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SENATOR KERRY IS INTERVIEWED ON MSNBC'S IMUS IN THE MORNING
SEPTEMBER 26, 2006
SPEAKERS: U.S. SENATOR JOHN F. KERRY (D-MA)
DON IMUS, HOST
CHARLES MCCORD, CO-HOST
IMUS: Please welcome to Imus in the Morning program a man I supported for the presidency back when -- whenever he ran, whenever it was -- 2004 wasn't it, Charles?
MCCORD: I believe so...
(CROSSTALK)
IMUS: The junior senator from the great state of Massachusetts...
MCCORD: Yes.
IMUS: ... Senator John Kerry.
Good morning, Senator Kerry.
KERRY: Good morning, Don Imus.
IMUS: How are you?
KERRY: I'm doing never better. Fantastic. Thank you.
IMUS: When you're in...
KERRY: How are you doing?
IMUS: I'm good.
KERRY: Good.
IMUS: Where are you?
KERRY: I'm in Washington.
IMUS: Did you ever listen to Jay Severin in Boston when he was on?
KERRY: Yes. I like him, actually.
(CROSSTALK)
KERRY: I really do. I heard his comment, but I think he is a smart guy. You know, I don't agree with him on everything, obviously, but he's good, he's very good.
IMUS: He seems sort of reasonable about certain things. You know, for example, he came to his senses about the war and...
KERRY: He is. I think he's thoughtful about stuff. He's very articulate, and I enjoy him. I think occasionally we've been able to just sort of get together and chat. He's a good guy.
IMUS: So these people who run for office -- the reason I mentioned John Spencer -- I'm sure he's a nice enough guy running against Senator Clinton here in New York. But he seemed to me like he genuinely thought he had a chance.
KERRY: Well, you got to or you can't get up in the morning.
(LAUGHTER)
IMUS: Really?
KERRY: Yes, sure, you've got to believe in yourself.
You know, you guys are pretty good at testing whether there's a base of reality in that. But you've got to believe in yourself.
IMUS: Are you thinking about running again? And did you decide whether you're going to...
(CROSSTALK)
KERRY: Haven't decided yet, but, yes, I am thinking very seriously about it; talking to a lot of people as I go around the country, and I've been very encouraged by the responses.
Look, I know there's an initial -- you know, there's an initial, sort of, cynicism or skepticism, the sort of quick take, Hey, the guy ran, he lost, whatever. But I think that in the end we did a lot of things right. We made a few mistakes. We came very, very close against an incumbent president in a time of war. And I feel more experienced, more prepared, and I feel a greater urgency to the agenda I fought for.
So I'm not ready to make that decision, but I've had a good reaction.
IMUS: I just can't understand why do you want to go through that again.
KERRY: Because the issues are so critical, Don. And if you'll -- I mean, just look at something like Iraq. I mean, Iraq is falling apart around these guys. We've got young kids going over there putting their lives on the line for a policy that's bankrupt.
And I think you have to set a deadline. A deadline is the only way to get Iraqis to stand up for Iraq, to get them to go out and fight so that our troops aren't being blown up while they squabble and duck and delay. And I think it's wrong.
And now you have this national intelligence estimate -- you know, at the moment that I had my resolution on the floor of the Senate about setting a date, the administration was arguing at that very time, Well, we're going to be probably pulling troops out over the course of next year. Don't set a date. And they were saying then it's the center of the war on terror.
Now we know that at the very same moment they were saying that they were being told by their own intelligence people that, no, not only is it not the center, it is creating greater problems in the war on terror and it's creating terrorists.
I'm tired of being misled and lied to like the rest of the American people are tired of it, and we've got to get a policy that works.
IMUS: You know, when you first made that proposal about a date and were criticized for it -- a lot of people -- it's not important what I think, but we, obviously, were sitting here talking about it. And I was debating about whether I thought it was a good idea. Then I got to thinking about it. In almost every aspect of life -- I mean, if somebody in your staff, if you tell them to do something and you don't tell them when you want it, you'll never get it.
KERRY: I agree with that. And, look, a date is the key to getting Iraqis to stand up for themselves. Every time the president says, We'll stay as long as it takes, he empowers the Iraqis to say, We'll take as long as we want. And it's human nature.
