CNN Larry King Live - Transcript
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
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COSTAS: Senator John Warner is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana is a member of that committee. Senator Bye, you asked President Bush, earlier this week, to present and unvarnished version of the situation in Iraq.
Did he do that tonight?
SEN. EVAN BAYH (D), INDIANA: Well, Bob, he did a good job of saying things that the American people already agree on; all of us Democrats and Republicans. We all want to be successful in Iraq. We all support the troops. We all want to be successful in the War on Terror. What the president didn't do as well at, Bob, was to lay out a clear plan with benchmarks for progress that will end in success and I think that's what the American people were looking for and that's essential that we do that to maintain the moral that will be necessary to stay in the course here. And in a word, Bob, we need accountability for progress and I think he could've done much better about that tonight.
COSTAS: Senator Bayh, at this point, what defines, realistically, success in Iraq?
BAYH: A country that does not threaten its neighbors, a country that does not harbor terrorists that could strike us or the rest of the civilized world, and a country that is Democratic and more representative, certainly, than Iraq has been in the past. I don't think we can expect perfection, Bob, but a combination of those three things, I think, we would constitute as success and would certainly enable to us to come home with pride.
COSTAS: Senator Warner, are you more satisfied, than you were an hour or so ago about the way President Bush now stands with his the American public? Did he do a good job of making his case tonight?
SEN. JOHN WARNER (R), VIRGINIA: Well, let the American public answer that. I'll give you my own thoughts and they are very clearly that I spoke -- as the president spoke with a great confidence, a strong resolve to stay the course and I disagree with my good friend over here. There's more than enough benchmarks for progress.
Show me one area in which the terrorists have achieved their goals. They tried to stop and disrupt the elections; they were held on time. They have tried, in many ways, to destroy the police force and each time they inflict terrible harm on police, killing them and so forth, twice the numbers show up the next day to volunteer to take their places. You can see many, many examples of a slow, but steady progress and at the same time, we're not unmindful for a minute of the losses of our own men and women in uniform and those that are injured.
It's very is at the heart of the president, but I have to say that if we stay the course and if we take an attitude back home in everything we say and do, whether we're Democrats or Republican, Evan, and not talk about quagmires and not talk about how maybe the conservatives are more patriotic than the liberals and be more respectful and send a strong bipartisan message that we're behind the men and women of our armed forces and the coalition forces and for the Iraqi people to move ahead and make steady progress with their new government and not, hopefully, let that August 15th deadline for the constitution slip.
Those are the types of benchmarks that we look to, to signal that progress is being made and we don't want to set any deadlines and the American people spoke strongly today in the polls. They don't want to cut and run, and we're not going to do it.
COSTAS: But in those same polls, more than 60 percent said that they felt President Bush had no clear plan for victory in Iraq and now, more than 50 percent say it was a mistake to go there in the first place. I say this respectfully. Virtually all Americans strongly support the troops. All Americans were horrified by 9/11. All Americans know that we face evil and ruthless enemies. They're united in their option to the likes of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. What they differ on, in good conscience; loyal, patriotic Americans differ about Bush policy.
WARNER: All right. First, you gave two examples, that they feel we shouldn't have gone there, but the facts are, as you said earlier in the program, we're where we are and we have paid a heavy price in men and women, lost lives and those that have been injured and the families who have suffered tremendously.
Secondly, the president stepped up to the plate tonight and in a very convincing way, I believe, said to the American people: Look, if we don't stop the terrorists where they are in these remote places of the world, be it Afghanistan or Iraq, they're likely to come here in greater numbers.
You pointed out earlier: Well, what's to stop them from coming now? Well, I think we've done a great deal in terms of our homeland defense and we've put up checks and balances and deterrents and we thank the dear Lord, it seems to be working.
But if we do not contain terrorism abroad and send a strong signal that America, together with its coalition partners, are going to stay the course and defeat their attempts to bring more harm to civilization, whether it's in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever it is, they will most certainly come back at us.
COSTAS: Senator Warner, Senator Bayh, stay with us.
We're going to take a break and when we return, we'll be joined by Congressman Chris Shays of Connecticut and Congresswoman Jane Harman of California.
