MSNBC Meet the Press - Transcript

MSNBC Meet the Press - Transcript
Sunday, December 11, 2005

BREAK IN TRANSCIPT

MR. RUSSERT: But first, the war in Iraq. Joining us, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright.

Welcome both.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Thank you.

FMR. SEC'Y MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Nice to be with you.

MR. RUSSERT: Madam Secretary, on Thursday, the Iraqis go to the polls. What do you think will happen? And two, what should the Bush administration do after the election?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, first of all, I'm chairman of the board of the National Democratic Institute, and we have people on the ground in Iraq, and they have been training a lot of people to be poll-watchers, as well as working with a variety of political candidates. I think that--I hope that it will be a very large turnout, that we will have other purple finger moments as we did in January. What has to happen is that we have to move towards a political settlement. And there are indications that there are going to be more Sunni participants. But the important part is how to get a government that is representative and then is able to do something about amending the constitution. So it's a very important moment. And I think it's something that we want to see succeed.

MR. RUSSERT: Last week, you said this in The Washington Post. "The president was basically repackaging things and saying everything's fine, when every day, we read that things are not fine. ... I so wish I could believe him. I like to believe an American president, but he's got such a credibility issue."

What don't you believe about President Bush?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, it's a little bit like a split-screen here. What we s--I just mentioned about the political evolution. The military part is terrible. Every day as we see reporting on this, there are Americans dying, Iraqis dying, a variety of terrible things happening in terms of the security; no reconstruction. And President Bush in his speeches is basically telling us something that I don't see. And I'm very sorry about it. And using words like "victory" that have been somehow part of some polling operation out of the White House doesn't work. You can't just keep putting "victory" on the screen when there is no evidence that that is going on. So that's my problem.

But I have to tell you, Tim, I really want to believe the American president. It's important for us to have confidence in his credibility. And I--at this point, I think it's really hard for the average American to have that kind of a feeling.

MR. RUSSERT: Joe Lieberman, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, said that, "We undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril."

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think Senator Lieberman has clearly spent a lot of time looking at issues, and he's somebody who's very serious. But I must say, I disagree with him. I think that Americans have to have the ability to talk about what's going on. And the only way that we're going to get at this is by asking questions, and I don't think it undermines the morale of the troops. I think that they want to know that we are able to exercise our freedoms. And there's nothing unpatriotic about asking questions.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Graham, what's going to happen Thursday?

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, I hope we have a larger turnout. We're about to democratically elect a parliament. We haven't done that yet. These are people who actually are running for office that will write laws for the Iraqi people. It will be a chance for the Iraqi people to chart their own destiny. That is a huge sea change in the Mideast. I hope it goes well. Speeches by the president have been helpful. They've been long overdue. Senator Lieberman believes there's been a change in the policy for the good. I do, too.

But here's the problem. When you tell people it costs $50 billion is all it's going to cost to rebuild Iraq, as Mr. Wolfowitz did, when you tell people that the insurgency is 1/10th of 1 percent and it still goes on after four years, there's a price to pay for underestimating how hard this is, and I think that's been the president's problem. He has made some policy statements in speeches recognizing problems. And as Senator Lieberman has found, we are doing better. We're cleaning, we're holding and we're building cities that have been reoccupied by the terrorists. And I don't think we're going to have any major troop withdrawals any time soon if we're really serious about protecting this infant democracy.

MR. RUSSERT: You don't think any significant troop withdrawals in 2006?

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, I hope it's not politically motivated. I hope it's based on what's going on on the ground. The Saddam Hussein trial is the best evidence yet of where we're at in Iraq. You've got a dictator standing trial for the crimes against his people. That's a wonderful thing. But the trial is being conducted in an atmosphere that you can't run a country. You can't have the defense attorneys assassinated, the judges attacked, the courtroom shelled. So that shows two things, that we're doing better, the dictator is now facing his crimes, but the security environment in Iraq is so tenuous that there's no way, in my opinion, we can leave any time soon. How can you have a legal system where people in the legal system are getting killed?

MR. RUSSERT: Has the Saddam trial been a negative for the U.S.?

SEN. GRAHAM: I think it's been a very positive experience for the people in Iraq because they can see the benefit of what happened with our involvement. They're getting to chart their own destiny by voting Thursday. And they're getting to bring a guy to trial who's oppressed the people and killed their family members. That's a good thing. But for us to deny the fact that we're a long way from a secure Iraq needs to stop. How can you have a secure Iraq when the defense attorneys and the judges are being killed?

