WTTV "Chicago Tonight" - Transcript

Interview

WTTW-TV "CHICAGO TONIGHT" INTERVIEW WITH REP. MARK STEVEN KIRK (R-IL)
SUBJECT: ILLINOIS POLITICS, THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN INTERVIEWER: PHIL PONCE

MR. PONCE: Welcome back to Chicago, Congressman Kirk.

REP. KIRK: Thank you for having me.

MR. PONCE: I want to get to your experience in Afghanistan in just a second. I want to touch on things that Carol and her panel were talking about. But first, a story that you just told me off camera about a conversation you had in Afghanistan.

REP. KIRK: As part of my duty, I met with the Afghan minister of agricultural development and he said, "You're a reservist; what do you do in civilian life?" And I said, I'm a U.S. congressman. He said, from what state? And I said Illinois. And he started laughing, because we're not just a laughing stock in the nation, we're a laughing stock in the world.

MR. PONCE: Okay, you were gone for a few weeks overseas; your reaction to coming back and seeing the events that had unfolded?

REP. KIRK: Well, I thought I was going to a corrupt and crazy country in Afghanistan, but my state became that as well. This is a major industrialized state with a number of enormous decisions before the $55 billion government of the state of Illinois and then a United States senator to put in place. And we have become a sort of tragic soap opera that I think in the long run is hurting the economy of our state and the incomes of families here.

MR. PONCE: You are quoted as saying that you believe the governor has severe psychological problems. Do you want to expand on that?

REP. KIRK: I do. There's no discretion left in the man. He needs to leave office and he needs to leave as soon as possible. He's hurting his state, and I understand how selfish you could be to do that, but almost the unforgivable sin in very partisan Illinois politics is he's crushing his own party. Not only is he really hurting Democrats across the board in Illinois, he's beginning to overshadow the inauguration of Barack Obama, which is -- I was on the other side, but it's still a historic and unique moment in U.S. history. And yet right now, the lead stories on major newspapers and networks is this tragicomedy all arranged by Rod Blagojevich.

MR. PONCE: We just heard -- we saw a clip earlier in the show of Roland Burris saying that his colleagues and the press should address him as Senator Burris. How would you address him?

REP. KIRK: I would address him as Mr. Burris because he was appointed by a corrupt governor who is -- on Friday will be impeached by the Illinois General Assembly and whose political career will be over by March. The man who stands out here as a class act is Danny Davis, who was offered the position and turned it down because he knew it was coming from a corrupt politician whose time was at an end.

MR. PONCE: But Roland Burris's argument is, notwithstanding any alleged corruption on the part of the governor, that he still is legally the governor, he had the authority to do it, and therefore the appointment is legal. Is it? You graduated from Georgetown Law School.

REP. KIRK: No, it is. It's strictly legal. But as -- one of the first things you learn in the first hour of law school is --

MR. PONCE: Don't remind me of the first hour of law school. (Laughs.)

REP. KIRK: (Laughs.) As painful as that was, it's the law but also a legitimacy and moral authority behind it. And here we have the mere shred of legal procedure left and all legitimacy and all morality removed from the process.

MR. PONCE: Olay, but we're talking -- you're making a distinction between what's legal and what's moral and what's seemly.

REP. KIRK: Right. This is a man who cannot command the authority of more than one-tenth of 1 percent of Illinois, who then put this candidate forward. And it would behoove us all for Blagojevich to resign, for Burris to step aside, and for the control of our representative in the United States Senate to be passed to the 12 million people of Illinois. My argument is, any Democrat or any Republican elected by the people of Illinois would be better than this.

MR. PONCE: We just heard state Senator Donne E. Trotter talk about the expense involved. It would be an expensive proposition to do that.

REP. KIRK: Not really. What I think a number of Democratic partisans are afraid of is a Republican could win this seat if there was a special election. And what they don't want you to know is that across Illinois, we're going to have elections for mayor across the state. So there will be elections, ballots and polling positions open anyway.

MR. PONCE: Last month before all this broke, you said that if there were a special election that you'd be very seriously interested in running. Still interested?

REP. KIRK: I'll look at it, but I think right now we're not going to have a special election. We're going to have a mortally wounded senator try to represent Illinois for some number of months, and our state will suffer.

MR. PONCE: If that does -- if the next senator is in fact Roland Burris, he says he could win re-election. Do you think you could beat him in a couple of years?

REP. KIRK: I think almost anyone could beat him. I don't think Roland Burris would even survive a Democratic primary.

