Part 1 of 5 (excerpt):
SENATOR BIDEN: If President Bush calls for more American troops to Iraq, the so-called surge, I will say 'No.' But there’s not much I can do about it. Not much anybody can do about it. He’s commander in chief. If he surges another 20, 30, or whatever number he’s going to, into Baghdad, it’ll be a tragic mistake, in my view, but, as a practical matter, there’s no way to say, “Mr. President, stop.”
Part 2 of 5 (excerpt):
SENATOR GRAHAM: We’ve had a clear hold-and-build strategy [in Iraq]. We could clear but we could never hold. We never had enough troops to begin with. For two years I’ve asked these generals, “Do we have enough troops?” “Yeah, we’re fine.” “Is the Army OK?” “The Army is fine.” A month or two ago, we found out the Army is broken, and they agreed that General Shinseki was right.
Now’s the time to start over. If we don’t start over and do what we should’ve done in the beginning—have enough people to win this war, have the Powell Doctrine implemented—we will pay a heavy price. So I support a surge in troops with a purpose, co-joining with the Iraqi military and political leadership to control this country. You can not have a democracy where you got militias stronger than the central government. You can not, not have a democracy where the people don’t have faith in their central government to take care of them. American forces going into Baghdad co-joined with Iraqi forces and a new political model is our best chance for victory. It may not work.
Part 3 of 5 (excerpt):
SENATOR BIDEN: What you do [in Iraq] is you tell him what—exactly what everyone’s recommended. “Look, Maliki, and look, government, we are, over the next year, going to begin to draw down. You step up to the ball and make some hard decisions about getting the Sunnis in the deal through oil. You make some hard decisions about implementing the constitution, which says we’re a loosely federated republic. You let local areas have control over their local police forces. You make the political compromise necessary in any emerging democracy. But do not continue the process where your only objective is to hold together the Sunni—or the Shia coalition, wipe out the Sunnis and expect you’re going to have anything remotely approaching democracy.”
Part 4 of 5 (excerpt):
SENATOR BIDEN: My view is we have one chance to not lose Iraq, and it rests in not repeating the mistakes we’ve made. It made sense to surge 60,000, 70,000, 100,000 troops before there was a civil war. There is now a civil war. You need a political solution before you can get a physical solution. Unless Maliki is willing to deal the Sunnis in so they abandon the insurgency, unless the Sunnis are willing to allow, under the constitution, the Shia to control their local districts like the Kurds do, there is no possibility, none, with 500,000 American forces there.
Part 5 of 5 (excerpt):
SENATOR GRAHAM: We have a chance to start over. Gates has replaced Rumsfeld; it was long overdue. Petraeus is replacing Casey, long overdue. We’ve got a new team on the ground. We’re going to come up with a new strategy. The strategy is going to be designed to win. The current strategy is not working. Withdrawal as a strategy, I think, is a disaster for this country. It sends the wrong signal to the insurgents. It, it, it hurts the moderate effort, and no one talks about what happens when we leave from the idea of withdrawing.
"Start over."
Bush never intends to leave Iraq. He won't tell you that; I just did.
The only way to end the war in Iraq (and prevent the approaching wars that Bush is rushing us into with Iran, Syria, and the Arab street, and Islamic factions worldwide) is to impeach Bush and Cheney.
There is nothing that Congress can do to end the war in Iraq or prevent Bush from worsening the problems in the Middle East and the war on terror without triggering a Constitutional crisis. Bush has created more Constitutional crises than any other President (more than all others combined) and each time the Republican-controlled Congresses have run away, unwilling to stand up to Bush's bullying, which has obviously emboldened his overreach to continue Constitutional abuses.
Whether the Democratically-controlled 110th Congress displays any more courage, integrity and backbone than their colleagues on the other side of the aisle remains to be seen. With their slim lead, the Democrats can't do it alone. And up until a couple of weeks ago (before 'surge' replaced 'lame duck' and 'midterms' as top Internet tags), Democrats had slammed the door on impeachment. Against the wishes of the base that delivered control of Congress to them, and despite the fact that the majority of Americans support impeaching Bush and Cheney.
Will Republicans continue their committment to political partisanship, and loyalty to Bush (over loyalty to the troops and the American people), in spite of their sworn pledges to protect and defend the Constitution and the nation? Will Republicans and Democrats alike try to play it safe, "keep low and keep moving," try to wait Bush out (and hope he doesn't do too much damage), until few enough days remain in Bush's term to justify the hassle of an impeachment inquiry?