If you don't give them -- if you don't leverage their willingness to stand up, if you don't set that kind of a goal, if you don't concentrate the focus of the government on a transition, if you don't say to the rest of the world and the region, Hey, the United States is actually going to start changing this dynamic -- we better get serious about being involved here.
And also, Don, the date is not just set in a vacuum. The date is linked to holding a summit, which I've been calling for for almost three years now -- that you have to have the proper diplomacy to resolve the differences between Shia and Sunni, if they're resolvable, or you may wind up having to go down a different kind of road.
But the point is you can't get anywhere, you can't get to where you have to go unless you resolve the political differences. Condoleezza Rice, General Casey, every observer has said you can't solve this militarily. It has to be solved through the politics and diplomacy. And yet there isn't any of that kind of major diplomacy.
And if you talk to the leaders around the region and those who are involved, they desperately want some kind of serious effort to resolve those differences and create a new security arrangement for the region.
IMUS: I can't see, though, when we set a date, they don't -- well, they do whatever they do and we leave and -- I don't see a good outcome. Do you?
KERRY: Well, I think it's going to be very, very difficult because the administration, by ignoring everybody's advice and turning their backs on all of the best intelligence and analyses beforehand, have unleashed pent up forces that were held down for hundreds of years. I mean, this struggle between Shia and Sunni is bigger than just Iraq. What you really have is a whole bunch of countries around there who are Sunni who have a stake in this outcome because they're fearful of the Shia linkage to Iran. And that's really the larger problem that has not been addressed by the administration.
IMUS: We're talking with Senator John Kerry here on the Imus in the Morning program.
Did you either see or read a transcript of, or are you aware of Bill Clinton's appearance with Chris Wallace on Fox?
KERRY: Actually, I did see it. I saw a retape of it the other day.
I thought he was terrific. I thought he took him on. I mean, I think the comment about the smirk may have been a little bit of a -- a little (inaudible) I think he was confused, because it's the president who has the smirk, not Wallace.
(LAUGHTER)
IMUS: Well, was President Clinton right?
KERRY: Yes.
IMUS: Cause now we've got people who were advisers of his and people who were in the CIA saying that a lot of that wasn't true; Condoleezza Rice saying, you know, a lot of what the president said, President Clinton, just simply wasn't true. They didn't have any big, elaborate plan and all that.
KERRY: Well, Dick Clarke is about as competent and, I think, respected and trusted a national security professional as there is in the country. And as the president said in the interview -- I mean, he served Ronald Reagan, he served George Herbert Walker Bush, he served Clinton and he served this president.
And the fact is they didn't listen to him. They did sort of downgrade his role, demoted him within the structure.
I know for a fact that the administration was thoroughly briefed when they came in on the threat of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida. I know for a fact because I was there. I had a briefing in July in the Senate security room with George Tenet, who I'd never seen so agitated and so clear about the imminency of an attack and of a threat and how they were just at wit's end trying to chase down these leads. And they knew something was going to happen. This was July 2001.
They go out to brief the president -- I believe that famous August, early briefing. And what did the president do? He sat there on vacation for another four weeks. They didn't do anything. They didn't have a meeting. They did nothing.
And in the beginning of September, just before the attacks took place, they were concerned about missile defense, not what was happening in the airplanes and the other things that were necessary.
Now, I think it's a waste -- you know, I don't think it serves us to go back and go through the tit for tat, et cetera, et cetera. I think what's much more important is what happened since then. And the fact is that the bottom line for the United States of America is today, five years after 9/11, there are more terrorists in the world who want to kill Americans and there are more terrorist acts taking place around the world. This is a failed policy.
And the NIE estimate now makes it even clearer that the administration itself has been told by its own professionals that it's failing. I think that report ought to be made public. They ought to declassify the critical components -- I mean, they ought to sanitize the key components.