MR. RUSSERT: But has Saddam manipulated it for his own propaganda successfully?

SEN. GRAHAM: I don't think so. I think every time he speaks and every time he fails to show up or make statements, it reinforces the fact to the people that he's on the way out. I think it's a good thing for the Iraqi people to see it. And I think if we misunderstand what's going on in Iraq, the level of security that we'll need to leave behind is not even close to being there.

MR. RUSSERT: Secretary Albright, you just heard Senator Graham saying it's unlikely to have any significant troop withdrawals in the immediate future. Do you agree?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think that we have to see the year 2006 as a year of transition. And the point here is that the Iraqi people have to begin to take more and more responsibility for what they're doing both politically and militarily. But the issue here is, and it's a paradoxical one, which is that our presence is both the solution and the problem. I am very troubled when I see American forces under threat. We all want our forces to come home safely as quickly as possible, but we also have to be very careful to get it right. The thing I've said, Tim, is that this was a war of choice, not of necessity, but getting it right is a necessity and not a choice. And we cannot leave chaos, but we have to see 2006 as a year of transition.

MR. RUSSERT: But you also said in June of '04, "The pessimists are wrong. We must stay the course because although the war in Iraq was not a war of choice, not necessity, winning the peace is a necessity, not a choice." And you wrote in your book, "Militarily, we must show neither desperation to leave-- which would further embolden the insurgents--nor a desire to stay longer than needed--which would alienate all of Iraq."

Which is it? Should we stay or should we leave?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think that what we have to do is work towards leaving, but at the same time, make sure that the Iraqis are capable of taking over. And what we've seen is--and it's part of what Senator Graham was saying in terms of what we know has been going on--we were told that the Iraqi forces were being built up. They are not. There's very interesting article by Jim Fallows that explains that we have wasted time in building up the Iraqi forces and that the training hasn't been good and we haven't given them equipment. And so we are creating a situation where it's very difficult for us to leave.

I do think that it is very important for us to get this right. And what has trouble me all along, Tim, is that while I understood that Saddam Hussein was a terrible person and that we're better off without him, I never thought that we were presented with a proper plan. And that's the problem here. There was no proper post-invasion plan. And it makes it very hard for us to kind of pick up and leave at the moment.

MR. RUSSERT: Should there be a fixed timetable for withdrawal?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I personally am not for a fixed timetable. I do think that--I agree with the president that there needs to be a set of benchmarks. We need to know what they are. The president needs to tell us that, and we have to have a discussion based on reality, on facts. And that's what I think has been a very positive thing that's happened in the last couple of weeks, thanks to Congressman Murtha, who has really raised a lot of questions, a great patriot.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Graham, back in June you startled a lot of people with this comment. "The public support in my state"--South Carolina--"has turned...in the most patriotic state that I can imagine, people are beginning to question. ...And I don't think it's a blip on the radar screen. I think we have a chronic problem on our hands."

SEN. GRAHAM: You just have to be blind not to understand what's going on in the country. The truth is that people in South Carolina are doing what they're doing all over the nation, they're wondering why it's taking so long. We've undersold how hard this would be. Without violence it took years to get Germany and Japan from dictatorships to democracy. Yet, at every turn we've underestimated how hard it would be. We've underestimated the actual economic cost, how hard it would be to build an economy up after the fall of Baghdad. We've never had enough troops. We've paid a price in the past for our missteps. We've assumed the best and never planned for the worst and it's hurt us. It's hurt us with our own people, it's hurt us internationally.

Things are changing for the better. The worst thing we could do, in my opinion, is to leave this infant democracy behind, without the ability to have a reasonable chance to develop in the future. It could turn into a regional war if they fail in Iraq. It does matter what happens in Iraq in terms of our own national security. Have we made mistakes? Yes. The biggest mistake would be to leave because of '06 politics.

MR. RUSSERT: In terms of the tone of the debate, the Republican National Committee has put on its Web site a new advertisement and here it is in part. Let's watch.

(Videotape, RNC Web site):

DR. HOWARD DEAN: The idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Waving a white flag, is that appropriate?

