‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Dec. 2, 2007

SEN. WEBB:  Well, the problem with the administration’s approach to this is they constantly use fear tactics.  They did the same thing when I offered this wartime amendment, where basically all I was saying was however long our military people have been in Iraq or Afghanistan, they deserve to have that much time at home before they go again.  And the Pentagon, the administration, started saying this was going to cause Americans to die and etc., etc., etc. President Bush has said that...

MR. RUSSERT:  Call up more Guard.

SEN. WEBB:  Or you can, you can develop a rotational policy after, after five years of doing this that’s going to ensure people the same amount of time at home before they go.  If President Bush had said to do it, they’d have been saluting and doing it.  And this is the same sort of thing.  There’s, there’s no one in the Congress that is going to interrupt funding that goes to the ability of the military to take care of the present responsibilities.

The difficulty that, that we have here, it’s sort of the elephant in the bedroom for this entire time period, has been how long are we going to be in Iraq?  What are we funding implicitly as opposed to explicitly?  And we don’t get to have this debate, and so the, the lever that the Congress has, the one pure, clear, constitutional lever, is the appropriations lever, and so the question becomes what is it we’re funding?  If you’re, if you’re—if you want bases in Iraq for the next 50 years, which is what the Republican leadership now is finally openly saying—Mitch McConnell said it on the Senate floor several weeks ago, “This, this should look like Korea 50 years from now”—then you’re going to have one sort of approach, which you ought to be open about it.  So we’re voting for these things, where in there you have money that’s directed toward ongoing operations, but you have all these other sorts of things as well, and so, you know, the question becomes how you draw the line. But the one thing for sure is nobody’s going to cut off funding for the, the things that are necessary for our people to be able to do their job on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

MR. RUSSERT:  But many Democrats have said, “We want to stop the funding for the war, period.”

SEN. WEBB:  And I think that’s just not a winning formula.

MR. RUSSERT:  How long do you think we’ll be in Iraq?

SEN. WEBB:  That’s going to be the big debate of the next year, you know. Actually, I wrote a piece for The Washington Post six months before we invaded Iraq, and the subtitle is—of, of the piece was “Do you really want to be in Iraq for the next 30 to 50 years?”

MR. RUSSERT:  This agreement the president signed with the prime minister, what it—of Iraq, what do you think that portends?

SEN. WEBB:  I, I have a, a lot of concern about the agreement and the comments that General Lute, who is the officer in charge of this, made during a press conference after the agreement, and the fact that the insinuation is that the Congress should not have a specific approval process as it relates to it.  I think, you know, I’ve been doing this a long time.  Generally when you have basing agreements, clear basing agreements, they are pursuant—in the past, they have been pursuant to bilateral security treaties, whether the Philippines, Japan, whatever in the past.  There, there has to be a formula here where the United States Congress specifically ratifies the notion of long-term bases, if that’s where they’re going.  I do not believe we should have long-term bases in Iraq.  I believe we should get this overwatch done, we should move our combat troops off the streets of Iraq, and we should move toward a situation where we do not have a large military presence in that region.  It’s, it’s not in the strategic interest of the United States to have a permanent, large term military presence in Iraq.

And we’re hearing right now, for instance, from the commandant of the Marine Corps that it’s time to, to move, to move troops out.  The Marine Corps would like to shift its mission over to Afghanistan where that’s a, that’s a live expeditionary, clear terrorist environment rather than the occupy—occupation duties that they’re, they’re doing in al-Anbar right now.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me turn to Iran.  Back in September there was a resolution offered which said this:  “The United States should designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization and place it on the list of Specialty Designated Global Terrorists.” At that time, on the floor, you said this:  “Categorizing this organization as a terrorist organization is not our present policy of keeping the military option on the table.  It is for all” political “practical purposes mandating the military option.  It could be read as tantamount to a declaration of war.  This is not the way to make foreign policy.” Do you believe people who voted for that resolution, in effect, were voting for war with Iran?