If past is prologue for future, Bush will be escalating the hostilities on all fronts. He will not wait for Congress to approve or get on board - he will rush to commit America's troops and resources, in Iraq and elsewhere, before Congress can catch its breath.
Congress is going to have to pick up its feet, if it wants to be relevant and rescue the country. Nothing short of glacial speed is going to stop Bush-Cheney from *shocking and aweing* Iran.
Transcript of Meet the Press:
MR. RUSSERT: All indications are that President Bush will address the nation this week and call for escalating number of U.S. troops in Iraq. The idea’s already sparked controversy all across the country. Here to talk about that and more, Democratic Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, South Carolina. Welcome, both.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Thank you, sir.
SEN. JOE BIDEN (D-DE): Thank you.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Biden, let me start with you. If President Bush calls for more American troops to Iraq, the so-called surge, Joe Biden will say...
SEN. BIDEN: No. But there’s not much I can do about it. Not much anybody can do about it. He’s commander in chief. If he surges another 20, 30, or whatever number he’s going to, into Baghdad, it’ll be a tragic mistake, in my view, but, as a practical matter, there’s no way to say, “Mr. President, stop.”
MR. RUSSERT: Why not try it?
SEN. BIDEN: I’m going to try it after the hearings. Here—there’s three things I’m going to try to do, Tim. Speak out as loudly as I can as to why I think repeating this mistake—we’ve tried it twice before—why it will not work, and why we need a political solution first, not a military solution. Secondly, I’m going to be holding extensive hearings as chairman, incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee for the next four weeks, bringing in experts from every, every perspective to talk about what options are remaining in Iraq. And thirdly, I have, I’ve, I’ve drafted a resolution of disapproval that is just hortatory, it’s a—to send to the Senate to try to convince the president that there are significant numbers and members of the United States Senate who think this proposal is a mistake, and hopefully force him to reconsider it. Because every two months he’s going to have to reconsider this, every two months. It’s not just surging once and that’s it. He’s not surging for a year. Every two months he’s going to have to decide, “Do I continue to extend the tours of duties of those who are there? Do I bring more people in?” And hopefully make the case to him that this is a mistake.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Graham, Robert Novak, the conservative columnist, who’s a pretty good head counter when it comes to the Republicans, he wrote this on Monday. “President Bush ... will have trouble finding support from more than 12 out of 49 Republican senators. ‘It’s Alice in Wonderland,’ Sen. Chuck Hagel, second-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, told me in describing the proposed surge. ‘I’m absolutely opposed to sending more troops to Iraq. It is folly.’” How politically uphill is this for the president?
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, all I ask of my Republican colleagues, Democratic colleagues, and the nation is just to hear the president out. I think there’ll be a lot of support by Republican members. And I hope some Democrats will understand the following: Where do we agree as a nation that a failed stay in Iraq is a disaster for this country? If Iraq fails and you have open civil war and it creates a regional conflict that would follow us for decades, that’s something every American should hope never happens and work together to prevent. I hope we can agree with this, that the current strategy is not working, hasn’t been working for quite a while. I think the president has looked at it from that point of view, “I cannot let Iraq fail because our national security interests are very tied to what happens in Iraq.” And when you talk about withdrawal, somebody needs to answer the question, what happens when we leave? And he’s also very much focused on the idea that we’ve got to give the Iraqi people the ability to find a political solution. A surge of troops is a result of the current strategy not working, and it, by itself, will not lead to a successful outcome. But a precondition to political stability and economic recovery is security. So I will support the idea of putting more American troops on the ground in Iraq with a purpose, to join up with Iraqi forces to bring about security in Baghdad that is missing, try to stop the sectarian fighting in Baghdad to give the political leadership in Iraq a chance to do the things they need to do to bring about a stable government. To me, it is a strategy that is based on the needs of the moment. Even though it may not be politically popular for the moment, I think it is in our best interests long term.
MR. RUSSERT: What’s wrong with that, Senator Biden?
SEN. BIDEN: Tim...
MR. RUSSERT: Secure the country to allow a political reconciliation?
SEN. BIDEN: Tim, look, this is a good guy, smart guy. We’ve been to Iraq together. I’ve been there seven times, he’s been there six.
SEN. GRAHAM: Don’t oversell. I’m, I’m a good guy.
