CNN The Situation Room-Transcript

CNN The Situation Room-Transcript

BLITZER: All right, Barbara, thank you for that.

Let's get back to our top story.

A new medical study shows an alarming epidemic of mental illness among returning combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Max Cleland is a former Democratic Senator from Georgia. Before that, he headed the Veterans Administration.

A veteran himself, he lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam.

Senator, thanks very much for coming in.

MAX CLELAND (D), FORMER U.S. SENATOR: Thank you.

BLITZER: What do you make of this study?

Very alarming numbers, maybe as many as a third of the veterans coming home from service in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from some sort of mental problem.

You've been there. You understand what's going on. Give us your thoughts.

CLELAND: This is what happens in war. I mean this is war. This is the price of war. You can't send young Americans to a place like Iraq and Afghanistan -- especially over a period of four years we keep sending them back and back and back -- and expect them to come home and just fit right in.

I mean they bring that trauma with them and that trauma stays with them most of the time, the rest of their lives.

That is why it is so important to intervene quickly with PTSD counseling and particularly those in the holding pattern at Walter Reed, those thousand there. They are suffering emotionally as well as dealing with their physical wounds.

So they're going to go on to the Veterans Administration. And the Veterans Administration is not prepared to deal with them, either.

So we have to have a wholesale, systematic approach here that works for the massive amount of emotional casualties that are coming back from this war.

BLITZER: Just explain, Senator, what PTSD counseling is.

CLELAND: Well, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD -- or, better yet, post-war trauma -- you go to a war, you bring it home. Duh. I mean, you know, that's what the Walter Reed is set up to deal with, but they're overwhelmed.

That's what the Veterans Administration is set up to deal with, but they're overwhelmed.

BLITZER: But a lot of the times this -- these are invisible, these problems.

CLELAND: Oh, yes.

BLITZER: These guys come back...

CLELAND: Oh, yes.

BLITZER: ... and they seem to be, you know, healthy and normal but what these studies are showing is that there's some invisible strains there that they're returning home with.

CLELAND: Yes. The deepest wounds of war -- having lost both legs and my right arm, I'll tell you, and struggling with PTSD myself, I can tell you the deepest wounds and scars of war are internal. They're psychological. They're mental and emotional. it's what you carry to your grave. So the fact that when we send young Americans abroad to war, we ought to understand that we'd better plan for these casualties when they come back. And that's exactly what did not happen in terms of the Iraq War.

BLITZER: And you've gone through -- like so many other veterans -- major depression. This is something that people should anticipate these veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan right now.

CLELAND: And if you don't intervene with the emotional aftermath of the war up front and early, it can slide down a precipitous path to hell. In many ways, PTSD can turn into alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, suicide.

I mean you -- that's why it is so important. If you figure, say, 30, 33 percent of the Iraq veterans or Afghan veterans coming home suffer with this emotional aspect of the trauma of war, that's over 300,000 people out there, male and female, all ranks, all walks of life.

We have a major challenge in this country to get on top of this. That's why it's so important to fix Walter Reed. That's why guys like Jack Murtha are willing to put as much money into this thing as possible and others who are calling in the Congress for improvements, serious improvements in the whole system of how we care for our injured.

I will say this, that, you know, Colin Powell's remark to the president, "Mr. President, do you understand the consequences of like invading Iraq and if you break it, you own it?" -- well, if we break young people in war, we own them for the rest of their lives.

And that's why it's important to fix Walter Reed and eventually square away the Veterans Administration.

BLITZER: And you've been very critical of the administration's policies in Iraq.

I want you to listen to what the vice president said earlier today because he is once again insisting that if your advice and the advice of other Democrats, other critics of the president's strategy are implemented, al Qaeda wins.

Listen to the vice president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When members speak not of victory, but of time limits, deadlines or other arbitrary measures, they're telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Senator, if you could sit down with the vice president and have a direct one-on-one meeting with him, what would you say to him?

CLELAND: Where the hell were you in the Vietnam War?

If you had have gone to Vietnam like the rest of us, maybe you would have learned something about war. You can't keep troops on the ground forever. They've got to have a mission. They've got to have a purpose. You can't keep sending them back and back and back with no mission and no purpose.

As a matter of fact, the real enemy is al Qaeda. It's al Qaeda -- stupid. It's not in Iraq. That's why we have to withdraw the ground forces there, settle Iraq with a diplomatic solution and go after al Qaeda.

That's what we should have been doing for the last four years.

Instead, this administration and this vice president and this president wants to send more troops to Iraq. Unbelievable.

BLITZER: And what would you say to the president?

CLELAND: You screwed up royally when you said, four years ago, major combat over, mission accomplished, bring 'em on. That means you should have gone to Vietnam and learned that you don't challenge guerrillas that way, people who want to blow themselves us just to take you out.

That's exactly what we've got going on in Iraq. That's what we've got going on in Afghanistan. We're in deep trouble and we're not even chasing the enemy. We're just bogged down in Baghdad with no hope of getting out under this administration.

BLITZER: And, finally, your Democratic colleagues here in Washington, they seem to be divided over what to do next, some really pushing hard for a cutoff of funding, others saying you can't do that.

What advice do you have for them?

CLELAND: Keep on pushing, because the right thing to do is to withdraw the ground forces from Iraq and settle this thing about the stability of Iraq and the future of Iraq by diplomatic means. Then you focus your American military on going after al Qaeda. Go after them in Afghanistan. Go after them in northwestern Pakistan. Go after them where they are.

They're morphing into 60 different nations around the globe. That's why it's so erroneous, strategically, to be bogged down in Baghdad now, after four years.

We -- you know, we won World War II quicker than we've -- we're dealing with this situation here. We're in a deep mess and it's time to get out of it.

BLITZER: Senator Cleland, thanks for coming in.

CLELAND: Thank you

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