SEN. GRAHAM: The '06 election is going to come and go. Iraq will be still a problem after '06. I don't think it's appropriate. Howard Dean is wrong when he says we can't win. It doesn't mean he's not a patriot. Murtha wants to leave the region and deploy outside of Iraq. I think he's wrong, doesn't mean he's a patriot. John Kerry wants to cut the force by two-thirds. I think he's wrong, doesn't mean he's not a patriot. Lieberman says stay the course.

The--there is no a political consensus in this country. Democrats and Republicans are struggling. We've lost our national unity when it comes to Iraq. What happens in Iraq will matter to this country long after '06. I wish we would quit running ads against each other and try to find consensus. Maybe this would be one of the things we could agree on. What happens in Iraq matters to the region and to our own national security. Come up with a plan that will allow us to leave honorably and give these people who are dying in droves in Iraq for their own freedom a reasonable chance to be successful.

MR. RUSSERT: So it is your opinion that you would prefer the Republican National Committee to pull that ad down?

SEN. GRAHAM: Yes. I don't want to have a campaign about who's a patriot. I want to have a campaign that would unite the country, find consensus on Iraq and talk about our political differences in terms that make us stronger, not weaker. And we're going to drive a wedge among ourselves that will make the world less safe, including ourselves.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Tim, there is not one Democrat who wants us to fail in Iraq. There's not one Democrat that doesn't want our troops to come home safely, or wants our homeland to be properly protected or let Iraq develop a democracy and operate within the region. And I have to tell you, to be maligned as not patriotic, or undercutting the effort, I think is unacceptable. And I very much appreciate what Senator Graham has said in terms of getting this ad off. It doesn't help anything. And I do agree with him that it is very important for the American people and for the Iraqis to be able to see some consensus in the United States about what we care about.

SEN. GRAHAM: Can I add this one thing? It goes both ways, too, Madam Secretary. Calling our president a liar, calling the vice president a liar, that everybody else in the world got it wrong in Iraq honestly, including the Clinton administration, that everybody was wrong about weapons of mass destruction, honestly accept two people, Dick Cheney and George Bush, is also part of the problem, and that needs to stop.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think that it's very important for us to understand what was done with the intelligence and why certain facts were put forward when they weren't facts. And there are enough people in the intelligence community that are saying that. But I agree that I think what we need to be working on is a solution here. This is a very serious problem. It has hurt--the United States has been hurt in terms of our position internationally. I loved representing the United States. It was the greatest possible honor. And I think now, our position in the world has been hurt and our moral authority has been undercut.

MR. RUSSERT: But to Senator Graham's point, Secretary Albright, in 1998, the Iraq Liberation Act was passed by Congress, signed by President Clinton. "...It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein."

And then again from your book: "...I could not question the goal of ousting Saddam Hussein. As President Clinton said in 1998, the Iraqi leader threatens `the security of the world,' and the `best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government.'"

MS. ALBRIGHT: Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: You believed he had weapons of mass destruction.

MS. ALBRIGHT: I said that I did, but I never thought that they were an imminent threat. And what we did was to keep Saddam Hussein in a box by using diplomacy, sanctions and force, with bombing in the no-fly zone. It worked. And what is evident from the CIA reports is that it did work. The sanctions worked. But I think...

MR. RUSSERT: So the war was a mistake?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think the war was a war of choice and unnecessary at this time. And...

MR. RUSSERT: Was it a mistake?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think it was badly planned. As I said, I understood the why, but I didn't understand why now, or what next. And that is the position that I've always said.

MR. RUSSERT: But if you knew today that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, would you vote to go to war?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I would have--one, I was not a politician. But I would have kept our attention on Afghanistan. They are the ones who hit us on the World Trade Center, they are the ones that guarded Osama bin Laden. And as the intelligence has shown, there has been no connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, until recently when, as a result, of even what Porter Goss is saying, there are more terrorists in Iraq than there were before.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Graham, I want to clean something up, from The Greenville News, February 24, 2003, this is Lindsey Graham talking. "[Lindsey Graham] cited `direct, substantial and unequivocal evidence that (Saddam) is supporting the al-Qaida murderers who plotted the September 11 attacks ... Saddam is an imminent threat.'"

Do you still stand by both of those comments? That Saddam supported the al-Qaeda murderers who plotted September 11th, and, two, he was an imminent threat?

