try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they” can “win because we quit.” How does it feel to be linked with al-Qaeda by the vice president?

REP. MURTHA: Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s unfortunate that the vice president does not have the—he doesn’t listen to what I’m saying. We can’t send troops into combat without equipment. We can’t send troops into combat without training. We can’t extend them past the one-year boots-on-the-ground policy that they have. And, and we can’t continue to have them over there in Iraq more than—more than a year. That’s what he’s, he’s not saying. That—he’s not—and he’s not saying our strategic reserve and the future threats to this country significantly increased in the last year because we have no ground strategic reserve. That’s what he’s not saying. So he attacks my, my differences, but he doesn’t attack the policy. He doesn’t talk about the policy and the results of what I’m saying.

MR. RUSSERT: But you’re a Marine. You like being linked with al-Qaeda?

REP. MURTHA: Well, they’ll take care of al-Qaeda. Let me—let me tell you this, Tim. Al-Qaeda will be taken care of by the Iraqis. They know who—there’re only 2,000 al-Qaeda. They’re Iraqis fighting Iraqis. It’s a civil war between the Shias and the, the Sunni. And they won’t negotiate. The Shias won’t negotiate with the Sunni. What, what I—what I found out when I was out there last time just a month ago, the Sunnis are not going to help in this whole process as long as the Shias control it and won’t negotiate with the Sunnis. Now, this may seem like an incidental point, but this is probably the most important point. They won’t change their constitution to give the Sunnis some influence in this whole thing. They’ve got to work it out themselves. We cannot do it for them.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think the vice president’s questioning your patriotism?

REP. MURTHA: No, I don’t think so. No, I, I, I met with the vice president the other day. We talked about the money. We talked about some of the things that, that I felt were important. And I said to him, “We can’t send these troops in without equipment, without training. It can’t be done. If you do that, it’s a disservice to our troops and to the families, the small percentage of families that are fighting this war.”

MR. RUSSERT: Did he apologize to you?

REP. MURTHA: Oh, no. No, no. That, that, you know, this is one of those things where, where he said that overseas. He didn’t blame me for, at least, getting the British out. You know, I thought he might blame me for getting the British out. But he didn’t do that.

MR. RUSSERT: John Murtha said something back in 2004 that is a little bit different than, than your thinking today. And this is what you wrote in the epilogue to your book: “A war initiated on faulty intelligence must not be followed by a premature withdrawal of our troops based on a political timetable. An untimely exit could rapidly devolve into a civil war, which would leave America’s foreign policy in disarray as countries question not only America’s judgment but also its perseverance.” Isn’t that exactly what’s happening?

REP. MURTHA: Yeah, I, I believed that at the time, and, and I believed that when there was a chance of solving it. I just say you have to solve it a different way. It can’t be done militarily. In this case, it has to be done diplomatically and internationally. The only way this can be solved—the progress that we make is measured by economics, it’s measured by, by the fact that, that you have no oil production—it’s below prewar level, electricity below—all the things they measure are below prewar level. So it’s not working militarily. Only a third of this thing could be done militarily. The rest of it’s got to be diplomatic and international. That’s what I’ve been saying. So, so the fact that redeployment, I think, is first step towards, towards stability in the Middle East.

MR. RUSSERT: On Tuesday you sat down with David Rogers of The Wall Street Journal, who’s been covering this issue very carefully, and, and said this:

“‘They want to end the war, but they want to fund the war,’ said Mr. Murtha, frustrated by his party’s reluctance to exert its power over spending.” Deep down, you’d love to cut funding for the war?

REP. MURTHA: Yeah, what, what I’d like to see is a change of direction. What I’d like to see is more diplomatic effort. What I’d like to see, more international effort. That’s not happening. I’d like to see a redeployment. I said that a year ago. But also the reason I want deploy—redeployment is not only because it, it would get our troops out of there, but we’d start an international effort, which has to be done, and we’d start to put money into our strategic reserve. I think that’s the most important part about it. We could not respond to an international incident that threatens our national security because we’ve depleted our national reserve, our ground reserve.

MR. RUSSERT: But why not cut off funding for the war?

REP. MURTHA: Well, you don’t have the votes to do that in the first place. We don’t have the votes to do it. You can’t—you, you can’t go forth. And the public doesn’t want—they, they don’t want that to happen. They want the troops to be entirely funded. What I’m saying is you got to follow the guidelines that you set up yourself for the troops. That’s the thing. You can’t send troops into combat without, without the appropriate equipment, without the training they need, and, and we have to do some things that makes the world understand we’re changing. Get them out of Saddam Hussein’s palace. Get them out of the Green Zone. Get our troops out of Iraq. Let them worry—work this out themselves. Let the Iraqis work it out themselves.

MR. RUSSERT: But you got way out front. You gave an interview to an Internet anti-war group, and many of your colleagues said, “Hey, Murtha...

REP. MURTHA: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: ...we’re not for cutting off funding. Come on back.” And you, you came back into the fold.

REP. MURTHA: Well, you got to have the votes to pass legislation. That’s always part of the problem we run into, and...

MR. RUSSERT: But you would prefer to cut off funding.

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: