MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

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MATTHEWS: For an opinion of events in Iraq and the president‘s press conference today, we turn to Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Good evening, Senator.

Let me ask you about your reaction to the fact that the Republican National Committee is putting out the word late today that they‘re going to drop that ad that they were running against Harold Ford, Jr. in Tennessee that showed the very attractive, sexy white woman basically making a date with the senator.

SEN. DICK DURBIN, (D-IL): Well listen, Chris, politics ain‘t bean bag. We know that. But some of the ads that are up on the air now on the Republican side really go way beyond the pale. Running ads against Tammy Duckworth, a disabled veteran from the Iraqi war in the Chicagoland area. The ads that they‘ve run against Sherrod Brown that have been totally discredited. Now I think they‘ve reached to the bottom of the barrel with this ad against Harold Ford. I‘m glad they had the good sense to pull it.

MATTHEWS: Well, was it good sense or was it pressure?

DURBIN: Both.

MATTHEWS: Were they embarrassed by it, or was the plan—let me give you a third option. They knew they could get a one or two-day run out of this stuff. And they knew they could get their point across to, perhaps, angry white voters or people that had a problem with the black senator already, and exploited the hell out of it. And then they pulled it, making themselves look like they had bowed to public pressure, when they‘d already gotten their point across.

DURBIN: That could be the outcome of this. But, you know, when those ads finally are exposed and the American people take a look at it, it doesn‘t help Republicans anywhere. To think that they‘re reaching to these desperate levels at this point tells us this is going to be a close election.

MATTHEWS: That may be.

Let me ask you about the president today at his press conference. Did you see any change in Iraq policy today with the president?

DURBIN: The only change I saw is the president started to acknowledge the position that the Democrats have held for a long time, a position which suggests this would be a year of change, that we would be talking to the Iraqi government in no uncertain terms about their responsibility to defend their own country, talking about timetables.

But it was a lot of brave talk two weeks before an election, but no real change in strategy, in terms of where he‘s going. I just have to tell you, when Prime Minister Al-Maliki is rejecting timetables, when the military is suggesting they may need troops and the president said they may not, there‘s no clarity now in this position by this administration in Iraq.

MATTHEWS: Yesterday the president called a press conference, or the administration did, over in Iraq where George Casey, our commander over there, and Khalilzad, our ambassador over there, called a press conference to tell us, the American voters, how the government over there of Iraq is going to behavior in the next year and a half or so. Do you think it was an accident they did not have a representative of the Iraqi government at that event?

DURBIN: No, I don‘t, because you know what happened immediately afterwards? The Prime Minister of Iraq came out and said, we‘re not going to be held to any U.S. timetables. We‘re a sovereign nation, a sovereign government.

Wait a minute. 2,780 American lives, 20,000-plus who have been seriously injured and disabled, $350 billion and the fourth year of this war, you know, it‘s about time the Iraqis accepted responsibility for their own nation, and it‘s certainly time for American troops to start coming home.

November 7th is a chance for voters to say to the Bush administration, no more rubber stamp Congress. We‘re going to put in a Congress that‘s going to hold you to changing the course in Iraq.

MATTHEWS: It‘s been a difficult time for the Democratic party. They‘ve had a hard time saying where they stand on Iraq. About half the Senate Democratic caucus voted to approve the president‘s right to go to war, about half voted against it.

Have you ever reached any unity on this? Do the members who voted to give the president the blank check to go to Iraq, have they apologized to you, have they said you guys were right who said no?

DURBIN: Chris, I don‘t expect an apology.

MATTHEWS: Why don‘t do they do it if they‘re wrong?

DURBIN: Many of them have said publicly they wish they would have voted the other way. I never heard a senator who voted against the war say I wish I would have voted for it, not one of the 23 of us who voted no.

But what‘s clearly happening here is there are people on the Republican side who were accepting the president‘s strategy, which is, quote, "stay the course" despite what Tony Snow says.

