‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Oct. 28, 2007

MR.  TIM RUSSERT:  Our issues this Sunday, our Meet the Candidates 2008 series continues, an interview with Democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut.  He has served in the Congress for 33 years.  In January he became chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.  This morning Chris Dodd on Iran, Iraq and the race for the White House 2008, only on MEET THE PRESS.

Then August 8^th, 1974, Richard Nixon announces his intent to resign.

(Videotape)

PRES. RICHARD NIXON:  I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  His successor, Vice President Gerald Ford, actually told this reporter four months earlier, in April 1974, that Nixon would not complete his term.  That and other Ford comments about Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and more in this new book, “Write It When I’m Gone:  Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R.  Ford.” With us the author, Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News, joined by New York Times columnist William Safire, who criticized what he thought was Ford’s disloyalty way back in, you guessed it, April 1974.

But first, in just 67 days voters will caucus in Iowa, the first step in selecting our next president.  And with us is a candidate who’s moved his family to the Hawkeye State in a final push in his quest for the Democratic nomination, Senator Chris Dodd.

Senator Chris Dodd, welcome.

SEN. CHRIS DODD (D-CT):  Thank you, sir.  Good to be with you.

MR. RUSSERT:  The president just announced that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a foreign terrorist organization and imposed sanctions on Iran.  Do you support the sanctions?

SEN. DODD:  Absolutely.  I think it’s the right way to go.  In fact, we’ll be dealing with that legislation in the committee I serve on.  That’s the—that’s the appropriate way to go.  What is not the right way to go, in my view, is the resolution adopted several weeks ago in the Senate, the large vote here, which almost exclusively focused on the military option in Iran.  Iran poses some serious issues.  Certainly the accumulation or the possibility of accumulating nuclear weapons, obviously supporting terrorism in the region are serious questions that the United States has to address.  The best way to approach that at this juncture is through the sanctions, the diplomatic approach, in my view, building the relationships that we need to build in order to effectively convince the Iranians that their direction they’re going in is one they have to stop.  And that’s my concern.  This vote the other day seems to belie that approach on sanctions and diplomacy.

MR. RUSSERT:  But back in March, Senator, you were a co-sponsor of a resolution that said this:  “The secretary of state should designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization.” “The secretary of the treasury should place the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the list of Specially Designated Global Theorists relating to blocking property,” “prohibiting transactions with persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism.” What’s the difference?

SEN. DODD:  Well, a huge difference, Tim.  That was the, the Gordon Smith bill, which he introduced, 68 of his co-sponsors, Senator Kennedy, myself, Jim Webb, among others here, that was exclusively focused on diplomacy and sanctions and specifically said no military action should be taken in Iran without the prior approval of the Congress.  Very, very different approaches than the resolution offered by Senators Kyl and Lieberman, which, the language on diplomacy and sanctions was removed before the final vote.  The only reference there was keeping military force possibly in Iraq in order to deal with the Iranian situation.  Very, very different.

Jim Webb vehemently opposed the Kyl-Lieberman resolution.  In fact, one of the leaders in the opposition, along with Dick Lugar, along with Chuck Hagel, there were bipartisan opposition to that approach, and the, the approach obviously that Gordon Smith suggested was one that enjoyed broad-based support because it was more expansive and included other options other than just the military one.

MR. RUSSERT:  But the resolution you’re talking about by Senator Kyl and Senator Lieberman received almost three-fourths of the Senate.

SEN. DODD:  It did.

MR. RUSSERT:  And it did mention diplomacy.

SEN. DODD:  No, that language was taken out, Tim, specifically taken out, the, the paragraph referring to diplomacy and economics.  And that’s the resolution you’re going to see.  What, what didn’t we learn from October 2002 in a sense?  The administration clearly is on a drumbeat here, given the Cheney speeches by the vice president, the Vice President Cheney speeches, the, the announcement the other day, even though including sanctions.  Clearly this administration is moving in that direction, towards military action against Iran.  And I believe that you’ll see, clearly, those who supported that resolution on September 26^th, that’ll be one of the justifications that the Bush administration gives for military action in Iran if it comes.  And I believe we’re getting precariously close to that happening.  That’s why I think that vote was so dangerous.

MR. RUSSERT:  You think we’re getting precariously close to military action against Iran?