But America ought to have this debate, because this is the central debate. Afghanistan has one-seventh the numbers of troops that we have in Iraq. Afghanistan is where they were just plotting once again to knock down American airliners. Afghanistan is where Osama bin Laden and most of Al Qaida is, and the Taliban is resurging. Afghanistan is the war that we all agreed to go fight and that we needed to fight, not Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
IMUS: So here's the thing I'm thinking about though, going back to -- I realize you said it's important what we do now and what we have been doing lately. But the thing that people like me try two reconcile whenever a controversy like this arises -- where in the case of Bill Clinton he says one thing, then you have former advisers, CIA people, Condoleezza Rice and others who say something else -- it's been my limited experience, and perhaps yours as well, that in a situation like that the truth often lies somewhere in the middle.
KERRY: Yes, that's true. I know what you're saying.
IMUS: So my question is, do you think, for whatever reason, the Clinton administration did enough, or is it a fair observation to make that the president was distracted by his own -- you know, wagging the fat girl, as I call it, which is unfortunate and I apologize for that...
(LAUGHTER)
KERRY: Yes, you do, but you don't. I understand.
IMUS: ... and being hounded to death by the Republicans who want to criticize him for not doing anything but then wouldn't let him do anything by trying to -- I mean he shouldn't lie and he shouldn't do those kinds of things. I understand all that.
KERRY: Obviously not.
IMUS: So my point is -- the bottom line, did president Clinton do enough?
KERRY: The president, by his own admission, says he failed. The president also was fighting against a very different atmosphere.
I remember that. I remember it crystal clear. First of all, I think I remember giving a speech around the time of Bosnia because I was so surprised and disappointed that the Republicans took an almost absolutely partisan position to the tee that we weren't going to get involved, they weren't going to be able to do it.
And you have to recall, the president -- President Clinton made a presidential decision over the objection of the Republican-run Congress that we had to go do that. And it was the right decision. The president was correct, and, in fact, wound up winning that without the loss of one American life. And we resolved what needed to be resolved in the region. It was a great success.
But the Republicans fought it every step of the way. They were clipping at him for doing it. And I remember when they fired those cruise missiles in the effort to try to get Osama bin Laden, they were screaming at the president that this was just a hoax to divert attention from Monica Lewinsky.
IMUS: Yes, I remember.
KERRY: And so there was a different atmosphere. People weren't yet taking Osama bin Laden seriously, not just in the public but in the United States Congress, which was Republican-run. And they were clipping at the president's heels. So there were legitimate limitations of power.
We hadn't been attacked here. There had been a terrorist incident, obviously, at the embassy and in the Cole.
Could he have done more? Sure. He says so himself. But that pales by comparison to the greatest foreign policy disaster decision making in sequence that we have ever seen since 9/11 in the last five years.
Just yesterday, three generals -- three retired officers -- demanded Rumsfeld's resignation. All of them served in Iraq. Two are retired Army major generals, a Marine colonel -- come out and said that Rumsfeld ignored all the things that were necessary to be doing.
You have this fellow, Paul Rieckhoff -- I don't know if you know (inaudible)
IMUS: No.
KERRY: ... a very articulate article yesterday in the New York Times. He's the executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. And he says that -- on the streets of Baghdad, he says, I saw countless insurgents surrender when faced with the prospect of a hot meal, a pack of cigarettes, air conditioning. America's moral integrity was the single most important weapon my platoon had on the streets of Iraq. It saved innumerable lives.
Now, you going to listen to guys like that or are you going to listen to these people who are fighting this ideological stay-the- course, which is dragging America down and losing its moral authority in the world?
IMUS: Am I supposed to answer that?
(CROSSTALK)
IMUS: Or is that like a rhetorical question?
KERRY: Don't you think it's logical?
IMUS: Don't be putting me on the spot.
(LAUGHTER)
I'm supposed to be interviewing you, aren't I?
KERRY: Well, I know. But (inaudible) have a good conversation.
(LAUGHTER)
IMUS: We're talking with Senator John Kerry.
KERRY: One thing I know is, Don Imus, you know how to take care of yourself.
(CROSSTALK)
IMUS: You know what I thought was kind of interesting is Condoleezza Rice said yesterday, Well, Richard Clarke, you mentioned him, he was the counterterrorism czar when 9/11 happened. Well, yes, but I mean...
(LAUGHTER)
I didn't get that...
(CROSSTALK)
KERRY: But as you will recall, if you look at his book, they weren't listening to him.
IMUS: No, I know they weren't. But whatever.