SEN. GRAHAM: I think the evidence that shows about the aluminum tubes, I authored a resolution before I went to the Senate, in the House, saying that he was an imminent threat. And one of the pieces of evidence that was presented to me was the aluminum tubing. And I can tell you about it now, we went to a secure room in the Capitol and they made the case, this could only be used for a nuclear centrifuge, to make a nuclear weapon. I...

MR. RUSSERT: But the State Department and the Department of Energy dissented.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah. I was wrong. I think it's OK to say that you were wrong, as long as you-- something good comes out of it. I think it's wrong to assume that the sanctions were working. I think the U.N.'s effort to control Saddam Hussein was a joke. I think they were being bought off. I think he was going to get stronger over time. And if we've learned nothing, let's don't turn our national security over to the U.N. until it's reformed.

MR. RUSSERT: But you no longer believed he was an imminent threat?

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah, in terms of the weapons of mass destruction, they seem not to be available. But here's what I do believe. I believe within that dictatorship, that he thought he had them. We've had generals tell us that they assumed the general across the way had the weapons, even though they didn't have it. He wanted us to believe that he had these weapons of mass destruction. And he probably believed it himself.

MR. RUSSERT: But he was not an imminent threat to the U.S. at the time we went to war.

SEN. GRAHAM: In the sense of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, that appears to be wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: What about his support of the al-Qaeda murderers who plotted against September 11th?

SEN. GRAHAM: That...

MR. RUSSERT: Do you--is there a linkage between September 11th and Saddam Hussein?

SEN. GRAHAM: That seems to have fallen apart, Tim. It really does. And in that regard, I'm glad he's in jail. I'm glad he's on trial. The world's better off without him. It would be a huge event in the Mideast if this could become a functioning democracy, where a woman would have a say about her children based on a constitutional right, that you could enforce in a courtroom with a fair judge. That's where the consensus ought to be.

Did we make mistakes? Yes. Did we poorly plan the fall of Baghdad? You'd better believe it. Shinseki was right. We should have had more troops. We need more troops now, in my opinion. This idea that it's a bunch of dead-enders is totally wrong. The insurgency's got to be larger than 1/10th of 1 percent because Zarqawi's been able to survive this long. So, yeah, we've made tons of mistakes.

MR. RUSSERT: Will we win the war in Iraq?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I hope so, because I think that there isn't anybody that wants us to fail there. It is very serious, and it has destabilized the region. And I'm very, very worried about it. So I hope very much. But it has to be part of--there has to be a political settlement. The fact that the Iraqis are beginning to buy into the political aspect of this, I hope that spills over into the military part, too. There has to be a way that we get this right...

SEN. GRAHAM: Absolutely.

MS. ALBRIGHT: ...that the peace plan works here.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the issue of the treatment of prisoners of war in this war on terror. Secretary Rice went--Secretary of State Rice went to Europe. This is how the Associated Press reported it. She "gave the Bush administration's most comprehensive accounting yet of U.S. rules on treatment of prisoners in the war on terror. Cruel and degrading interrogations are prohibited for all U.S. personnel around the world, Rice said. `As a matter of U.S. policy,' ...the United Nations Convention Against Torture `extends to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the U.S. or outside the U.S.' However, she gave no examples of banned practices, didn't define cruelty or degradation, didn't say whether the rules would apply to private contractors or foreign interrogators and made no mention of whether exceptions would be allowed."

Senator Graham, you're working very much in this process.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: You support Senator McCain's legislation.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: Intense negotiations with the House side. Duncan Hunter of the--Congressman Hunter said they're close to an agreement. The White House involved. What are you asking for? And is the White House asking for a blanket immunity, so that anything that may have occurred in the past would be absolved by Congress?

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, we're not close to a deal. I've been involved as deeply as I want to be involved for the last three days, trying to find a compromise that we can live with. The McCain language was passed 90-to-9. What does the McCain amendment do? It requires that all interrogation techniques be standardized and put into the Army Field Manual. Why? Our interrogation policy--interpretations of interrogation policy has been confusing, misleading, and our own troops have suffered because they don't know what's inbounds and what's not. So the McCain language attempts to put it all in one spot, so that we'll understand what they can and can't do.

