MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: Iraq
Interview
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SCHULTZ: Paul Bremer just said that Iraq was a failed nation and they want to do a do over? No one who was involved in the Bush administration has the right to talk about Iraq with any credibility whatsoever. These guys failed big time. The invasion of Iraq was one of the biggest mistakes in American history. Thousands of lives lost and of course for a war that was started on lies. Manufactured by this crowed right here. They couldn`t get enough of it. You know, it`s all that privatization that`s going on.
You know what? Enough is enough. Choices in Iraq right now or up to the President of the United States, the commander-in-chief, and the president alone at this point, the guy that was elected and then re-elected. There is a reason a Democrat won the last two presidential elections. So I ask you tonight. Isn`t this a real debate about credibility? Isn`t this a real debate about judgment and who you trust?
And I wonder if these Republican senators who continue to walkout in front of the cameras just slamming Obama and every decision the president makes whether it is truly politically motivated or they -- do they really believe this stuff? Do the have skin in the game? That`s a key question and I`ll go back to what I asked last night.
Are you ready to send your kid into this civil war, because we might get hit? It`s back to the old argument, "Well, we got to fight them over there so we don`t have to fight them over here." We`re fighting them everywhere. This is an issue of resources. We can`t be the world`s policemen.
And here`s another thing that I think that we got to take under consideration. You can`t trust the Republicans when it comes to resources. Look what they`re doing with the VA, they don`t want to fund it. So if we get into something big in Iraq again, how long do you think it`ll be before we`re talking about offsets? Oh, yeah, middle class folks have got to serve it up again. You know, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, they got to privatize everything because we don`t have money for that because we went back into Iraq to get it right again.
Get your cellphones out. I want to know what you think. Tonight`s question, "Would you hire anyone from the Bush administration as a National Security Consultant?" That one`s even harder to get out. Text A for yes, text B for no to 67622, you can always go to our blog at ed.msnbc.com. We`ll bring you the results later on in the show.
For more, let me bring in Senator Barbara Boxer of California. Senator, it is great to have you with us tonight. I appreciate your time.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER, (D) CALIFORNIA: It`s good to be with you and can I thank you for that opening? Thank you.
SCHULTZ: Well, you know, 10 years ago, I didn`t have this platform and I was at home pulling out what hair I had left.
BOXER: Right.
SCHULTZ: And at that time, I was amazed that this was nothing but a promotional drum beat to go do something on a lie when there was not really verification and you know that. You voted against this. Are we getting another Iraq sale job, Senator?
BOXER: Well, of course and the media is inviting all these guys and maybe there`ll be some gals too to talk to about this again. And I would just say rhetorically if you want another disaster listen to these people. They did get us into the worst disaster that I can remember certainly in my lifetime. And you talked about the 4,000 Americans dead, but you didn`t happen to mention in this particular report the 30,000 desperately wounded.
The fact that they said we`d be treated as liberators. The fact that these same people said we`d be out of there in six months and that the oil revenues would pay for the war, which is now estimated by experts to be at $2 trillion when you count all the health care that we have to give to our brave men and women in uniform. We were in there nine years and we are not going to go back. We`re not.
SCHULTZ: What do we do, Senator? What is our course of action as you see it?
BOXER: OK. Here`s what I think. There are certain facts that we have to deal with. We know there are terrible terrorists out there in the world. They`re all over the map, but we know I-S-I-S, ISIS, came into being when we went into Iraq. And they have now fill the void because Maliki did not do an inclusive government and ISIS took advantage of this opening and taking back Sunni territory.
We do have, Ed, tens of thousands of our military in the Middle East and many of them are experts in intelligence and counter terrorism. Yes. We have a stake at making sure that there`s not another 9/11, but we`ve had that ever since the day after 9/11. So we have to be vigilant and, yes, we have to go after those terrorists but we don`t get into boots on the ground. We don`t get into a civil war. We gave the Iraqi people a chance of a lifetime. We gave it to them with our blood, with our treasure, and I am telling you they blew it and that`s the fact. Maliki wouldn`t even give us a status of forces agreement.
So those Republicans who were saying, "Barack Obama took our people out". By the way, I was for taking our people out. The president wanted to keep more of a force there but he couldn`t get a status of forces agreement. So bottom line is we`re not going to go back in there again. We have paid dearly and there are families who will never get over the payment that they`ve made.
SCHULTZ: And finally, Senator. The conservatives are making the case that if we don`t do something that this will be a staging ground for another 9/11 that we will get hit again as a country. We won`t be secure because we`re not involved in their civil war and the fighting going back between the Sunnis and the Shia and of course the pushback against the dictator Maliki. What about that?
BOXER: The fact is we have a counter terrorism operation in the Middle East. And we should do what we`ve done all along since 911. Go after those terrorists.
Today, we -- the president announced that we did get the terrorist behind the Benghazi catastrophe. We got that man. And we are holding him and we will try and then he will face justice but you don`t get into the middle of a civil war. We have counter terrorism and we`ll continue to have counter terrorism.
SCHULTZ: Senator Barbara Boxer, great to have you with us tonight. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
BOXER: Thank you.
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