MR. PONCE: Well, let's switch gears to -- listen, before we get away from local politics, some people say that Republicans are as complicit in (sic) Democrats in promoting a sleazy political culture in the state and promoting pay-to-play politics. Republicans should bear part of the burden?

REP. KIRK: Absolutely. We have, like, George Ryan, who led one wave of corruption in this state. Some people wanted to pardon Ryan and let him go. I led the effort to say to President Bush, when you leave office, one thing you shouldn't do is let Ryan go. You know, make him, as the chief executive officer that violated his oath of office, pay the full price for his crimes, all 18 of them that he got convicted of. And then we're going ahead with Blagojevich, who is likely off to jail as well, and this comes from a state which, quite frankly, tolerates a lot of this. I mean, I come from the northern suburbs, where any taint of corruption kills you immediately, but in many other parts of the state, that's not true. What we don't realize, though, is this has a direct economic cost. You know, this 10 or 20 percent off the top to the boys costs our state and our economy, and we lose out. And to tolerate corruption on top of a recession is a double whammy for Illinois families.

MR. PONCE: Let's get to your experience in Afghanistan. How long were you there, and what were you doing?

REP. KIRK: I was there for three weeks, assigned as a naval Reserve intelligence officer to Regional Command South based in Kandahar, a NATO command. We were under a Dutch general, and I worked for a U.S. general, the senior leader there. I was put in charge of trying to help put together a counternarcotics plan for southern Afghanistan, because what we have seen in Afghanistan is that we defeated the Taliban, we destroyed the al Qaeda bases, we established elections, and a new government took power, but then efforts stalled. The Taliban gave up on its opposition to narcotics, and they became the largest heroin (bearers ?) in Central Asia, now earning hundreds of millions of dollars. And now they are attacking NATO with a great ferocity. In my area, we've lost 80 Americans, but we lost 90 Canadians and over 100 British, and what I saw there was an allied effort to take on the Taliban, the resurgent Taliban, plans to expand the mission if President Obama wants to do that -- the allies will step in with the United States if he makes that decision -- and really, a tough, implacable enemy that we're up against.

MR. PONCE: Now, you were in an area; it's called an area of imminent danger. I mean, was there combat going on? What exactly did you do? Where did you go?

REP. KIRK: There was. I'm the first member of the House as a reservist to deploy into an imminent danger area since 1942, and so I was stationed at Kandahar Air Field, and then we would deploy to provincial capitals, like to Lashkar Gah, which is the capital of where 50 percent of all the world's heroin is produced, meet with the governor, local Afghan leaders, describe the coming campaign, what we were doing to encourage farmers not to grow poppy, what we were going to do eradicate poppy, how we were going to go after drug kingpins, to lay out the lines, what the British were going to do, what the Americans were going to do, what the U.S. military was going to do, what the DEA was going to do, and to lay out this effort to remove the financial engine from the Taliban.

MR. PONCE: And how were you received? Did they trust you? Did you trust them?

REP. KIRK: Oh, very well. I mean, everything -- everybody saw me as a military officer. We didn't explain to everyone else my role as a congressman. And as in Afghanistan, everything starts out with a three-hour shura and a tea, and we talk about family and establish that rapport, and then to work through the details, which have to happen over several meetings, and what is going to be a big change in southern Afghanistan. Should President Obama approve the NATO plans, we'll have about 60,000 additional troops go to Afghanistan, of which one-third will be Americans. They will be pushing into areas that the Afghan government or NATO forces have never been before, where the center of the heroin and Taliban insurgency has grown, really the narco-Taliban. And so this is going to be a change for Afghanistan, and we'll see how it goes.

MR. PONCE: We're almost out of time, but let's switch geography real quickly. You're a supporter of Israel; your take on what's happening in Gaza?

REP. KIRK: I think it's the height of chutzpah for Hamas to shell Israeli cities and then be upset when Israel comes to clean house.

MR. PONCE: All right. Last question for you, and that is, you're a naval Reserve intelligence officer; reports are that Leon Panetta is going to be picked as head of the CIA, nominated as head of the CIA by President-elect Obama. Your reaction to that?

REP. KIRK: A bit surprised. I don't think he's had any sort of significant military or intelligence background. I don't know if he speaks any foreign languages or was ever stationed overseas. So I'm a little surprised that this would be the man who would head all intelligence for the United States.

MR. PONCE: Mark Kirk, thanks for coming back to "Chicago Tonight." I appreciate it.

REP. KIRK: Thank you.

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