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

Do you believe that, like Norman Podhoretz, that we should bomb Iran as soon as logistically possible?

MR. GIULIANI:  No, I believe what I just said and have said consistently, that military options should not be taken off the table.  It could be a big mistake to do that, but that that should be an option that would be even thought about only as a last resort.

MR. RUSSERT:  Podhoretz...

MR. GIULIANI:  And that that diplomatic pressure, other kinds of political pressure, economic pressure, which is, I think, also enormously helpful here, trying to get more help from Russia and China—I think all of this can work. I think it works less successfully if you go ahead and take the military option off the table.  But I don’t think the military option is the thing that we want.  I mean, that isn’t the thing that we, we, we want to get to if we don’t have to.  Again, we would only get to it if it was a last resort and under this kind of an analysis.  Understanding it would be dangerous and risky, but that it would be more dangerous and more risky for Iran, a highly irresponsible regime, to be having nuclear weapons.  It was the worst nightmare of the Cold War, the idea that irresponsible people would have nuclear weapons.  So I would, I would say you put great emphasis on sanctions, you put great emphasis on economic pressure, hope that that works.  Looks like it’s had some success already, although you have to have some pause with the other comment that says they’re only moderately confident that they haven’t resumed moving toward nuclear weapons.  So you got to, you got to be cautious about this.

MR. RUSSERT:  Podhoretz also wrote this, this week.  “I entertain an even darker suspicion.  It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again.  This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the president may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations.”

Do you think the intelligence community is intentionally putting this information out?

MR. GIULIANI:  I have, I have no reason to believe that.  The only thing I can do is interpret the language at face value.  It’s a—it is a much more complex interpretation when you read it than either side presents it because one side presents it very much in one direction, the other side can present it in another direction.  It’s a pretty balanced presentation that I think adds up to we better, long-term, be very, very cautious about Iran and we better keep the pressure on; otherwise, even they are only moderately confident that Iran has not gone back to the program of moving toward, you know, nuclear weapons.

MR. RUSSERT:  Your best estimate as a potential commander in chief, how long will U.S. troops be in Iraq?

MR. GIULIANI:  For as long as necessarily to get the strategic objective achieved.  I mean, we, we, we have a strategic objective in Iraq, and sometimes we lose sight of that in light of all the politics that are surrounding it.  Our strategic objective in Iraq is an Iraq that’s stable and an Iraq that will act as an ally of the United States in the ongoing Islamic terrorist effort war against us.  That’s the strategic objective that would be in the best interest of the United States.  I think every American would agree.  Some think that that’s possible, some think that it’s impossible, but that’s certainly the best strategic objective.

Everything that I can see, information that I can get, tells me that our military, including General Petraeus, thinks that there’s still a chance we can achieve that objective.  As long as there’s still a chance that we can achieve that objective, we should support it, Democrats and Republicans.  I mean, what, what, what possible gain is there for any American—Republican or Democrat—if we lose in Iraq and have to bring the troops back in defeat.

MR. RUSSERT:  But if there’s no...

MR. GIULIANI:  That would be a gain, that would be a gain for the Islamic terrorist in their war against us.

MR. RUSSERT:  If there’s no political reconciliation between the Shiites and the Sunnis and that becomes clear to you...

MR. GIULIANI:  If, if it became clear to any president, Republican or Democrat, that the, the, the people in charge of the effort tell you, “Hey, Mr. President, we can’t accomplish this.  This can’t get done.  We’re just, we’re just, we’re just in a situation that is impossible to succeed,” I think any president would have to take that real seriously and start thinking about, well, how do we extricate ourselves from this.

MR. RUSSERT:  But as of now...

MR. GIULIANI:  That isn’t—but that...

MR. RUSSERT:  ...as of now you’re, you’re prepared to spending more—several more years if necessary.

MR. GIULIANI:  For now—I, I don’t think you put it—when has any country ever won a war with great pressure for time limits placed on the military while you are engaged in that war?  I think there’s been a counterproductive thing done here that—if we had gone into any war with, you know, “You’ve got a year to do this, you got two years to do this, otherwise we’re going to give the enemy a timetable of our retreat,” you almost can’t succeed in that war. The enemy even figures out you can’t succeed, and they outlast you.  So I think you have to say, and I think we should learn that from this experience we’ve gone through, where we’ve seen a lot of Democrats, like, in three or four different positions on this.  I think we should learn from this that we should set a strategic objective, and we should support that strategic objective.  When it becomes obvious to the military that we can’t succeed, or our review of it, then we shouldn’t.  But as long as there’s a chance, we should support achieving that objective.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me ask you about terrorism.  You were front and center on September 11^th.  You testified before the September 11^th Commission, and there was an article recently in the Village Voice that cited some comments you made.  I want to ask you about them:  “Rudy Giuliani told an audience at Pat Robertson’s Regent University:  ‘Bin Laden declared war on us.  We didn’t hear it.  I thought it was pretty clear at the time, but a lot of people didn’t see it, couldn’t see it.’ A 15-page ‘memorandum for the record,’ prepared by a 9/11 commission counsel and dated April 20, 2004, quotes Giuliani conceding that it wasn’t until ‘after’” September 11^th “that ‘we brought in people to brief us on al-Qaeda.’ Asked about the ‘flow of information about al-Qaeda threats from 1998-2001,’ Giuliani said:  ‘At the time, I wasn’t told it was al-Qaeda, but now that I look back at it, I think it was al-Qaeda.’”

That doesn’t seem someone who’s very aware of the al-Qaeda threat before September 11^th.

MR. GIULIANI:  I wasn’t very aware of it before September 11^th.  I, I knew about it in general.  That’s what I was saying to the commission.

MR. RUSSERT:  But they had been participants in the ‘93 World Trade Center bombing.

MR. GIULIANI:  Right.  I knew that.

MR. RUSSERT:  In 1998, al-Qaeda declared war on the U.S.

MR. GIULIANI:  I, I knew that.

MR. RUSSERT:  But if you knew that, why weren’t you briefing your people and being more front and center on that issue?

MR. GIULIANI:  Well, because I, I, I didn’t...

MR. RUSSERT:  Of being prepared for it?

MR. GIULIANI:  ...didn’t see the enormity of it.  Neither did the administration at the time.  My—I was, I was dependent on the briefings that I was getting from, from, from the administration, and they were not—I don’t think they saw the threat as big as it was, as, as, intense.

MR. RUSSERT:  So when he declared war, you did not see it as clearly as you said you had?

MR. GIULIANI:  I saw it, I read it, I understood that it was a problem.  I never, I never envisioned the kind of attack that they did.  If you ask me, well, what did I envision at the time, what I envisioned were the kind of suicide bombings that had gone on in, in Israel.  I had been briefed on that. I had been warned about that.  You might go back and look at what I did at the time.  I closed off the area around the stock exchange, I closed off the area around the, around, around the courthouse.  I closed the area around the mayor’s office.  I was very criticized for that because they said, gee, I was trying to cut off access to City Hall.  And I tried to explain, although you can’t give out all this information at the time, that I was being told to do that by the FBI, and I was being told to do that by, by the, by the New York Police Department.  So I knew that level of threat.  And in 2000, when we had our millennium celebration, I thought there was going to be a terrorist attack.  And I think it—I was warned there may be.  So you, you, you—I made extensive preparations to ward off a terrorist attack then.  But I had no idea of the kind of level of attack that was in store for us.  And that was, that was a surprise.  And I told the commission that.

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