FOX News Interview With Senator Lindsey Graham

Interview

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MR. SCOTT: South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He just returned from a trip to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq with Vice President Joe Biden. He briefed President Obama about the trip.

Can you give us some sense, Senator, of what you told him?

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah. I think we do need more troops in Afghanistan. The 30,000 troops that will be sent into Afghanistan are very much needed. We've lost ground there. The resources we diverted to Iraq have hurt Afghanistan. But I think we should have gone in Iraq and we need to win.

When it comes to troop withdrawal in Iraq, General Odierno and General Petraeus have a very good sense of how quickly we can draw down. You've got a three-year time window with the SOFA. Under that agreement, we're supposed to have our combat troops out within three years.

You've got elections at the end of January. You've got national elections in Iraq later on in the fall. So my concern is that you draw troops down too fast, you can undermine the progress we made.

MR. SCOTT: You're in an interesting position. You're a close friend to John McCain, who was obviously just vanquished by this new president in the election, and yet you've also said some very positive things about Barack Obama. You said you're very pleased with the new president --

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah.

MR. SCOTT: -- said that there's a lot of enthusiasm in places like Pakistan for the incoming administration.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yes.

MR. SCOTT: Is this a case where you think that -- you see him governing from the center or are you jumping on the bandwagon that won?

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, I hope so. No, I'm not jumping on anybody's bandwagon. I'm trying to be a good senator. We're at war. You know, the campaign's over, but the wars are not. The men and women fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq need a commander in chief who will come up with good policies. Picking Bob Gates to continue as secretary of Defense was an outstanding choice. Leaving General Petraeus in place at CENTCOM is an outstanding choice.

I want to be helpful, because the men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan do not need any more division in Washington than necessary. We need to end the war well in Iraq and not lose a war that we're on the verge of winning in Iraq and we need to regain lost ground in Afghanistan. And if Lindsey Graham can help this new commander in chief -- president do that, I will certainly do that, because that's what the country needs.

MR. SCOTT: You're also in an interesting position as a judge advocate general in the Air Force Reserves. I know you have some pretty strong opinions about Gitmo. President Obama has already requested a halt in those military tribunals and the expectation is that he's going to ask to close the place any day now. What do you think we do with those 250 or so people who were held there?

SEN. GRAHAM: The first thing we need to do is realize that they're held there as warriors, not people who robbed a liquor store. They're being held under the theory that they're enemy combatants who took up arms against the United States.

So I do believe we can close Gitmo. But what do with them? Repatriate some back to other countries makes sense if you can do it safely. Some of them will be tried for war crimes. And a third group will be held indefinitely because the sensitive nature of the evidence may not subject them to the normal criminal process, but if you let them go we'll be letting go someone who wants to go back to the fight. Sixty-one people, Jon, have been released from Guantanamo Bay, have gone back to terrorism.

So we've got three lanes we've got to deal with: repatriation, trial and indefinite detention. And I want to help the new administration come up with the policies that keep us safe. If we not -- if we do not view this as a wartime event, we'll be making a huge mistake. I do not want to criminalize the war when we close Guantanamo Bay.

MR. SCOTT: All right. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Thank you.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you.

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