SEN. WEBB:  I think a lot of people voted for that resolution without considering the possibility that, that that was happening.  And I, I saw—I—when, when I saw that the resolution was coming up, I sat down with my staff, and I, I asked which entities have we designated formally as, as foreign terrorist organizations?  And there was not one other actual governmental entity that the United States had ever characterized as a foreign terrorist organization.  And if, if you think about that in terms of logic, international terrorism is, is nongovernmental by design.  International terrorism works the seams of, of governmental, you know, bodies of, of—boundaries and this sorts of things.  That’s what makes it so fluid.  So if you turn around and say that a, a piece of an actual foreign army is a terrorist organization, essentially what you’re saying is that we are at war with that country, because we are at war with actual foreign terrorist organizations.  So it was interesting to me—I spoke about this the day before the vote.  We got 70--what?--I think it was 72 to 25; 25 people voted against this resolution.  But among the 25 were the top six people in terms of seniority on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  So I think the people who really have long experience in foreign policy—that was including the two Republicans, the top four Democrats and the top two Republicans.  I think the people who really are thinking in terms of the process understood the, the concern that I and some others had.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Biden said that if President Bush attacks Iran without authorization from Congress that impeachment charges should be brought against the president.  Do you agree with that?

SEN. WEBB:  Here’s what I think.  We don’t need to get to that process. We—to that point where we would, we would call for an impeachment.  We have the availability, inside the constitutional process, to prevent this from happening.  I introduced a bill in March which basically said no funding will be authorized for the assumption of unilateral military actions against Iran, absent basic commonsense situations like repelling an attack or pre-empting an immediate attack available, or the operations of our intelligence activities. Those are some things.  Setting those aside, the way to preclude this is to, is to do what’s called an appropriations retrenchment, say there will be no money to start an activity rather than saying there will be a bad result if you conduct the activity.

MR. RUSSERT:  And you have the votes for that?

SEN. WEBB:  No.  But that’s the, that’s the approach.  We...

MR. RUSSERT:  But if the president goes forward and attacks...

SEN. WEBB:  If he goes forward now, he would say—this is, and actually this is the reason that I decided to put that legislation in—he would be saying right now that his signing statement after the 2002 authorization was broad enough that it would allow him to do it in the general war.  And if that were the case, there would be a lot of people, I think, who would step up and perhaps call for some sort of retaliatory action against the president. And...

MR. RUSSERT:  Such as?

SEN. WEBB:  Possibly impeachment.  I’m not saying that I would, I would actually do that, but if he were, if he were to do so, absent a clear justification, that’s where you’d end up.  The problem is, as always, you blur the lines and you, you, you, you have a situation where there’s not a clear line on that.  So the best way to do it is through the appropriations process, and it makes it very clear.

MR. RUSSERT:  2008 presidential election, do you think the Democrats can capture Virginia in a presidential race?

SEN. WEBB:  I think the Democrats have a, have a very good chance in, in Virginia.  If you look at the demographics of Virginia, how they’ve changed and how the statewide elections have gone over the past three cycles, two governmental cycles and my race, I think they had—the, the state is open. One of the things that I was very strong about when I decided to run was that it was time for the Reagan Democrats to come home, the people who, on issues of economic fairness and, and, and social justice moved away from the Democratic Party and who, who have a reason to come back.  And I think if you look at the state elections last November, you look down in the, the Hampton Roads are, the Tidewater area, the Democrats picked up four seats in traditionally Republican areas.  And they’re the kind of candidates that I was talking about.  One of them was a former police officer, one was a retired Navy captain, one was a person who was a, a Reagan Republican.  Another was a—is a former Army doctor, all in, in Republican areas.  So...

MR. RUSSERT:  Who’d be the strongest Democrat?

SEN. WEBB:  In Virginia?  I’m going with whoever’s nominated.

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