SEN. BIDEN: No, no. No, but, but the truth of the matter is we, we agree on two basis premises: A failed state would be a disaster to the United States of America, and two, the current strategy isn’t working. But nobody’s calling, that I’m aware of, for pulling all of our troops out. That’s a red herring, number one. The question is do we continue with a policy that is failing? We’ve tried this policy twice in the last 12 months, surging troops into Baghdad. Unfortunately, my friends have got this backwards. We need a political solution before you can get a military solution. What has changed from three years ago when I sat on this program with you and said we need to surge 60,000 troops then is we now have a civil war. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not put Iraq together again absent Maliki making some very hard decisions about what he’s going to do.
Think of this, we’re going to surge 20-, 30-, whatever the president says, thousand troops into Baghdad again, a city of six million people, six million people where civil war is raging. We’re going to have our troops go door to door in 23 neighborhoods. We’re going to keep them out of Sadr City where, in fact, we are not—we’re told hands off because Maliki is dependent upon Sadr, the Mahdi army. This is a prescription for another tragedy. If we want to make sure we don’t lose Iraq, don’t use the last bullet in our gun here, prove ourselves to be impotent, and embolden every sector of the Iraqi population to conclude we are incapable of affecting outcomes there. That’s my worry about doing the same thing again.
MR. RUSSERT: I think Senator Graham has confused a lot of people. Is the opinion of military generals—John Abizaid, general, US Central Command, came before you, your committee in November, and this is what he said: “I’ve met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It’s easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us to do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.” And remember the president, repeatedly during the midterm elections, said over and over again, “I listen to the generals.” Here he is, President Bush.
(Videotape, July 7, 2006):
PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: General Casey will make the decisions as to how, as to, as to how many troops we have there. He’ll decide how best to achieve victory and the troop levels necessary to do so. I spent a lot of time talking to him about troop levels, and I told him this, I said, “You decide, general.”
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: So General Casey said, as recently as Friday, “We don’t need more American troops.” So General Abizaid and General Casey are removed. So if you give advice to the president and he doesn’t like it, rather than listen to the generals on troop levels, you remove the generals?
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, I hope we will hold the generals accountable for their work product. I respect General Casey and Abizaid, but the strategy they’ve come up with for the last two years has not worked. Iraq is not more stable than it was when they took over two years ago. Sectarian violence in Baghdad has gotten worse. I’ve been there five times. The first time I went there we went rug shopping. The last time I went we were in a tank. It is clear to me, I think Joe Biden and every other American including the president, now is a time for change. If we don’t change now, we’re going to lose Iraq. And if you come up with a new policy, do you let the same people who implemented the old policy come up with a new idea? I don’t think so. Petraeus, to me, I hope is Bush’s Grant. It is now time for a change. The old strategy is...
MR. RUSSERT: General David Petraeus, who will now be in charge.
SEN. GRAHAM: Absolutely. He did a great job in Mosul, counterinsurgency doctrine worked in Mosul. We’ve had a clear hold-and-build strategy. We could clear but we could never hold. We never had enough troops to begin with. For two years I’ve asked these generals, “Do we have enough troops?” “Yeah, we’re fine.” “Is the Army OK?” “The Army is fine.” A month or two ago, we found out the Army is broken, and they agreed that General Shinseki was right.
Now’s the time to start over. If we don’t start over and do what we should’ve done in the beginning—have enough people to win this war, have the Powell Doctrine implemented—we will pay a heavy price. So I support a surge in troops with a purpose, co-joining with the Iraqi military and political leadership to control this country. You can not have a democracy where you got militias stronger than the central government. You can not, not have a democracy where the people don’t have faith in their central government to take care of them. American forces going into Baghdad co-joined with Iraqi forces and a new political model is our best chance for victory. It may not work.
But this idea that nobody has called for withdrawal is folly on the Democratic side. John Edwards says pull out 40,000 troops now. Reid and Pelosi sent a letter to the president: “End this war, start redeploying in four to six months.” These Democratic proposals are, to me, a formula for defeat. They’re nothing more than just a political way to get out of Iraq, and it will come back to haunt us for years, and they never talked one minute in that letter what happens to Iraq when we leave. Is our national interest—security interest compromised with a failed state in Iraq, and does withdrawing lead to a failed state? Somebody needs to talk about that.
SEN. BIDEN: I’ll talk about that.
MR. RUSSERT: In all honesty—in all honesty, are we losing, though?
