CBS News: "Face The Nation" - Transcript

Statement

And with us now from Clemson, South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham of the Armed Services Committee. And here in the studio with us, Senator Carl Levin, who is the chairman of that committee. Let's start first with Afghanistan, where I started with General Jones. What are you going to do, Senator Levin, if the President comes to you and says we've got to have a lot more troops for Afghanistan?

SENATOR CARL LEVIN (Michigan, Chairman, Armed Services Committee):
Well--

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Will Congress go along with that?

SENATOR CARL LEVIN: Well, it's too early to know what Congress would do. It depends on what the facts and the arguments are. It depends what our commanders in the field say. It depends also, I think, in part, what our NATO allies are willing to do. Many of them have come forth. Some of them-- a number of countries have taken some very hard hits, losses of troops, but a lot of the other NATO allies have fallen short of their commitments and we're going to put maximum pressure on them to do what they promised to do, in terms of providing trainers for the Afghan army and also providing money. They-- they have promised a billion dollars, along with a billion euros, a long time ago, and they have only provided ten percent of that. So, you know, Afghanistan is a little but different from Ira-- a lot different from Iraq. For one thing, Afghanistan is the place, along with the Pakistan border, that the attackers were trained and harbored, that hit us on 9/11. We took our eye off that ball when we went to Iraq, but now we've got our eye on that border. We cannot allow that border to become a safe haven again.

And something else is very significant in Afghanistan. And that is that the Afghan army is cohesive; they are motivated; they hate the Taliban. And so they have the motivation necessary. What they don't have are the numbers yet. We've got to be much, much better and quick-training of the Afghan army, because I think we've got to transfer this responsibility as quickly as we can to the Afghans.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator Graham, what-- what about that?
What-- what about when we put our eye back on that area along the border? What's going to need to be done there, and how far do you think Congress is going to be willing to go?

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM (Armed Services Committee): Well, your question was, what would you--what would Congress do if the President said we needed more troops in Afghanistan? I am one Republican that would support more troops in Afghanistan. I do believe, quite frankly-- I'll be shocked if more troops are not requested by our commanders. Afghanistan has deteriorated. In July of last year the President said, when he was a candidate for office, that Afghanistan, not Iraq, was the central battle in the war on terror.

I disagreed then because Iraq hung in the balance. Iraq is more stable. The President is right. Afghanistan is now the central battle front on the war on terror. That means more of everything: more troops, more political engagement, more economic engagement. Carl is right. Our NATO allies need to send more troops. The Afghan army to be doubled would be a twenty billion dolla-- twenty billion dollar appropriation over five years. America is now paying ninety percent of the Afghan army. NATO contributed their hundred million dollars when Gates passed the hat to help pay for the Afghan army, so I would urge our NATO allies to submit more troops, more funding. And I'll be shocked if more troops are not needed. We must secure Afghanistan, and it is not secure now because we don't have enough troops.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, do you have any indication that our NATO allies are going to say anything more than, oh, it's a great idea, and we'd be happy to continue holding your hat but we're not going to help you much more?

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: Right.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So what do we do after that?

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well, we-- we have to get it right. We urge our -- you know, the President has a lot of political capital throughout the world. He's come up with a new engagement strategy. Hopefully, they will reward the President by helping him.

But we've got to do it. No matter what NATO does, we've got to make sure that Afghanistan is secure for all the reasons that Carl said. If we go-- if Afghanistan becomes a chaotic situation, it affects Pakistan. So we're going to need more of everything.

My message to my Democratic colleagues is that we made mistakes in Iraq. Let's not Rumsfeld Afghanistan. Let's don't do this thing on the cheap. Let's have enough combat power and engagement across the board to make sure we're successful. And quite frankly, we all have got a lot of ground to make up.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I'm-- I'm going to get back to Senator Levin in just a minute, but I've got to ask you what you mean when you say "Let's don't Rumsfeld this thing."

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: We went in with a strategy to win-- to defeat the Iraqi army that worked. We never had enough troops on the ground to secure the population. You cannot have political reconciliation, economic progress, the rule of law, when the judges and the economy is under siege by the enemy. There is too much violence. We've lost parts of Afghanistan to the Taliban. So once we changed strategies and engaged in the surge with more military power, more of everything, we turned Iraq around. When I'm saying "Don't Rumsfeld Afghanistan," don't resist the idea that we're going to need more, because we are. As much as it hurts me to say that, knowing that people in Iraq will come to Afghanistan to continue to fight, I think it's the only way to turn around Afghanistan.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. So where are you going to get these troops, Senator? And the last time I heard, the government was in, kind of, a crunch for money. How do you pay for all of this?

SENATOR CARL LEVIN: We have to transfer a lot of responsibility to the Afghan army. There was a summit, a NATO summit in April. There was a commitment made to have a trainer group go to Afghanistan, by NATO countries. We've got to put a lot of pressure on NATO allies that have so far not come through to do that. It is critically important.

The Afghan army not only needs to get to a hundred and thirty thousand which is the current goal, from their approximately eighty thousand that they're at now; they've got to double that to get to two hundred and fifty thousand. For all of the reasons that Lindsey Graham have just given that we've got to protect the Afghan people and they have got to protect their own people from the Taliban. And by the way, there is a lot of challenging areas in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan in many areas is safe and secure and there are certain areas where there are challenges and we have got to take those challenges on.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But would you disagree with the Senator Graham's premise that it's just going to take a lot more of everything, including U.S. troops.

SENATOR CARL LEVIN: I-- I think it is going to take a lot more of most things. I don't think we should commit at this point to more troops for two reasons. Number one, it takes NATO allies off the hook from keeping their commitments and number two, it takes some of the pressure off of the Afghans themselves to help move that army much more quickly. We need their commanders, for instance, to have larger units in Afghanistan.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I want to ask you quickly about Guantanamo. General Jones says they still believe they can get it closed down by the end of the year. There seems to be a lot of resistance in Congress. Senator McConnell said this morning he thought there would be widespread bipartisan opposition to closing it down. Do you think it can actually be done?

SENATOR CARL LEVIN: Yeah, I think it can be done and the White House assured me as of yesterday that they are on track to get us that plan in the time required by law. You know, we have-- President Bush who said we have to close Guantanamo. We got our key military leaders, from Petraeus to our Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs say we've got to close Guantanamo. Five president-- former secretaries of state say we have to close Guantanamo because Guantanamo has been used by terrorists as a training tool.

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): So, what are you going to do these people?

SENATOR CARL LEVIN: So there is a very broad consensus among some of us, the key leaders of this country that we've got-- that we need to close it, because it is a security threat as long as we keep it open. And so now what I believe we need to do is to have the plan, which others have insisted we have and I agree, have that plan in place for transferring all of those two hundred twenty people to other places for tro-- not to release--

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Would you be willing to take some of those people in Michigan?

SENATOR CARL LEVIN: I support that, providing we have local support and the governor when we are talking about state facilities, of course, I do. You know, we should not be cowed by the terrorists so that we don't even keep them in maximum security prisons in the United States. We can't allow the terrorists to be intimidating us from trying them and keeping them in our jails.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right, we have to end it there. Senator Graham, thank you for being with us this
morning. And you too, Senator Levin.

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: Thank you.

SENATOR CARL LEVIN: Thank you.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Back in a minute.

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