So, there will be four on our panel from Capitol Hill, when we continue on LARRY KING LIVE after these messages.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTAS: Bob Costas sitting in tonight for Larry King. Congresswoman Jane Harman of California sent her regrets a moment ago. There was a congressional vote going on. If she can cast her vote and get back to our studios in time, she'll join us before the end of the hour, but we are joined now by Connecticut Republican Congressman Christopher Shays. He is the chairman of the Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. He's made eight trips to Iraq in the past 25 months, the most recent being in late May, and it's your contention, Congressman Shays, that the reports of daily carnage, which are significant and newsworthy and awful, but nonetheless that they have skewed perspective on Iraq and American policy in Iraq. Is that a fair summary of your view?
REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS (R), CONNECTICUT: I mean, that's part of the issue. The other part is we transferred power in June of last year. The president was determined to do it, and all of his critics said he shouldn't do it. And then when that succeeded, they went to another criticism, that we shouldn't have the elections when we did. We had the elections, I was there on election day. I saw Iraqi women force their men to come vote with them, because they were going to vote. Now we're seeing a constitutional convection take place. We're seeing the Sunnis, we are seeing the Kurds reach out -- excuse me, we are seeing the Shias and the Kurds reach out to the Sunnis.
The Sunnis have a problem, though. They had 100 percent of the power. They say, OK, we'll compromise, we only want 50 percent. But they're only 20 percent of the population. So that's an issue.
The president made it very clear -- we're working on it in two levels. We are training their security, their police, their border patrol, their army. We're training them. They are able to take our places in different ways, and they're getting the equipment now that they need. And there's far more than Senator Kerry said that are capable. We're doing that.
At the same time, we're negotiating with the Sunnis to say, back off.
The only people who need an exit plan, in my judgment, are the Syrians and the Saudi Arabians and the Iranians. They're the ones that need to find a way to exit out of the mess they're getting themselves into.
COSTAS: Congressman Shays, you're aware that Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, recently said: "Public support in my state is turning." Congressman Walker Jones of North Carolina, Republican congressman, is among those who have submitted a bipartisan resolution that would call upon the U.S. to begin troop withdrawals from Iraq no later than 2006. This isn't the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party. These are solid Republicans, and they and their constituents are increasingly concerned about where we're going here.
SHAYS: Well, they're good people. And you know what? Abraham Lincoln would have lost the election if it was a few weeks or months before the actual election. So, public opinion is obviously huge. And the president needs to bring that public opinion back.
But, you know, what the Iraqis -- the Iraqis aren't asking us to leave. In fact, when I say what's your biggest fear, it's not the Sunnis, it's not the fighting. They say that you will leave us. That's their biggest fear, that we will leave them.
COSTAS: Congressman Shays, I put this to you, because it is best put, I think, to a member of Congress. President Bush is obviously in his second term. A situation different from that of most vice presidents, Dick Cheney is not viewed as a presidential hopeful. He has made that clear.
So neither of them will stand for reelection, but Republican members of Congress will, and with public support for American policy dwindling, this has to be a concern and there has to be some pressure being brought to bear behind the scenes by loyal Republicans to President Bush and Vice President Cheney, expressing concern that this is going to doom them or at least effect them in some way in upcoming elections.
SHAYS: Well, I think that's true. I think we all feel impacted by this war. And some may lose because of their position, but I think they're taking the right position. And I think the president needs to get off Social Security a bit, and recognize that when you have men overseas risking their lives, that it deserves more of his attention and dialogue and interaction with the American people.
COSTAS: Senator Bayh, like every other member of the panel, you voted in favor of the resolution in 2002...
SHAYS: I think I'm going to get on my way.
COSTAS: Congressman Shays has just told us -- I don't know if the audience could hear us -- that he is heading for the same congressional vote Congresswoman Harman is presently a part of, and we thank him for taking a few moments to be with us.
So now it is Senator Bayh and Senator Warner who remain with us.
Senator Bayh, back in 2002, you voted for the resolution that would empower the president, if he so chose, to use force in Iraq. Do you now regret voting in favor?