And the fact is the American people are no longer there. They don‘t want this war to go on indefinitely. When I was there just a couple of weeks ago, we lost 27 American soldiers in one week. The day I came back, we lost nine more. This is totally unacceptable. The president‘s approach in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people.

MATTHEWS: What do you think of the judgment of your fellow Democrats who voted to approve the war? Their judgment? Were they smart, were they visionary? What were they?

Why did they support a war that turned out to be so bad? That seems to be so misconceived that anybody who studied history for two weeks would have known that third world countries don‘t like being invaded by white people from the West, Europeans or Americans.

They have always resisted invasion. They have always turned nationalistic against any outside occupier. It‘s absolutely predictable. And this president didn‘t know it, but why didn‘t the Democrats know it?

DURBIN: The American people were misled by this administration. And many of my colleagues in the House and Senate, both parties, were absolutely misled about weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, connections with 9/11.

All of these things turned out to be totally false, and many of them discovered later. I had the good fortune I guess of sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee behind closed doors during that debate and hearing the debate that was going on within the administration.

And I would walk out of those doors and think I can‘t believe the statements that are being made by President Bush and Vice President Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. And that‘s why I voted no. But many others were misled, as the American people were misled.

MATTHEWS: Do you think Vice President Dick Cheney who you mentioned, do you think he honestly could have passed a lie detector test when he said there was a connection to 9/11, that there was some meeting in Prague, that there was some sort of deal, a cabal put together by the intelligence services of Iraq? And the al Qaeda group—in fact, Mohamed Atta, the lead pilot to attack the United States? Do you believe he was telling the truth when he said that? Do you believe he was telling the truth when he said they had a nuclear weapon program underway with a vehicle that could deliver that nuclear weapon to the United States? When you put it all together, do you believe he was telling the truth?

DURBIN: I just have to tell you, when you take a look at the public statements made by the vice president, not only leading up to the invasion of Iraq, but since, you just see a litany of falsehoods. Now whether he intentionally deceived the American people or was misled himself, the point is he would cling to some of these positions long after everyone had abandoned them. It was only yesterday that he finally acknowledged that maybe the insurgency was not in its last throes, something he said a year ago.

MATTHEWS: You allow him to pass it off when Lori Melroy, some of these people on the fringe, and Ahmed Chalabi, who had his own agenda to get us in there. Do you really believe he listened to people that he believed or he wanted to use them as his witnesses?

DURBIN: Let me tell you, the neo-cons with Vice President Cheney and Pearl and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and this whole gang, they had an agenda here. It was the invasion of Iraq and any excuse would do.

And sadly, we end up in a position today having lost so many soldiers, in a position where we‘re continuing to lose our soldiers because of this failed foreign policy. What we heard from President Bush today is no departure from what we have seen in the past. It doesn‘t tell me that he gets the message. And the message is clear. There is no end in sight if we stick with the Bush strategy in Iraq.

MATTHEWS: Let‘s go back to the anti-Harold Ford commercials. They were racially tinged to put it lightly. They were playing on white sensitivities about losing good-looking white women to black guys. It was so obvious what they were doing there. Do you think that‘s the kind of thing that Barack Obama will expect if he does go into this presidential election?

DURBIN: Well, I can tell you that I hope Barack Obama does get involved in this presidential race. He‘s an extraordinary person. I think he would really do something very positive for this country and start bringing us together.

MATTHEWS: Will he have to face this kind of crap from the Republican ad writers? Will he have to take that kind of stuff?

DURBIN: Unfortunately I‘m afraid he will, because we have just seen it chapter and verse repeated so many times. Whether the victim is Max Cleland or the victim was John Kerry with the swift boat ads or now these terrible ads that they have run against Harold Ford in Tennessee, there are some voices within the Republican strategy, and I don‘t know at what level who frankly prevail when they should be rejected. This party of Abraham Lincoln with its proud tradition shouldn‘t sink so low in the midst of a campaign.

MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. Coming up, President Bush says he‘s not satisfied with the situation in Iraq. Will he do anything to change the U.S. policy? We‘ll talk about that when we come right back. You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.

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