SEN. GRAHAM: In all honesty, we are not winning. And if you’re not winning, you’re losing. And now’s the time to come up with a strategy to win. The reason President Bush is going to do this, because he understands that we have to win in Iraq. The reason Senator McCain and Lindsey Graham and a few others are supporting this when 14 percent of the public supports us and 80-something percent is against us is we’re thinking about the consequences of a failed state in Iraq. That’s more important than 2008. We cannot let this country go into the abyss. Now is the last chance and the only chance we have left to get this right.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Biden, I’m going to talk about the Democrats and give you a chance to respond to that. There was a national poll done asking a simple question: Did the Democrats have a clear plan for Iraq? And this is what people all across the country said. Yes was 8 percent, no was 82 percent. The Washington Times, the editorial page, opined this way: “The real goal behind [January’s] dog and pony show”—that’s your hearings—“is to raise enough of a ruckus to force the president to agree to some sort of phony compromise ‘surge’ of a small number of American troops for a few months—just enough time to assure that little is accomplished militarily, while [Biden] and his political allies can claim that the plan has been tried and has ‘failed,’ and that the only alternative is to cut a deal with Tehran, Damascus and the Iraqi jihadists.”
SEN. BIDEN: I don’t know if I can respond to The Washington Times. I’m not going to now. I don’t understand what the devil they just said. There’s been no one on your program in the last four years who’ve been more supportive of the president attempting to try to get it right in Iraq, number one. Number two, no party out of power ever has a congressional voice that is a unified voice on a particular policy. That’s, that, that’s a red herring. Number three, if you take a look at what Lindsey just said about where the Democrats are, the Democrats are consistently in the place where we said we’d follow what was recommended by the vast majority of the experts. Think about this. Nobody, nobody has recommended what the president’s about to do. They all say a need for a changed plan. The Baker Commission, opposed to the position suggested. The generals oppose the position suggested. Even those who think we should surge troops, like the American Enterprise Institute, talk about it and they’re honest about it. They say if we surge troops, then, he said, we have to go from one—we have to bring Sadr City under control. He talks about—my friend talks about letting the Iraqi political establishment have some time to do something. What’s the Iraqi political establishment here? You have a guy who is heading up that government who is tethered to a guy who is one of the worst guys in the whole region, the new Hezbollah, the Mahdi army, a guy named Sadr. You have the prime minister of the country unwilling to take a political chance to deal with what my friend talks about, the militia.
MR. RUSSERT: So what do you do?
SEN. BIDEN: What you do is you tell him what—exactly what everyone’s recommended. “Look, Maliki, and look, government, we are, over the next year, going to begin to draw down. You step up to the ball and make some hard decisions about getting the Sunnis in the deal through oil. You make some hard decisions about implementing the constitution, which says we’re a loosely federated republic. You let local areas have control over their local police forces. You make the political compromise necessary in any emerging democracy. But do not continue the process where your only objective is to hold together the Sunni—or the Shia coalition, wipe out the Sunnis and expect you’re going to have anything remotely approaching democracy.”
MR. RUSSERT: And if that doesn’t happen, what happens?
SEN. BIDEN: If that doesn’t happen we have full-blown chaos, you need plan B. Then you disengage and you contain. Then the question is, what do you do? The reason why we should be talking to the neighbors, Tim, is not just the degree to which they may be able to positively impact, which is marginal. What happens if this is a bad bet? Nobody you’ll find, including my friend, will tell you there’s any good option left. There’s options, but no good options.
MR. RUSSERT: You said the other day that this is President Bush’s war, and there’s...
SEN. BIDEN: It is.
MR. RUSSERT: ...there’s really little Democrats can do. Why not cut off funding for the war?
SEN. BIDEN: I’ve been there, Tim. You can’t do it.
MR. RUSSERT: Why?
SEN. BIDEN: You can’t do it. It’s—what—because it made sense in the Constitution when you said you could cut off funding when you had no standing army. We have a standing army with a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. You can’t go in and, like a tinker toy, and play around and say, “You can’t spend the money on this piece and this piece and”—he—able—he’ll be able to keep those troops there forever constitutionally if he wants to.
MR. RUSSERT: Why not have legislation then that would cap the number of troops in Iraq?
SEN. BIDEN: Because it’s very difficult to—it’s constitutionally questionable whether or not you can do that. I think it is unconstitutional to say, “We’re going to tell you you can go, but we’re going to micromanage the war.” When we wrote the Constitution, the intention was to give the commander in chief the authority how to use the forces, when you authorize them, to be able to use the forces. And so, look, what we have to be doing here is the president—the only way this is going to change, Tim, and I’ve been saying—I’m a broken record on this—is when a majority of Lindsey’s colleagues, Republicans, say to the president, “Mr. President, enough. We are not going to support you any more,” that’s when the president will begin to change his policy. That’s when we begin to listen to bipartisan groups. That’s when we bebin—begin to listen to the majority of the expert opinion in this country.
