‘Meet the Press’ transcript for July 22, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  And will they be supportive?

SEN. FEINGOLD:  They—we haven’t drafted it yet.  We’re going to work cooperatively with whoever wants to work with me.  I’ve talked to the majority leader, I’ve talked to Senator Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and we will be working together to see what kind of a thing we should come up with.  But yes, I have talked to them.

MR. RUSSERT:  Will it get any Republican support?

SEN. FEINGOLD:  We’ll find out.  You know, I think this might be an opportunity for some Republicans who may be uncomfortable with taking steps such as impeachment to say, you know, somehow we have to reflect the fact that so much of this has gone wrong.

Take, for example, Gordon Smith, who actually said on the floor of the Senate that this Iraq situation may be—have criminal elements.  He actually said the word criminal.  This is an opportunity for people to say let’s at least reflect on the record the fact that something terrible has happened here. This administration has weakened America in a way that is frightful at one of the most important times when we need to be strong.  And we as a Congress have to reflect this tragedy.

MR. RUSSERT:  What is the legal impact or effect of a censure?

SEN. FEINGOLD:  It is not—does not have legal impact.  It is a resolution that has been done before both with regard to members of Congress and also presidents, and it does not have legal consequences to my knowledge.

MR. RUSSERT:  You’ll be introducing this when?

SEN. FEINGOLD:  Shortly.  In a few days.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, we thank you for coming here...

SEN. FEINGOLD:  Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...and sharing your views.

SEN. FEINGOLD:  My pleasure.

MR. RUSSERT:  Coming next, does the surge continue or will we begin to withdraw troops from Iraq?  David Brooks, Bob Woodward and Stephen Hayes—our political round table is next only on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  Welcome all.

Bob Woodward, you just heard Senator Feingold, the Democrats now suggesting, in his mind, censuring the president for his conduct of the war in Iraq.

MR. BOB WOODWARD:  Yeah, I, I don’t know where that goes.  Clearly, the Democrats are frustrated.  One of the things you learn, when you try to understand presidents, in, in the end they work their will, particularly on issues of, of war, and they can’t, you know, find a hook to get into this to stop it or change it.

MR. RUSSERT:  David Brooks, you spent an hour and 10 minutes with the president and some—with some other conservative columnist reporters.  You wrote this:  “I left the 110-minute session with President Bush thinking that far from being worn down by the past few years, Bush” seemed “empowered.  His self-confidence is the most remarkable feature of his presidency.” No second-guessing about the war in Iraq?

MR. DAVID BROOKS:  Not really.  No.  I mean, on the little things—it’s interesting, on the big things I don’ think there has been second-guessing. Bob would call it a state of denial, and I think on the big things, on whether he thinks theologically all human beings have a gift of wanting to desire freedom and all countries should be democratic, he hasn’t budged an inch on that.

And the second thing which impressed me about that meeting, his faith in his own power, the power of the presidency to change the world, he has not budged on that.  And so you might think that’s strong leadership, you might think he’s deranged.  But, but his basic attitude, I think, has not changed.  What has changed, I think, is a little more honesty and tactical flexibility now that Donald Rumsfeld is gone.  I think they’ve hired people like Mike McConnell who are much more honest and who are much more willing to look realistically at the situation.  But on the basics, no change.

MR. RUSSERT:  But when the president sees or hears what I just read from Steve Hayes’ book about McConnell speaking candidly about his perception as a citizen as what he saw the administration do in terms of molding or shaping intelligence, what would the president say about that?

MR. BROOKS:  I would still think he thinks the fundamentals are, are true, that in the long run he’ll be proved right, and that’s kind of remarkable.  I think a lot of us who supported the war, the failures of the war have set off a whole cascade of philosophical thinking.  “Maybe in the Arab world they’re not culturally ready for democracy.  Maybe we don’t have the power to do it, we just don’t have the competency as a government.” It’s created a whole set of serious debates.  It doesn’t seem to have created that in the president’s mind.

MR. RUSSERT:  And now a Democratic senator’s going to introduce a resolution to censure him for his conduct in the war.

MR. BROOKS:  Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT:  I think a big tactical mistake from a Democratic perspective. There are 30 Republican senators who are desperate to get away from President Bush.  They’ve been pushed back toward President Bush by, one, Harry Reid making this more partisan, and a censure resolution would make it hyper- partisan.  So I think it would be huge for the whole political landscape if those Republicans drifted away from Bush.  But it’s not going to happen if there’s censure resolutions, if it’s a partisan debate.

