A conversation with Bill Clinton

OLBERMANN:  We are doing that when we can.

CLINTON:  And Hillary voted against that resolution.  I was really proud of her, not because she disrespects Gen. Petraeus. She is on the Armed Services Committee.  She likes and admires all of these generals, including the ones with whom she disagrees.  And many of the military generals agree with what Democrats are saying about Iraq.

But that is not the point.  The point is that we need to be talking about things that will affect the American people and their lives.  And do I think we should not attack people personally?  Absolutely. 

But do I think we should not allow the inevitable snit, as people’s nerves get frayed and they are frustrated and they say things like that to divert us from what will affect the American people and our interests in the world?  That is what I believe.

And most responsible candidates will always drive it right back to what affects the American people.  The elections are supposed to be about them, not the politicians.

OLBERMANN:  As a final point, do you have an idea, do you have an opinion at this point, how and when we are going to get out of Iraq?

CLINTON:  I do.  If you ask me, do I know what is going to happen, no, I don’t know.  But I can tell you what I think should happen.  I believe we have really no choice but to begin fairly quickly to reduce our military presence there. 

And I believe that for several reasons.  First of all, I think when it is clear that we are bringing down our presence, number one, we will bring our people home and probably fewer people will die.

I think that we can do that without undermining what has been done in these two areas where the Sunnis are basically fighting to control their own country again and we are helping them.  That is what we should have been doing all along, helping them instead of asking them to help us. 

I think that we have to do it because we need to lower the level of violence, because we need to increase the pressure on the Iraqi government to make deals because we need to mix things up so that the neighbors and the U.N. and all of the other people will engage in diplomatic discussions.

And then the Iranian president can come here and say, oh, I want America to leave and I will fill the vacuum. The truth is he is terrified that there will be millions of more refugees and they will all go into Iran and they aggravate his own instability.

Iran is not a monolithic country.  There are a lot of different ethnic groups there, near where almost all of the refugees would certainly pour in.  They would have a lot of problems if this happened.  We need to get more diplomatic movement. 

And finally, the American military has been badly damaged by this.  So if we have an emergency, we will have to fight it with the Navy and the Air Force.  We have no Army.  We have no Marine Corps.  The Guard, the Reserves are either all there or on rotation.

And even the Navy Reserves now are being called up, trained in infantry tactics and deployed to the Iraq theater.  They were supposed to be trained in infantry tactics to be our security reserve in the event of another problem.  Now even Navy Reservists are being sent in to serve with the Army in the theater.

So this is a subtext in this thing, but I think almost 100 percent of Americans are proud of the military, proud that it is capable of doing what it does, and would be really alarmed if they knew just how depleted it has been by our commitment of far more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan, where I think our national security is more at stake.

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