FOX On the Record with Greta Van Susteren Transcript

Fox News Network

SHOW: FOX ON THE RECORD WITH GRETA VAN SUSTEREN (22:11)

June 23, 2003 Monday

HEADLINE: Interview With Bill Nelson, Jeff Sessions

GUESTS: Bill Nelson, Jeff Sessions

BYLINE: Greta Van Susteren

BODY:
VAN SUSTEREN: Tonight: Danger grows for our soldiers in Iraq. It's hard to protect themselves when they are surprised by the enemy. And who would think a 12-year-old girl would ambush them? But she did. Joining us in Washington, D.C., Republican senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Democratic senator Bill Nelson of Florida, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator Nelson, it makes it pretty difficult when a 12-year-old kid is firing on you.

SEN. BILL NELSON (D), FLORIDA: Oh, man. This is reminiscent of the most vulnerable position that an American soldier can be put in because you see this innocent child, and suddenly, the child is trying to kill you.

VAN SUSTEREN: Senator Sessions,I mean, it's pretty extraordinary. The soldiers chased her down into her house and just took her weapon away.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS ®, ALABAMA: It is extraordinary. It's good that they showed that restraint. You know, these are young soldiers, and it is very tough duty. I mean, the heat is unbearable. They're having to wear the bulletproof vests. And they're just performing in an exceptional way and showing a lot of restraint, I think. But it is a difficult duty, no doubt.

VAN SUSTEREN: Is it getting more dangerous?

SESSIONS: You know, since the military was disbanded, I think there has been a lot of hostility and maybe some coalescing of really tough groups that are more organized than we've seen early on. I do believe that the situation is not completely out of control. We've lost a number of soldiers. Every soldier that goes out is at some risk. But by and large, every day there are thousands of soldiers out there, many of them mostly receiving real good welcomes where they go.

VAN SUSTEREN: Senator Nelson, are you satisfied with the progress we're making and the decisions made by the Bush administration in what's going on in Iraq today?

NELSON: Greta, I'm not happy. We had a brilliant military campaign, and my hat's off to the Pentagon and all those in the administration who did that. But before the war started, we tried and tried in the Foreign Relations Committee to get the administration to come forth with how they were going to handle the post-war Iraq. And they simply were not prepared. And part--

VAN SUSTEREN: But how do you prepare yourself? I mean, you can't—how do you prepare yourself, like, for a 12-year-old kid with an assault weapon? I mean, that—that's a tough one.

NELSON: Well, you can't. But what you can get prepared is how many troops and a recognition of how long it's going to take. We had Senators Biden and Lugar and Hagel over in Iraq today, saying that it's going to be at least five years, and I wouldn't be surprised if it won't be a decade. What we've got to do is to stabilize the place politically and economically, and that's going to take a long time.

VAN SUSTEREN: Senator Sessions, do you think that the American people have the stomach for five years more and, I mean, the occasional American soldier coming home dead?

SESSIONS: Well, I don't know what it means by five years. We have about 148,000 troops in Iraq now. If those numbers go down and if we make progress in establishing an Iraqi government, I think that would be—people would be happy with that. If we have to put in more troops and it gets worse, then that would be another thing. Frankly, I don't think we're going to have to put in more troops. I think we'll see more foreign troops assist us. We'll be able to draw down those numbers. And by five years, I hope we have few, if any, there. I don't think we know for sure.

VAN SUSTEREN: At what point should the American people become impatient? I mean, how much more time? I mean, is it—is it six months? Is it a year? I mean, at what point should we see, you know, definite improvement, like soldiers coming home and less deaths?

SESSIONS: Greta, I don't think anybody knows, but the American people need to be thoughtful and critical and insightful and not impatient. We've just got to be patient. We've got to observe and realize what we've done here. We've removed a terrible regime. It's going to be difficult to get one established in its place, but it may—it could come together. And I would hope it comes together quickly. I hope that we can get an Iraqi government going as soon as possible, but nobody knows that for sure. And I think the American people are pretty sophisticated. I believe they understand that.

VAN SUSTEREN: What about the cost, Senator Nelson? I mean, how much- - does anyone have any sort of grip on how much this is costing us? Because, frankly, I always thought that at the end of the war, we should stand tall, take our victory and maybe pass it off to, you know, the other countries that were so interested in stepping in. I mean, there are a lot of countries sort of, you know, biting at our heels, asking to be part of it.

NELSON: Well, I wish we could. I wish, for example, we could offset all of our expenses with the oil revenue. But the spokespeople keep saying that it's going to be that oil revenue that's going to go to the Iraqi people.

VAN SUSTEREN: Are we allowed to take that, under international law, to take that oil and--

NELSON: I don't think...

(CROSSTALK)

NELSON: I think under the agreements, it has to go there. And if that creates a stabilized Iraq, then that's clearly in our interest. Greta, you can look to the experience that we've had in Bosnia. We're now in the eighth year in Bosnia. You can look to the situation in Afghanistan. You see how that has started to come apart, where the warlords...

VAN SUSTEREN: But we couldn't—we couldn't let the—we couldn't let al Qaeda sit there in Afghanistan. We couldn't let the—you know, we couldn't let that happen.

NELSON: Oh, absolutely. It was the fact when we left in '89 that created the vacuum that was filled by the terrorists.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, let me give the last word to Senator Sessions. Senator Sessions, you've got—what are we going to do? How are we going to get out of the mess?

SESSIONS: Well, I think we got a lot of people committed to the Middle East. We're patrolling the Persian Gulf. We got troops in Kuwait. We got aircraft in Saudi Arabia and Incirlik in Turkey, flying over Iraq for the last decade. We forget how much we were invested in that region, trying to contain Saddam Hussein. That was—that would would be some relief.