MR. RUSSERT:  Steve Hayes, in your new book, “Cheney:  The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President,” you write this. “Some people think if we” walk—“just walk away from Iraq everything will be fine, that it’s the optional war, that you don’t have to be here, that it’s possible to retreat behind our oceans and be safe and secure; withdrawal from Iraq doesn’t damage our interest in this wider conflict.  And that may be in part because they don’t believe there’s a wider conflict.  I know different. It’s so clear to me.  I have trouble understanding why” it’s “unclear to everybody else.” That same certitude that David Brook uses to describe the president, you’re using to describe the vice president.

MR. STEPHEN HAYES:  Yeah, it’s very interesting.  I think one of the things we saw this week, and this, this speaks directly to what the vice president told me, is with this—the release of this NIE we saw a shift in thinking.  I think for a long time administration critics had begun to make the argument that really this al-Qaeda threat is overblown, that they misled us into the war in Iraq, they’re misleading us about the seriousness of the threat from al-Qaeda.  And I think what the NIE does, even though in some ways it’s, it’s very critical of the administration, is it strengthens the basic case that the administration has been making that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat.

MR. RUSSERT:  But it seems to contradict last year’s intelligence estimate...

MR. HAYES:  No question.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...that al-Qaeda’s ability had been diminished.

MR. HAYES:  No question.  I think what, what Admiral McConnell said about that was, was exactly right, and it’s what you hear, I think, if you talk to sort of on-the-ground intelligence officials over there, that, that this March 2006--or truce between Pervez Musharraf and the Islamists was, was catastrophic.

MR. RUSSERT:  In your book you ask the vice president about the insurgency being in the last throes when he was interviewed about it.  He now acknowledges to you that was a mistake.

MR. HAYES:  Yeah, he said it was obviously wrong for him to have said that. And what he said was he had been reading reports that Zarqawi was on the run, that they weren’t getting close to getting him, and that, at this point, it looked like that was going to be sort of a marker.  And, you know, one of the things he said to me in, in—as I conducted these interviews was that he thought that there would be these markers, and these markers that—the capture of Saddam Hussein, the election, Zarqawi’s death would contribute to sort of a turnaround, and they didn’t.  And, and he said that, that, that comment was obviously wrong.

MR. RUSSERT:  And no doubts about the war in Iraq?  No second-guessing.

MR. HAYES:  Zero.  I think what, what he says is, “What we’ve got to do is a better job communicating that this part—that this war in Iraq is a central part of the broader war.”

MR. RUSSERT:  Bob Woodward, you’ve written three books on the Bush administration, the war, and here they are on the screen:  2002, “Bush at War”; 2004, “Plan of Attack”; 2006, “State of Denial.” In that trilogy did you see any change or wavering in the level of certitude about the correctness of going to war?

MR. WOODWARD:  No, no.  I mean, Bush jumps in his chair when he talks about the duty to free people and bring democracy to the world.  But the, the problem here is that we haven’t been getting enough of the truth about what’s been going on in the ground.

And just to step back, you know, Iraq is not just a philosophical issue, particularly for our fellow citizens who are there.  It is a war, a violent war.  And if you look at the precedence here, and look at Vietnam or any other insurgency, you cannot prop up a government that does not have the support of its people, or does not have some sort of process to settle the political issues without violence.  Iraq is an incredibly violent place.  How do you get out of this?  How do you solve the political problem and—I mean, even General Petraeus says, “Look, we don’t—we can’t solve the political problem militarily.” Well, where does this government go, the Maliki government?  How do they function?  How do they govern?  And you get into the details of how this place works and there’s no realistic prospect.  People who are in the administration say this is a five- or 10-year process to create this government, prop it up, whatever you want to call it.  So we’re on a timeline for some sort of fix that is way, way in the distant future.

MR. RUSSERT:  And is there five or 10 years of patience in the American political process?

MR. WOODWARD:  No, there is not.  You, you talk to lots of Republicans, what David rightly refers to as the 30 Republicans who, in their soul, are in a kind of despair—would you agree?

MR. BROOKS:  Absolutely.

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