Hey, are you...
(CROSSTALK)
KERRY: But the seriousness of this, you just can't overstate it. The United States is having trouble now getting other nations to do some of the things they might normally do because people don't trust what we're doing.
And even this discussion of torture is diminishing us in the world. I mean, there shouldn't even an shred of daylight between whether or not you torture or don't torture. And our best experts -- what's his name? -- you know, General Kimmons, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, said that no good intelligence comes from abusive practices. And this is the guy in charge of it. He says (inaudible) it's unreliable and he says himself that it does more harm than good in the world.
I mean, we're just on the wrong track with these guys.
IMUS: Well, that compromise they reached, you're on board with that, aren't you or no?
KERRY: I don't know yet. I've got to look at it very, very carefully today. I want to see the precise language.
I know that the New York Times had an editorial, I guess, a couple days ago and they called it a bad bargain. And they said that the deal does next to nothing to stop the president from reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post headline of their editorial said The Abuse Can Continue, and, basically, said the president can reinterpret.
So I'm going to take a look at it today. I want to see precisely what the language says can or can't be done.
IMUS: It's not one of these deals where you're going to vote for it and then against it or something (inaudible)
KERRY: Not in this one. No, sir. Never again.
(LAUGHTER)
IMUS: How is Mrs. Kerry?
KERRY: She's doing great. Thank you. She's really doing well.
IMUS: My wife said she talked to somebody that helped me out with a book, or...
KERRY: I beg your pardon?
IMUS: My wife said she talked to somebody who is helping you guys with a book...
(CROSSTALK)
KERRY: Yes, I've hired a person who's doing research. And we're really moving along very, very well. I'm excited about it, very excited about it.
And, yes. In fact, I'm going to follow up with Deirdre, if I can, because we're doing...
IMUS: What do you mean by that?
KERRY: Well, we're doing a chapter on toxics...
IMUS: Oh.
KERRY: ... and what's happening in terms of cancers and other diseases that people get.
IMUS: I hate to be personal here but...
KERRY: You do?
IMUS: ... but I got -- you know, I lost a big one. I look at you losing the presidency not as you losing the presidency, but as...
KERRY: But as you losing a bet.
IMUS: Yes.
KERRY: I know. That's personal.
IMUS: OK.
So I'm...
KERRY: So how much do I owe you?
IMUS: Well, you don't owe me anything. I don't bet money; I bet ego.
KERRY: Oh, OK. Well, that's a big bet.
IMUS: Yes, it is, and with mine -- but I'm supporting Joe Lieberman. I guess you are, too, right?
KERRY: Joe -- no, I'm supporting Ned Lamont, who's the Democratic nominee.
IMUS: You don't even know the guy's name.
(LAUGHTER)
KERRY: I'm supporting the Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont.
(CROSSTALK)
IMUS: That's too bad.
KERRY: But Joe's got a very good shot. We all understand that. It's a very competitive race.
IMUS: OK, Harold Ford Jr.?
KERRY: I hope Harold's going to win.
IMUS: OK, then, I'm supporting him.
KERRY: He's a good man. He's done a terrific campaign. He's doing very, very well.
IMUS: Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania. I'm supporting him.
KERRY: He's going to lose.
IMUS: He's going to lose?
KERRY: Bob Casey is going to win that race.
IMUS: That is not good.
Well, of course, if I can win Lieberman and Ford, that's two.
KERRY: That's a big percentage.
IMUS: And Kinky Friedman in Texas. ,
KERRY: Kinky Friedman -- boy, I'd love to see Kinky Friedman win, I really would. But I think it's a tough list, but I'd love to see it happen.
IMUS: You know, he's a little goofy because (inaudible) but I've known him for 30 years. He's brilliant.
KERRY: He really is. He is a funny a man. And his observations are just right on target.
IMUS: And he surrounds himself with smart people.
KERRY: He does. Very smart himself. He's a very smart guy.
IMUS: Well, let me know what you're going to do, will you?
KERRY: You'll be among the first.
IMUS: OK, thanks, Senator.
KERRY: I promise you, Don. Great to talk to you. Take care.
IMUS: Senator John Kerry here on the Imus in the Morning program.
END
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