A candid conversation with Hillary Clinton

Joe Scarborough Host, ‘Morning Joe' • Profile

In an interview with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Friday morning, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., spoke candidly about everything from Iraq and healthcare to Mother's Day and her hair style.

You can read a partial transcript of the interview below or click on the video to the right to watch the full interview.

SCARBOROUGH:   Hey, let’s talk about what’s going on in Congress.  It’s been remarkable to see Republicans finally going and talking to the president and saying, “Enough is enough.”  And you’re actually talking about putting—moving and trying to pass a bill, not to deauthorize what happened in 2002, but actually to sunset it; say, “OK, we authorized the use of force in 2002, you’ve had your chance; enough’s enough.”

How’s that moving forward?

CLINTON:  Well, Joe, on both counts I think it is promising that finally Republicans have gone to the president to tell him what the entire country knows, which is he has to change course in Iraq.  And the House last night passed another effort to try to rein the president in by saying, “Look, we’re going to fund the troops for a limited period of time but you’ve got to come back and give us more than you’ve given us up to now.”

You know, I think that we’ll go back and forth on this for a while longer trying to see how much we can get the president onboard to start bringing the troops home while we fund those who remain in Iraq.

What Senator Byrd and I have suggested is, no matter what you thought about the original authorization or the president’s decision to, you know, rush to war before the inspectors were able to tell us whether there was any WMD, it is clear that whatever the mission used to be is either accomplished or over.  You know, Saddam Hussein is gone and the Iraqis have been given a chance, thanks to the sacrifice of our young men and women, to have a better future for themselves, and this is up to them now.  And if there are remaining American interests, then let’s spell them out so there’s no misunderstanding between Congress, the president and the American people as to why if we leave anybody in Iraq we have a vital national security interest there.

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SCARBOROUGH:  Senator, I think that you just blew your opponents away in the last debate.  I’m not kissing up to you at all; those who know me know that I certainly don’t do that.  But you had a solid debate performance I guess back in South Carolina about a week and a half ago. 

And one of the issues, obviously, that’s come up is Iraq, but another issue that a lot of people are talking about has to do with health care.  And, obviously, you were on the forefront of that back in 1993.

How big do you think that issue’s going to play in the 2008 election?

CLINTON:  I think it’s going to be one of the most important issues, right up there with Iraq, in terms of our domestic challenges. And I believe finally we’re going to have a sensible debate about it.

You know, with all of the business leaders who I’ve been speaking to and who’ve been publicly announcing their support for reforms in our health care system, trying to get everybody into it, control costs, get better value for the money we already spend, there’s a growing momentum that is bringing a lot of different stakeholders to this debate.

So it’s not going to be just within the political arena.  We’re going to have a lot of support from business and labor and, obviously, doctors and nurses, hospital administrators, people who are on the front lines. 

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