‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Dec. 9, 2007

MR. TIM RUSSERT:  Our issues this Sunday:  Our Meet the Candidates 2008 series continues, an exclusive interview with Republican Rudy Giuliani.  He has served as associate attorney general in Washington, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, and in 1993 was elected and in 1997 re-elected the 107^th mayor of the city of New York.  This morning Mayor Rudy Giuliani joins us for the full hour on MEET THE PRESS.

Mayor Giuliani, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

FMR. MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI:  Thank you, Tim.  Nice to be back.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let’s go right to it.  Mason-Dixon, MSNBC have done some polling.  First the Democrats, just to share with our viewers and give you a sense of that race.  Here’s Iowa:  Hillary Clinton, 27; Obama is 25; Edwards, 21--three-way dead race.  New Hampshire, Clinton ahead by just three.  South Carolina, Clinton over Obama by three.  And the Nevada caucus, which is September 19^th—November—excuse me, January 19^th, Clinton, 34; Obama, 26.

Now the Republicans.  Here they are, Iowa:  Huckabee, 32; Romney, 20; Thompson, 11; McCain, 7; Giuliani, 5.  Fifth place, is that a problem?

MR. GIULIANI:  I wish you had shown Florida.  It would—it would have—it would have looked better, where we have an 18-point lead.  There are, there are some polls we’re behind, some where we’re ahead.  I think there are 21, 22, 23 primaries and caucuses going up to February 5^th.  I think we’re ahead in 16, 18 of them.  I don’t expect to win all of them.  We’re going to work real hard in every single one of them, maybe surprise some people in Iowa, maybe in New Hampshire, work real hard there.  South Carolina, Michigan, Nevada.  Then we get to Florida, where I think the latest poll was 16 to 18-point lead, and we’ve had a lead there of that magnitude pretty much throughout.  Every once in a while it slipped back to like seven or eight.

MR. RUSSERT:  But in fifth place in Iowa, would it be better for you if Huckabee beat Romney in Iowa?  Wouldn’t that be helpful?

MR. GIULIANI:  The best thing is if you win.  That’s the very best thing.

MR. RUSSERT:  But that...

MR. GIULIANI:  Who knows.  Who knows.  I—you’ve been through so many of these, Tim.  You know that no candidate has won all the primaries in a, in a hotly contested one.  This is one in which that’s not very conceivable, given all the good candidates there are.  So if we can win a couple at the beginning, you know; win Florida for sure.  We go into February 5^th, then, ahead in New York, Illinois, California, New Jersey, Connecticut.  We’re actually ahead right now, I believe, in Missouri.  Kit Bond’s endorsement probably helped there more than me.  But the reality is we’ve got, we’ve got a lead probably in, like, 15 of the 20 on February 5^th, Florida, and we’re competitive.  But we’ve got a long way to go in some of them.  So we’re going to see.  We’re going to work real hard.

MR. RUSSERT:  Here’s New Hampshire:  Romney’s ahead of—as you can see, 25; Giuliani, 17; McCain, 16.  South Carolina:  Huckabee is ahead 20; Giuliani, 17; Romney, 15.  And Nevada, we’ll show you Nevada:  Giuliani is ahead 25, 20, 17.

MR. GIULIANI:  Now do Florida.  Do Florida.

MR. RUSSERT:  We, we haven’t done Florida.  But we’ll, we’ll get there eventually.

MR. GIULIANI:  No, but you look, you look at South Carolina, that’s, that’s a good place to be for someone who has, you know, campaigned all over the country.  We haven’t concentrated on any one state.  We’ve kind of had a proportionate campaign all over.  Some of the candidates have concentrated on a state.  We got a real good organization in South Carolina.  That’s a very competitive place to be.

MR. RUSSERT:  But if you lose...

MR. GIULIANI:  New Hampshire.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...Iowa, if you lose Iowa and New Hampshire, South Carolina, you’re still in?

MR. GIULIANI:  I’m, I’m, I’m in, all right?  The idea is you want to win the first one.  If you lose the first one, you want to win the second one.  If you lose the second one, you want to win the third one.  And you want to be there for, you know, Florida, at the end of the month, big state.  And you want to be there, certainly, for February 5^th when we’re going to have more primaries on one day than we’ve ever had in our history.  And some real big states, you know, New York, Illinois, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me turn to some important issues first.

