CNN The Situation Room - Transcript
CNN The Situation Room - Transcript
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
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BLITZER: Welcome back.
Is the increasingly bitter debate over the conflict in Iraq harming the U.S. mission there? Even as some Republicans break ranks with the Bush administration on its Iraq policy, are there splits among Democrats as well?
Joining us now from Capitol Hill is the House minority leader, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
Congresswoman, thanks very much for joining us.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), MINORITY LEADER: My pleasure, Wolf. Thank you.
BLITZER: Listen to what the president said Monday night. I want you to respond to this specific allegation he makes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past. They're playing politics with this issue. And they are sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. And that's irresponsible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: In effect, he's accusing you of being unpatriotic, undermining the troops, and encouraging the insurgents.
What do you say?
PELOSI: Well, first of all, he wasn't referring to me, because I, along with the 60 percent of the House Democrats, voted against the use of force in Iraq, giving the president that authority.
BLITZER: When I said "you," I meant Democrats, not necessarily you personally. I know -- I know you voted against the resolution.
PELOSI: Well, I think the record should be clear that not only did I vote against it, but 60 percent of the Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against it. A strong majority voted against it.
But as the president did on Veterans Day, his comments are very inappropriate. But none of it more inappropriate than sending our troops into war on a false premise without the equipment they needed to succeed, without a plan for success after the fall of Baghdad, and without an exit strategy. So, the president is -- for him to question questions that we have, is really, in my view, not -- that is inappropriate.
A person who would become the majority leader of the Senate, Senator Taft, said -- now, this was during World War II -- in a time of war, that we should be questioning the government, that it is appropriate to do so. It's essential, he said, to a governing democracy.
BLITZER: You voted against the resolution that would authorize the use of force in Iraq, but you believe, at least based on your public statements, that Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction. On October 10, 2002, the congressional records you as saying this: "Others have talked about this threat that is posed by Saddam Hussein. Yes, he has chemical weapons, he has biological weapons, he is trying to get nuclear weapons."
You believed that at the time.
PELOSI: According to the intelligence that was given to us. But I further said that the intelligence that the president put forth to us at the time of the vote did not support the threat, an imminent threat.
There was no imminent threat. That's why I, as the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, joined Senator Graham, who was the senior Democrat in the Senate -- on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and both of us voted against the war.
There was no imminent threat. No place in any of that intelligence could they show you that there was an imminent threat that justified the use of force. There was plenty of time to see if those -- if those weapons existed, and it was a question of the intelligence being wrong, but the intelligence also being exaggerated to use force.
BLITZER: Did the president lie to the American people?
PELOSI: As I said at the time, the intelligence did not support the threat of an -- an imminent threat from Iraq. You can take that any way you want.
BLITZER: Well, what do you -- which way do you take it?
PELOSI: I think the president took us into war, put our young people in harm's way based on a false premise. And there was plenty of intelligence and counter from other agencies of government that questioned the intelligence that he was using and justifying for the use of force.
But that's yesterday. The point is about tomorrow.
What do we do? How do we deal with a situation where we have been at war for over two and a half years, where we have an administration that has shown no indication that they understood what they got us into in the first place?
Now you see even the Republicans joining the Democrats in the Senate and asking for truth, asking questions, wanting answers. Democrats in the House asked these questions months ago. We still haven't received answers to them. But I think the American people are growing impatient with what the president is doing
BLITZER: All right. Listen to what the -- your fellow Democrat, Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, what he says about this current debate looking forward. Listen to what Lieberman, who supported going to war in Iraq, what he now says.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: In my opinion, the debate has grown in our country and in this city much too partisan over what is happening in Iraq. And that partisanship has begun to get in the way of the potential for a successful completion of our mission there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: All right. Do you want to respond to Lieberman? PELOSI: Yes. With all due respect to Senator Lieberman, I totally disagree. We didn't go into Iraq to fight for freedom of speech there to deprive ourselves of it here.
The two questions I think that are important here are, is our presence in Iraq making America safer? It is not.
And secondly, is our presence in Iraq jeopardizing the condition of our military to protect us in other threats that may be posed? So I think the answer there is that Iraq is not making us safer and not enhancing the strength of our military.
So, the question is, how much longer do we go through this under an administration that by past performance, from start to now, has not demonstrated any ability to conduct this in a way that shows us that they know what the end game is, and that they have a strategy for success? And it is our responsibility -- it is our responsibility to speak out against it.
And the point is, it's not about -- it would be partisan to remain silent. It is patriotic to speak out against it.
BLITZER: We're just getting this in, advance text of what the vice president is going to say in a speech here in Washington tonight.
Dick Cheney will say this, Congresswoman: "The suggestion that's been made by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."
Cheney goes on to say, "Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing force against Saddam Hussein."
Clearly, the president, the defense secretary, the vice president, they're going to keep on the offensive and try to hammer away at your fellow Democrats who supported that resolution to go to war.
PELOSI: Let me just say this about the vice president -- and again, all due respect to his office. Almost everything he has said to the American people has not been accurate.
Just because he says it doesn't make it so. And there are pages, pages of statements that he has made that have been factually incorrect.
So it's interesting that he's taking this tact. It's not surprising.
But the fact is, is that we need to have some criteria for success. They're going to have an election in December. The president has to make the point as why is it important for us to be there beyond that point? We have some people are on their third or fourth tour of duty. Those of us who visited our men and women in uniform in hospitals here, and in Germany and Iraq, come back with the nagging questions of, when -- where is the end in sight in all of this?
BLITZER: All right.
PELOSI: What is the plan?
On the other side of it, as I say, while we're here, at home, we try to make a future worthy of the sacrifices that they were making there. And that's why I'm so proud that Democrats came forth yesterday with our agenda for innovation, our commitment to competitiveness to keep America number one.
BLITZER: All right.
PELOSI: And I hope that we can talk about that as well.
BLITZER: We will talk about that on another occasion because we're all -- unfortunately all out of time right now.
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives.
Thanks for coming into THE SITUATION ROOM.
PELOSI: Thank you, Wolf. Nice to be with you.
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