BAYH: I think we can still be successful in Iraq, Bob. And I think we need to do everything humanly possible to achieve that goal. If we are successful, I think history will record that it's the right thing to do. But in order to get there, we need a game plan for success. My colleague, John Warner, said stay the course. And I understand that, but we need sign posts along the course to tell us that we are, in fact, making progress. The president, for example, tonight, Bob, mentioned 160,000 troops. How many should we have this time next year? There are about 450 attacks every week in Iraq. How many should there be in six months or a year, so that we can tell whether we're making progress? And, Bob, most importantly of all, that there is accountability for success in making that progress.
I think there has been much too little of that. And if we have that, then we can be successful, and this will be a contribution to peace and stability.
COSTAS: Senator Bayh, in your view, what is the single biggest mistake or miscalculation that the administration has made?
BAYH: When I was with my friend, Senator Warner, in Iraq in December, our top intelligence official said at that time to us that things would be 100 percent better, 100 percent better, Bob, in Iraq today if we had only not sent the Iraqi army home. These were hundreds of thousands of young, heavily armed men, unemployed. And we sent them home. We needed to remove the generals, the human rights violators, but the privates, the sergeants, the corporals, they should have been kept in place. We should have said to them -- most of them were Sunnis -- we should have said to them, this is your country, too. We need you to provide stability and law and order for your country, even as we're helping you reconstitute a democratic government.
That was a tragic mistake.
COSTAS: Senator Warner, do you buy that?
WARNER: Well, factually, and I followed that conflict daily, many of the Iraqi troops didn't stand and fight. They dropped their weapons, and put on their robes and fled to the desert themselves, in fear of the shock and awe of the American forces.
Now, the senator is correct that perhaps some of the leaders we could have recruited and put back in. Not those that were the hard- line Saddam Hussein, but the professional army. And, undoubtedly, history will reflect that perhaps we didn't think through as carefully as we should the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad. Because much remained, and we've learned a lesson.
But, you know, here we are. And I want to refocus back here at home, that we need a stronger bipartisan voice on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, in support of our troops, and I think backing our president, who spoke out very courageously tonight. He didn't pull any punches. He didn't give a rosy picture. He said it's going to be a long, hard, tough slog, but we're going to stay the course, and we will achieve the goal of enabling the Iraqi people to take over their nation, have the security forces to maintain what they need to do to preserve their sovereignty, and to join the democratic nations in the world in some form. And I think Americans will look back on this chapter as one of the most important in contemporary American history.
COSTAS: We'll continue with Senators John Warner from Virginia and Evan Bayh from Indiana right after this break. You're watching LARRY KING LIVE.
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BUSH: The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September the 11th, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi, and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden.
For the sake of our nation's security, this will not happen on my watch.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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COSTAS: Back on LARRY KING LIVE, Bob Costas sitting in. A few more moments here with Senators John Warner from Virginia and Evan Bayh from Indiana.
As you both know, army recruitment is down, below projected levels. I put this question to each of you. Is there any circumstance under which you could see a return to the draft? Senator Bayh?
BAYH: No, in a word, Bob. It would take something completely unexpected. I think a crisis in North Korea or Iran, for example.
I am worried, however, that we're not doing enough to particularly shore up the guard and the reserve forces, which are being strained in the maximum. That's why some of us have worked on trying to alleviate the financial hardships that those families are facing, so that these service men and women aren't put in the unconscionable position of having to choose between doing right by their families and doing right by our country. We need to enable them to do both, and we should do more along those lines.
COSTAS: Senator Warner?
WARNER: I was privileged to be secretary of the Navy when the decision was made to abandon the draft. And that was in the latter stages of the Vietnam conflict, and it was the right decision. It was a tough decision. And out of that decision grew the finest armed forces in the history of mankind in many respects. A magnificent, all-volunteer force. Every one of those individuals, brave men and women, who proudly wear that uniform, raised their hands and said, "I volunteer to defend my nation."
But let me just point out, I am concerned. And I'm not going to try and gloss over it. I am greatly concerned about the recruiting, and, as Evan said, the impact on the guard and the reserve. And it is a function of the Armed Services Committee, on which both of us proudly serve, to remedy that problem, to work with the Department of Defense, and turn that curve around.
COSTAS: Senator Warner, Senator Bayh, our thanks to you both. When we return in the final segment of this edition of LARRY KING LIVE, we'll be joined by the mothers of two soldiers, each of whom lost his life in Iraq. One still supports Bush administration policy. The other was opposed from the outset. They'll articulate their positions when we come back.
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