MR. RUSSERT: If the surge doesn’t work, will Republicans senators then go to the president and say, “Enough”?
SEN. GRAHAM: Well let’s talk a little bit about the—why he’s doing the surge. Again, he’s trying to come up with a strategy for victory, and our Democratic friends have written the president a letter days before he makes a speech explaining what he’s going to do and why. Every Democratic proposal that I’ve been privy to has one common denominator to it: withdrawal. He received a letter from the speaker of the House, from the majority leader of the Senate saying, “Bring this war to an end. Redeploy in four to six months.” We...
MR. RUSSERT: No, but my question, Senator—Senator, my question was, if the surge does not work...
SEN. GRAHAM: Right.
MR. RUSSERT: ...will Republicans then say, “We tried everything. We gave it our last best hope. Mr. President, the war has been lost”?
SEN. GRAHAM: I don’ think any Republican or Democrat should do anything right now to say the war is lost. We should try to win this war. And the day you say we’re going to withdraw—three months, six months, a year from now—the effect will be that the militants will be emboldened, the moderates will be frozen, and we will have sent the message to the wrong people. Who started this...
MR. RUSSERT: So we’re stuck there forever.
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, you stay there with a purpose to win. If we never had enough troops in the beginning, when did we start having enough troops? We have paid a heavy price for the mistakes we’ve made in the past. The biggest mistake we could make as a nation is to listen to Pelosi and Reid doctrine of withdrawing without wondering what happens when we leave. My biggest fear, as a United States senator, as an American, is that we will make a political decision to leave Iraq without thinking about what’s left when we leave. Nobody wants to talk about what happens when we leave. I understand it’s not popular, but this war is not about the moment, it’s about the next decade and the decade to follow. It’s about our national security interests. It’s about the war on terror. Moderates vs. extremists. If we leave the moderates and leave it to the extremists, if we tell the extremists through our behavior and our actions, “We’re leaving Iraq in a year. It’s yours,” we will never know peace. I hope we can rally around the president’s idea of putting enough troops in to make a difference. I hope we can do what Joe says, push the Iraqi people to come up with the political model that will work. But no politician in Iraq can possibly reconcile that nation with this level of violence. A pre-condition—a pre-condition to political solution is security. Security is absent. We got to regain the capital.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Biden, you said on Friday that you’ve made a—you’ve reached a tentative conclusion that people in the administration believe that the war is lost, perhaps even including the vice president, and that they simply want to go along and try to keep the war at a point where they can pass it off to the next president. Do you really believe that?
SEN. BIDEN: Here’s what I believe. I was referring to—I was being asked about the vice president and the former secretary of defense, Rumsfeld, and I said they’re two of the smartest people I’ve ever known in my years here in Washington, and they could not have believed what they’d been saying for the last three years that we’re winning. They could not believe that. So what is the explanation? Why would they continue to say we’re winning when, as bright as they are, they know that was pure malarkey? And the only conclusion I can—and I said I’ve tentatively concluded among—about those two people, that they concluded that the required change in, in, in, in approach to Iraq would be so radical that they don’t think it could work. Therefore, keep it stitched together, pray for a Hail Mary pass and/or pass it off to the next guy. Because, look, do you believe—rhetorical question, I acknowledge—do you believe Rumsfeld and Cheney believed what they’ve been saying for the last three years? We’d come back, both of us, on this show, both of us together, and say, “Look, this is what we saw on the ground here.” How could they not know we were losing so badly? So that’s why I was referring to those two men.
But I want to make a point about—that Lindsey just made. My view is we have one chance to not lose Iraq, and it rests in not repeating the mistakes we’ve made. It made sense to surge 60,000, 70,000, 100,000 troops before there was a civil war. There is now a civil war. You need a political solution before you can get a physical solution. Unless Maliki is willing to deal the Sunnis in so they abandon the insurgency, unless the Sunnis are willing to allow, under the constitution, the Shia to control their local districts like the Kurds do, there is no possibility, none, with 500,000 American forces there.
MR. RUSSERT: What did the hanging of Saddam Hussein and the circumstances of insults being hurled at him and he throwing insults back—it took on the form of a sectarian lynching.
SEN. BIDEN: It, it was, it was Abu Ghraib again. It had the same kind of just poisonous impact. And that’s why, if I were Maliki’s adviser, I’d say, “Now is the time you have to make a dramatic move to hold accountable the Sunnis who engaged in that.” You, as the leader of a united country, have to stand up and publicly condemn it. I don’t think he has it in him.