Second part is the most important part. This detainee issue is a defining moment for this country in the war on terror. Senator McCain says it will be the policy of this country, not just for the Department of Defense, but for every agency in the federal government, to treat detainees without cruelty, and cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment will be off the table. That's what we've been for for 60 years.

We've got a problem here. How do you protect the operative in the field who's making snap, quick decisions under stressful circumstances, to protect our own freedom? I'm willing to provide a defense to an operative who's acting reasonably and responsibly, following the law, making hard judgment calls.

What we cannot do, what Senator McCain cannot allow to happen, or our country cannot allow to happen, is to create immunity or exceptions in the law that has protected us for 60 years. Because if we start allowing American political figures to waive the law, grant immunity or create exemptions from existing law that the international community has signed up to, what stops the next country from doing the same thing to our own people? This is a very important decision we're about to make.

MR. RUSSERT: Is the administration asking for immunity for events that may have occurred?

SEN. GRAHAM: There is a breakdown along how to best protect the troops. There's a philosophical difference here. I don't want to divulge. It's honestly held differences. The vice president is not the vice president of torture. He is trying to create exemptions, in my opinion, to protect our people that go too far because the way you protect your people is to adhere to the rule of law. The way you win this war is to embrace a value system different than your enemy. The Israelis are under siege. They don't engage in torture. The British at the House of Lords passed a resolution or a court case said that the U.K. will not engage in torture. If we're going to teach the Iraqis ethics and values and close down these secret prisons, we've got to practice what we preach. And if we exempt our own troops from the application of international or domestic law, then we will set in motion forces that will hurt our troops in future conflicts.

MR. RUSSERT: The bottom line, your position is that there should be no cruel and inhumane, degrading treatment of prisoners of war by U.S. personnel or contractors now, in the future and in the past?

SEN. GRAHAM: Because if we allow such activity, what happens to the airmen that's downed in some foreign country and they torture that airman, wanting to know when the next air strike is coming? Under our theory here they would be justified. I don't want our people to be treated in a way that we would find unacceptable. And what we do as a nation sets in motion forces that will change the world for the good or for the worst. And for 60 years, we've adhered to treating people humanely. The president has said it. The Congress is trying to say it. And if you exempt certain groups of the country or agencies of the government from that standard, then you're setting in motion forces that will hurt your own troops.

MR. RUSSERT: The president would still have the right of pardon?

SEN. GRAHAM: The president can pardon anybody that he believes is unjustly accused. But we can't let the president, the attorney general or any political figure waive the law, be bigger than the law, make a declaration that statutes we've agreed to for 60 years no longer apply. No one political figure can be the judge and the Congress. You can't give them that much authority because it would be duplicated throughout the country. The president of Syria or the president of Iran, under this theory, could waive international law to defend his own country, and that's not what we want to happen.

MS. ALBRIGHT: I completely agree. And it would be very nice if the president would call the secretary of state, the vice president and the attorney general into his office and told them that they should be saying approximately the same thing, which is why the McCain amendment is so important to get it into law. And I am so troubled by what all this has done in terms of the moral authority of the United States. And when a secretary of state has just spent all her time explaining a position instead of dealing with the problems of terrorists that were in London, Madrid and in Jordan, then it is a stunning problem. And it makes me very concerned. And I totally agree with what Senator Graham said here. And he is an expert on the issue. And it's absolutely essential that the United States, while an exceptional country, not ask for exceptions for us from law.

SEN. GRAHAM: And we can protect our own troops. We can give them defenses that are fair and reasonable and will protect them in hard situations without abandoning the rule of law. And if we don't, if in the name of winning this war, we've set aside the laws that we've adhered to for 60 years, we will lose our way as a nation, we'll lose the moral force that we've been and we can't win the war if we do that.

MR. RUSSERT: The White House has hinted the president would veto the defense bill if this language was included.

SEN. GRAHAM: I'm optimistic that won't happen. Duncan Hunter has been pretty good to work with here. I hope we can find a consensus providing a good defense to our troops without granting immunity, which would do more harm than good. We're still trying. We're still working hard. People of good faith are involved. And we've got to get it right. If we get this wrong, it will be a huge setback. If we get it right, we can go to the world and say, "We're cleaning up our act. Now, you help us."

MR. RUSSERT: To be continued. Senator Lindsey Graham, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, thank you both very much.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

MR. RUSSERT: And to you both.

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