SEN. DODD:  I do.  I think there’s a—I—clearly the administration seems to be pointing in that direction, and I think that’s a dangerous move at this juncture here.  And again, I don’t—I’m not going to take a backseat to anyone in my concerns about the problems that Iran poses here.  And I would not exclude the use of military force in dealing with that.  But it seems to me that arrow ought not to be drawn out of our quiver until we examine and explore fully the opportunities to reduce those threats, much as the administration has now done in North Korea.  For six years they objected to the approach the Clinton administration took on North Korea.  They finally came to that point of view, and today you don’t hear much talk about North Korea because I think we’ve handled that well in the last couple of months. But here in Iran, I think clearly there’s an effort to pursue a military action.

MR. RUSSERT:  Do you believe that, in effect, the vote for the resolution of September 26^th—one of them was cast by Hillary Clinton...

SEN. DODD:  Yes, it was.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...was a de facto vote for war with Iran?

SEN. DODD:  I think it gives a justification for it.  That’s my concern with it here.  Much as you saw back in ‘02, 2002 in October, the resolution which I supported at the time, said the president ought to look at diplomatic approaches in that language, but clearly had no intention of doing that as we’ve, as we’ve subsequently learned.  And it gave them the argument that the Congress gave overwhelming support, almost by the same vote, I might add. There were only 23 votes against that resolution, October of ‘02, about 75, 76 votes in favor of it.  So the similarities are startling, in my view, and it was used and waved back, over and over again, “Congress and the Democrats went along with this.” What haven’t we learned of—over that time period?  Seems to me that’s why that vote was such a bad one, and I think Mrs. Clinton, my colleague from New York, cast the wrong vote on that issue, terribly so.

MR. RUSSERT:  You mentioned October of 2002.  Let me bring you back to that day, October 9^th, specifically when you went to the Senate floor and spoke in favor of authorizing the war in Iraq.

SEN. DODD:  Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT:  Here it is.

(Videotape)

SEN. DODD:  There’s no question that Iraq poses biological and chemical weapons, that’s not in doubt, and that he seeks to acquire additional weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.  That’s not in debate.  I also agree with President Bush that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must be disarmed.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  What do you think when you watch those words?

SEN. DODD:  Well, I read the whole speech, and I did last evening in preparation for coming here this morning.  And I also cautioned there that we explore, let the, let the inspectors stay on the job here.  And many of us, most of us believed, even Carl Levin for instance, who took a very different view than I did, acknowledged the fact that the weapons of mass destruction were there and the possibility of accumulating.  We were all drawn into that. I regret that vote, obviously.  Like to have it back.  You can’t.  I’ve said as much.  It was a mistake, in my view, here.  But I also at that time and also in March of ‘03, strongly cautioned the administration not to aggressively pursue the military option without seeing whether or not we could actually prove that the weapons of mass destruction existed there.

Colin Powell said it well before the Senate Foreign Relations committee.  He said if this is about regime change, we should not go in.  If it’s about dealing with weapons of mass destruction, that’s a cause for war.  I agreed with him then.  I agreed with him then.  I think that was the appropriate way to approach the issue.  And certainly we’ve learned painfully that that was not the issue.  The weapons of mass destruction did not exist.

MR. RUSSERT:  But, Senator, your support for the war continued.  Here you are in July of 2005, almost two years after you voted for the authorization. Here’s Chris Dodd on MEET THE PRESS.

(Videotape)

SEN. DODD:  We need to complete this job, which I support, by the way.  We’ve got a lot of things we need to do.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  And then in February of ‘06, when asked specifically about a deadline for withdrawal of troops, here’s Chris Dodd:  “‘Senator Dodd, do you agree that setting a deadline would tip off the enemy so to speak?’ Dodd: ‘Yeah, I’m opposed to deadlines.’”

SEN. DODD:  Well, let me—just first of all, it was in—in September of ‘04, I said it was a mistake that we went in.  Hartford Courant will report that, September 28^th, 2004.  What I talked about on the program here was we’re there.  We got in mistakenly.  How do we complete this in a successful way? And certainly the idea—I initially did not like the idea of having deadlines. But, Tim, I’ve come to the conclusion, as many others have as well—and people on the ground conclude this as well—this was not going well at all here. This was—the issue that was raised by John Warner to General Petraeus before the Senate Armed Services Committee a few weeks ago, is America safer?  That’s the issue the American president has to answer.  Are we keeping our country safe and secure?  And I believe that our continued military presence in Iraq does not keep us safe and secure.  I think we’re far more vulnerable, I think we’re far more isolated today than in any time in recent history, and that we need to change direction on this policy.

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: