CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer - Transcript

November 16, 2003 Sunday

HEADLINE: Interview With Paul Bremer, Jalal Talabani; Interview With John Edwards

GUESTS: Paul Bremer, Jalal Talabani, Christopher Dodd, Mitch McConnell, Lawrence Eagleburger, James Woolsey, Adel Al-Jubeir, Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom, Michael Smerconish

BYLINE: Wolf Blitzer, Caroline Faraj, Chris Burns, Bruce Morton

HIGHLIGHT:
Interview with Paul Bremer and Jalal Talabani. Then, interview with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

BODY:

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BLITZER: President Bush says the United States won't cut and run from Iraq, but realities on the ground have forced the administration to change its strategy. It's a move that will be getting lots of attention from U.S. lawmakers.

We're joined now by two of them, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate's second ranking Republican; Democratic Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Senators, welcome back to "LATE EDITION."

Senator Dodd, the shift in Bush administration strategy to get a provisional government in place by June, allowing Bremer's work to be over with, is this a good strategy?

SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD (D), CONNECTICUT: Yes, I certainly agree with it. I wish they'd done it earlier. It has the odor of panic; that's what I worry about here. And there's a concern that this may be the first step of sort of to cut our losses and pull out of here altogether.

So we started out by going it alone. Now we may leave Iraq alone, and I'm worried about that, the ramifications if we do do that.

We see polls at least being done in Iraq that indicate that there's a growing hostility. They no longer see us as liberator but occupier here, and this poses some serious problems.

Obviously, the difficulties we're seeing, the tragedy occurring in Turkey, the bombing attacks in Saudi Arabia, the continued deterioration of the U.S. presence in this part of the world is a matter of deep, deep concern.

BLITZER: There's some arguments-some cynics will say and a lot of Democrats are saying it's domestically politically driven, this new strategy, to try to reduce the U.S. involvement in time for next November's presidential election.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), MAJORITY WHIP: Well, first, Wolf, I think it's hard for a lot of Democrats-I don't think Chris would be in this group-but hard for a lot of Democrats to sort of admit that they really are glad that Saddam Hussein is gone. That's the first point.

Number two, figuring out exactly how to handle Iraq in the wake of his departure was never going to be easy. Hindsight is 20/20, and I think the strategy, particularly of the Democratic presidential candidates, is to pick at every single aspect of this.

What the administration is trying to do at the earliest possible time is to put the Iraqis' future in the hands of the Iraqis, and if they can do that with a Governing Council or whatever it's called in June that has the credibility of the Iraqi people so that we can concentrate less and less on running the country and more and more just on the security aspects of it, why would that not be a good idea?

BLITZER: All right. Do you want to respond?

DODD: Well, no as I said-first off, the Democrats-I don't know a single Democrat that doesn't applaud the departure of Saddam Hussein. That's not the issue.

The issue for many of us, of course, is how would this reconstruction phase be run? It has been mismanaged, by any calculation. I don't know how you possibly conclude otherwise.

Our concerns are here obviously that you're not going to have a government chosen by the Iraqi people, one, rather, imposed by the United States. There's a danger in that, in terms of their ability to build the kind of local support that's necessary.

I want this to work. The problem is it's taken them a long time to get to this point, and it took tragedy after tragedy to drive them to it, rather than understanding this issue.

This administration needs to make the international equivalent of a 911 call, and we better get other people involved here quickly if we have any hopes of this working.

BLITZER: President Bush told David Frost, the British interviewer, the following: "The Iraqi citizens need to hear that. They need to know that we won't leave the country prematurely. They need to know two things. We're not going to cut and run, and, two, we believe they have the capacity to run their own country."

How concerned are you, though, that the security situation seems to be getting worse and that the CIA itself, in an assessment this week, said it's not just in the Sunni triangle around Baghdad, Tikrit, but in the north and in the south, it seems to be getting worse, in Mosul and Nasiriyah, where we saw those terrorist attacks only in recent days?

MCCONNELL: There was a good New York Times article just today about how much progress has been made outside of the Sunni Triangle. It is considerably more secure outside of the Sunni Triangle.

The Sunni Triangle is a problem. But other places are a problem. Attacks in Saudi Arabia, attacks in Istanbul.

Terrorism is on the move. And the only way to go after terrorism is on offense. And we're there, and we're chasing them down, and we're hunting them, and we're going to bring as many of them to justice as we possibly can.

BLITZER: Operation Iron Hammer, is that the way to go to come out with a real major military offensive?

DODD: Well, look, I-in fact, I wish some of the blue suits at the Pentagon had let the uniformed services do their job. Too often we get the civilians at the Pentagon dictating to the uniformed services, the Joint Chiefs, how to conduct a military operation. And I'm not competent to tell you whether or not this is a right military move to make or not.

What worries me is that the epicenter of international terrorism was Afghanistan. We're walking away from Afghanistan. That situation is deteriorating by the hour in that country. And there is a great fear we're having here that it is moving. While the epicenter was Afghanistan, it may be moving to Iraq. It certainly wasn't there to begin with. That's a huge problem.

BLITZER: All right, very briefly.

MCCONNELL: Yes, I was in Afghanistan six weeks ago. It's not deteriorating rapidly. They've got a new constitution coming out. They're going to have elections in June. They've made dramatic progress in Afghanistan.

BLITZER: All right, but still no job resolved yet. The job has not been...

MCCONNELL: Well, this is not going to be done overnight in either country.

BLITZER: All right, let's move on. We're going to take a quick break, though.

First, something occurred in the past week that hadn't happened in a very long time. I'll ask both Senators McConnell and Dodd about that.

"LATE EDITION" will continue right after this.

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BLITZER: Welcome back to "LATE EDITION." We're continuing our conversation with U.S. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, U.S. Democratic Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut.

The whole issue this past week of Medicare is coming to the forefront right now. Medicare is about to go, if the Republicans have their way in the Senate and the House of Representatives, in perhaps the most dramatic expansion of Medicare, including prescription drug benefits for seniors, in recent history.

Tell us exactly what you've heard from your Republican leadership, where this plan is going.

MCCONNELL: Well, we expect to have bipartisan support for a Medicare reform bill that has elements of choice in it, but most important for most seniors, is a prescription drug benefit for the first time in the history of the program. It's an exciting new benefit that seniors have wanted for a long time...

BLITZER: How much is it going to cost?

MCCONNELL: It's going to cost $400 billion over 10 years. It's a major investment, the largest change in Medicare and the largest addition of benefits to Medicare since the program came in in the '60s.

BLITZER: Democrats have wanted prescription drug benefits for seniors for a long time. Will you go along with this Republican plan?

DODD: Well, we're going to look at it. But my suspicions are, we're looking at a bit of a Trojan horse here. I mean, there is the prescription drug benefit, which seniors need. But there's a-this idea of sort of, of privatizing Medicare, having a program here that really will force people off Medicare, as many as 10 million people will be pushed into a privatized system.

Medicare has been one of the most successful, popular programs since its inception. And there's a danger in this bill that you're going to do great damage to a wonderful program.

And the lure is going to be, of course, the prescription drug benefit. But people ought to keep their eye on the Medicare provision. I think there's great damage being done to Medicare, real damage in increased premiums. The estimates are a 77 percent increase in premium cost over the next several years, as well as many seniors being pushed off altogether, and private plans dropping their own employees...

BLITZER: Sounds like Senator Dodd is not going to be one of your supporters.

MCCONNELL: Probably not going to be one...

DODD: There's going to be-this is going be a-people have to watch this carefully in the future...

MCCONNELL: I don't think the bill he describes is the bill he's going to be voting on.

BLITZER: Well, that's going to be released, presumably later today. We'll find out.