MR. RUSSERT: Condemn the Shiites and all.
SEN. BIDEN: Condemn the Shiites.
MR. RUSSERT: What did the Saddam hanging do to the potential for reconciliation in Iraq?
SEN. GRAHAM: It gave people the idea that Saddam Hussein will never come back, and I can’t tell you how many people lived in fear of this man re-emerging as a political leader in Iraq. That fear is lost. The way the hanging occurred was a setback, but whatever taunt he received on the day of his death pales in comparison to the way he treated his own people. This will pass. We have a chance to start over. Gates has replaced Rumsfeld; it was long overdue. Petraeus is replacing Casey, long overdue. We’ve got a new team on the ground. We’re going to come up with a new strategy. The strategy is going to be designed to win. The current strategy is not working. Withdrawal as a strategy, I think, is a disaster for this country. It sends the wrong signal to the insurgents. It, it, it hurts the moderate effort, and no one talks about what happens when we leave from the idea of withdrawing. So we’re going to...
MR. RUSSERT: If a year from now the situation on the ground is similar to what it is today in terms of violence, in sectarian violence, what will you—what do you say then?
SEN. GRAHAM: What I say is, a year from now or five years from now, what would be the consequences to an Iraq in open civil war with sectarian killing where Iran tries to take over the southern part of Iraq, the north—northern, northern part the Kurds break away and Turkey gets involved, what would we do if we left a year from now and there’s open civil war and Iran tries to occupy, through a puppet government, the south of Iraq. What will we do if Turkey threatens to go to war with the Kurds? We got to think about these things now, and we need to adjust now. We’ve made mighty mistakes. We’ve never had enough troops in the past. Let’s don’t repeat the mistakes of the past, I agree with Senator Biden. The biggest mistake we’ve made is we’ve never put enough troops on the ground to secure this country. We’ve never had a strategy for economic political power to be successful because security was never there to make it successful. The biggest mistake we could make is to repeat the mistakes of the past and not have enough people on the ground to make a difference. The Iraqi people have to step up. Listen to the president Wednesday. He is not blind to the fact that eventually the Iraqi people have to solve their political problems. But until we put the right combat power in place with the Iraqis, we will never have a political solution. And I ask my friend Joe Biden, the letter from Pelosi and Reid of leaving in four to six months, do you agree with that?
SEN. BIDEN: I do not. This is a red herring. Here’s the deal: 20,000 30,000, 40,000 troops is not enough. Let’s get real here. And I’d like to ask my friend, tell—name me the moderate Iraqis. Name me the moderate Iraqis who are out there...
SEN. GRAHAM: Can...
SEN. BIDEN: ...prepared to make the kind of compromises democracy requires. We came back after the election when we were over there in—when, when, when, when they voted, the Iraqis. And the president said, “Great democratic move.” And I sat in the White House, and I said, “Mr. President, it was a sectarian election. There was no democratic movement there.” You’ve got to compromise. We keep looking for Thomas Jefferson hiding behind Iraq somewhere.
SEN. GRAHAM: You’re right there.
MR. RUSSERT: How much time do we have, realistically?
SEN. BIDEN: Well, I think, realistically, we have the remainder of this year. And at the end of that time, I think this is, this is ball game. And my friend is right. That’s why smart guys are doing what Senator—what Secretary Baker and a lot of other people are saying. We’ve got to think about the totality of the region. That’s why you should be talking to these other countries. That’s why you should be putting a plan B in place. That’s why you should be forcing a political solution. And remember, this administration said just as little as several months ago, a month ago, “We can’t tell the Iraqis what to do.” Give me a break. Give me a break.
SEN. GRAHAM: If I, if I may.
MR. RUSSERT: Go ahead, real fast.
SEN. GRAHAM: If I may, the Iraqi judge who allowed his face to be on worldwide television presiding over the trial of Saddam Hussein, to me, represents the best of the country. There are plenty of Kurds...
SEN. BIDEN: I agree. He has no power.
SEN. GRAHAM: ...Sunnis and Shias who are dying for their freedom. To be a policeman or a politician or a judge in Iraq, you risk everything. There’re plenty of people there that want their freedom, and power of the moderates to stand up against extremists win this war.
SEN. BIDEN: Who are the moderate leaders?
SEN. GRAHAM: Win this war.
MR. RUSSERT: The debate on Iraq will continue.
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