MR. GIULIANI:  Oh, and Michigan is in there, too.  We shouldn’t miss Michigan is in there in January.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me turn to Iran.  The National Intelligence Estimate is out.  This is what they reported from our intelligence community.  “We judge with high confidence that in” the “fall” of “2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.

“We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.

“We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon is late 2009, but” this “is very unlikely.

“We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before 2015.”

And when the National Intelligence Estimate was asked as to why that may have happened, this was their conclusion:

“Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.”

Seeing that, hearing that, learning that...

MR. GIULIANI:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Doesn’t this remove the option of a pre-emptive military strike against Iran?

MR. GIULIANI:  No, I, I don’t think it does.  I think, I think you always leave open the military option in a situation, and you’ve got to interpret it, you’ve got to interpret that as between high confidence, moderate confidence. I think what it’s saying, I think a fair interpretation is that, at least in their estimate, which they warn you may not be correct if you read the introductory part of it, right now the short-term issue is not nearly as grave, but they go on to say that the long-term issue is still there, that they can’t, they can’t with any high degree of confidence say that they’re not going to move ultimately toward nuclear weapons.  So our, our—the option of this government should be that we don’t take any options off the table, and we keep the pressure on them.

And of course we don’t, we don’t want to use the military option.  It would be dangerous; it would be risky.  But I think it would be more dangerous and more risky if Iran did become a nuclear power.  We should utilize sanctions.  We should utilize as much pressure as we’re capable of.  But the fact that that is there, that military option is there, not taken off the table ultimately increases the pressure, doesn’t it?  The reality is the pressure works.  They said that, too, right?  They, they said in 2003 Iran abandoned its nuclear program, they believe, because of all the pressure, all the threats, that they are susceptible to that.  2003 was the year in which we deposed Saddam Hussein.  It was the year in which America showed massive military strength.

MR. RUSSERT:  But you’re not saying deposing Saddam Hussein was a reason that Iran suspended its program?

MR. GIULIANI:  I, I was going—no, I, I said you’ve got to look at what was going on in 2003.  All of a sudden Iran, according to this, if it’s correct—and again, we all have to factor this with it may or may not be correct, high confidence, they go on to warn you that that doesn’t mean it’s certain.  When you read this, you’ve got to have a chart to interpret it.  So the reality is they stopped in 2003.  So now let’s look at what was going on in 2003.  We had just won a big victory in Afghanistan, we had deposed Saddam Hussein.  That’s around the time Qadafi was putting up the red flag, the white flag of surrender.  So—and they say that pressure helped to bring Iran to that position.

MR. RUSSERT:  Diplomatic pressure.

MR. GIULIANI:  Well, well, pressure in general.  And the idea that the military option is not taken off the table has got to add to that pressure. You take the military option off the table completely, I think you move back into a different situation.  When you say the military option is on the table, it doesn’t mean as some, you know, political opponents like to say that you, you know, you’re, you’re threatening or—it’s a statement of policy.  And then you say, what we want to do, we want to see a peaceful solution to this. Nobody would be happier than Americans to see a peaceful solution to this. And then you also try to get your allies to be as strong as they possibly can be on the sanctions because I think I would use that NIE with them to say, ‘It works.  This works.  This kind of diplomatic pressure and not taking the military option off the table works.’ 2003, all the pressure was there and the military option was on the table, and they stopped.  Why would we now take it off the table?

MR. RUSSERT:  Norman Podhoretz, who’s an adviser of yours on foreign policy, this is what he wrote.

“The case for bombing Iran.  I hope and pray that President Bush will do it,” by Norman Podhoretz:  And then this interview.

“Norman Podhoretz believes that American needs to go to war soon with Iran. As far as he knows, Rudy Giuliani thinks the same thing.

“‘I was asked to come in and give him a briefing on the war, World War IV,’” said Mr. Podhoretz, a founding father of neoconservatism and leading foreign policy adviser to Mr. Giuliani.  ‘As far as I can tell there is very little difference in how he sees the war and how I see it.’”

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