There was a huge talkathon in the United States Senate this week. You were involved, deeply involved, in this-judicial nominees.

Let me put some numbers up on the screen. Take a look at the screen. You'll see these numbers, compiled by The Washington Post.

During the Clinton administration, 248 judicial nominees were considered. Sixty-three were blocked by Republicans. During the Bush administration, so far, 172 have been considered, meaning up and down votes. Six so far have been blocked.

What's the point-what was the point of 30 or 40 hours of nonstop talk on an issue where you've gotten almost everything you've wanted so far?

MCCONNELL: Well, first of all, 63 judges were not blocked during President Clinton. He had almost as many judges confirmed as President Reagan over an eight-year period. And he had a Senate in the hands of the opposition for six of those years.

What's really going on, the Wall Street Journal, I think, summed it up pretty well Friday with an editorial saying he is Latino. The Democrats are selectively targeting minorities and women to defeat, Miguel Estrada being a perfect example of it, these...

BLITZER: Not Judge Pickering?

MCCONNELL: No, these leaked memos from Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, when they were in the majority, confirm that they were targeting Miguel Estrada because he was Latino.

What they found particularly...

BLITZER: Well, that's a serious charge. So let's let Senator Dodd respond to that.

MCCONNELL: Well, let me just finish. What they're doing is targeting conservative women and conservative minorities.

DODD: Well, no, this is-first of all, it's sad to see this. The Senate is a unique place, obviously, and undermining the ability of the minority to be heard on these issues -- 172 nominations, no other president in the history of this country in this time frame has had as many judicial nominations confirmed as this president has.

And the fact that six of them have been stopped, where there are serious reasons being raised about their qualities to serve, having nothing to do with gender or ethnicity.

And the fact that we tie up the Senate for 30 hours...

BLITZER: How many of those six are minorities or women?

DODD: You know, I don't even know. I know that Miguel Estrada was one of them. I think there are two other women involved.

The point is this. Here we are at a time when we've got a raging war going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've got unemployment with a manufacturing sector of 2 ½ million jobs being lost. We spent 30 hours in the waning days of this session to spend talking about four or five people who have jobs, by the way, they're doing fine economically. It seems to be a terrible waste of the Senate's time.

I hope we can get behind this. The partisanship is hurting the Senate.

BLITZER: All right.

DODD: We shouldn't be doing this.

MCCONNELL: Four of the six are minorities or women. They have chosen to do this, that is, filibuster on the floor of the Senate, for the first time in the 220-year history of the republic. It's never been done before, and probably will always be done after this, and I think it's an unfortunate precedent that we've set.

DODD: That's completely false, in a sense. There have been all sorts of filibusters on judicial nominations.

MCCONNELL: To advance the nomination, never to kill a nomination, ever.

DODD: No, no, because you didn't succeed. But they tried filibusters. The test is not whether you won the filibuster, it's whether you conducted one. And filibusters have been conducted on numerous occasions over the 200-year history...

MCCONNELL: And cloture has been...

DODD: You failed in every one of them.

MCCONNELL: Cloture was invoked on a bipartisan basis in order to move the nominations forward.

DODD: That's not the test.

MCCONNNELL: That's absolutely wrong.

BLITZER: I don't think we're going to resolve it one way or the other.

(LAUGHTER)

But I think this debate is going to continue. We're all out of time.

Senator McConnell, thanks as usual for joining us.

MCCONNELL: Thank you.

BLITZER: Senator Dodd, thank you very much.

DODD: Thank you, Wolf, very much.

BLITZER: Up next, what do our "LATE EDITION" viewers think about the news coming out of Iraq? We'll read some of your e-mail.

Plus this, getting to the roots of terror. The former United States secretary of state, Lawrence Eagleburger, and the former CIA director, James Woolsey, offer insight into what the United States should be doing.

Much more coming up. "LATE EDITION" will be right back.

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