MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

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MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. It's now been three years and one day since the Iraq war started and the fight in Congress about the war and how long it will be there, goes on.

Representative Anna Eshoo is a California Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and Representative Kay Granger is a Texas Republican on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Congressman Eshoo, you first, then Congresswoman Granger, same question, were we smart to go into Iraq as part of the war on terror?

REP. ANNA ESHOO (D), CALIFORNIA: Well, we now know that it didn't really have anything to do with the terror, the act of terror that was inflicted on our country and so we are now struggling, I think, a mighty struggle, with the mistake that has been made, along with how the war is being conducted. And I think one of the great tragedies of this is that it has taken place, and that we don't really know how to stay there, and we're having trouble coming up with the answer of how to get out.

MATTHEWS: Congresswoman Granger, same question, were we smart to go into Iraq three years ago, yesterday, as part of the war on terror?

REP. KAY GRANGER ®, TEXAS: I don't know whether smart's the right word. It was the right thing to do. I call it the battle. It's a battle in the war on terror, and the president said when we started this war that it was going to be a long and a tough one, and of course it has been a long and a tough one, the war on terror.

What we're in right now I think you're seeing, we're fighting terrorists, we're fighting insurgents. It's success in this battle, in Iraq, could mean a major difference in that part of the world, and a major difference in the lives, certainly of the people of Iraq.

About a week ago, I hosted Iraqi women in Washington for International Women's Day and those women and some of them elected leaders, there was a minister of public works and she said, "Thank you for hanging in there and for giving us a chance, frankly, what you all have had in the United States."

MATTHEWS: Why do you flinch on the word smart, as a question? Because the president has said, many times, this was a war of choice. He decided when to go and if to go, and that was his decision. He will go down in history as the president who made that decision. It's a decision. Was it a smart decision?

GRANGER: It was the right decision. I don't know when you're talking about going to war, using the word smart.

MATTHEWS: Well, was it smart or not to have gone and to have pursued al Qaeda and put all our resource into a worldwide effort where the world would have been united behind us as they were right after 9/11, or to break with the rest of the world, have them rooting against us, including all the Arab and Islamic countries of the world who were for us after 9/11.

I'm just asking do you think it was a smart decision or not to do what he did, because other presidents, like I don't believe Clinton, I don't believe Reagan, I don't George Bush Sr. made a decision like that and he did. Do you think it is a smart decision?

GRANGER: I think it was the right decision. I think perhaps had Clinton made some decisions when he had the ability, we might not have been in the situation there perhaps. But I think it was the principled thing to do, so smart is right, yes, smart, right, principled.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask Congresswoman Eshoo another question of fact. This doesn't require any analysis. Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, promised the American people before we went into this three year war and counting that the Iraqi oil would pay for the war.

We're now talking about a trillion dollar war going to two trillion.

Did Wolfowitz tell the truth or simply sell a war that he favored?

ESHOO: It may be both of the above, Chris. This is turning out to be a tragedy because of the way the administration has executed the war, not enough troops on the ground to keep the peace after we invaded, a reluctance of the administration to owe up to mistakes that have been made, and move in another direction to correct them.

Now who's caught in this? Our troops are caught in it. That's why there's so many of us, 100 Democrats in the House of Representatives now are co-sponsors of Congressman John Murtha's resolution. And there's a very good reason for that. It's because there are 25,000 Iraqis now that are at war amongst one another.

And so, you know, the administration, the president said today, for an hour and a half, essentially things are going well, we have to stay the course. Stay the course is not a policy. So do I think that this is a mistaken effort? Absolutely.

We need courage in the White House to owe up to the mistakes so that the policy can be reshaped and we can redeploy our troops and bring them home.

And it's going to be time for the Iraqis. Time for the Iraqis with their new government to take over the security of their country and we can say to our troops, well done. The mistakes are not on the part of the military. It's the commander-in-chief, this is his war and his mistakes. I think that history is going to judge this administration very harshly, because it wasn't right and it wasn't smart.

MATTHEWS: Representative Kay Granger of Texas, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We're just out of time. I'd love you to come back very soon. And Anne Eshoo, thank you for joining us.

Much more on the politics of the Iraq war coming up. If you can keep up with all the action, in fact you can do it and the hot political races this year and the presidential race, which seems to be coming faster and faster in 2008. Check out the biographies of the presidential wannabes and cast your ballot in our virtual Republican straw poll. Go to our Web site, hardball.msnbc.com. Last I saw, McCain was leading.

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