Fox News Sunday - Transcript

Fox News Network

SHOW: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (09:00)

HEADLINE: Interview With Mitch McConnell

GUESTS: Mitch McConnell

BYLINE: Tony Snow, Brit Hume

BODY:
SNOW: The Bush administration this week mounted a public relations offensive on the issue of Iraqi reconstruction.

The chief argument: Things are going well, despite what you read in the paper or hear from political critics, and despite the kind of violence that rocked Baghdad this morning.

So, what is life really like in Iraq? For answers, we turn to Senator Mitch McConnell, who returned last night from a long trip to the region.

Also here, Brit Hume, Washington managing editor of Fox News.

Senator McConnell, first, the comment -- the characterization made by Senator Rockefeller. He was there in July. He says the soldiers are more at risk today than they were during the war. Are they?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), KENTUCKY: That's certainly not the case, and there was way more violence when Saddam Hussein was there. Everybody keeps talking about increased violence. There were 300,000 Iraqis murdered by Saddam Hussein over the years.

If you're a typical Iraqi citizen, you're considerably less at risk today than you used to be.

SNOW: But you...

MCCONNELL: And our soldiers are not at more risk today than they were when they were engaged in active combat. Senator Rockefeller made it look like the act of combat was nothing. That's not what the soldiers who actually were there fighting were telling us last week. It was pretty vigorous, aggressive fighting to get to Baghdad and on up to Mosul.

SNOW: What did the soldiers tell you about the nature of the resistance they face now?

MCCONNELL: Well, they think that there are a collection of, as Secretary Rumsfeld likes to call them, dead-enders and maybe al Qaeda there, who are killing more Iraqis than are killing Americans, who want to get power back.

If the Americans left tomorrow, would the violence stop? Absolutely not, because these are people who want to reinstall a regime that they did quite well under for a number of years.

So, you know, just taking Americans out isn't going to stop the violence. What we need to do is press forward.

And a lot of good things are going on there. It's been very difficult to get that story out back here, and I'd be happy to recite some of them, if you'd like.

SNOW: Well, we'll get to that in a minute. But I want to talk a little more about the nature of the opposition.

Also, Senator Rockefeller said something I've heard a lot, which is that you've got hundreds, maybe thousands, of al Qaeda and other terrorists flocking in, one presumes from Iran or from Syria.

Just how concentrated -- again, I -- can you characterize for us the nature of that opposition? Are these organized cells? Are these people coming through? Are these, as you call them, dead-enders? And are they organizing into a more sophisticated fighting force, as General Sanchez seemed to indicate a couple of weeks ago?

MCCONNELL: I don't think we know exactly who these people are. The assumption is that they're a combination of Baathists who are very unhappy to be out of power, some al Qaeda and maybe other just random terrorists who want to go to Iraq.

My view is, I'd a lot rather fight them there than in Washington or New York. And even if they are collecting there, they're going come after us at some point down the road.

This is a good place to fight them, where we have a very good force and a growing number of Iraqis who -- in the security forces as well -- who are doing a pretty good job, including, apparently, the people that kept that suicide bomber from doing a lot more damage today than he would have done.

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS WASHINGTON MANAGING EDITOR: Senator, there's a measure on the floor, or soon will be -- $87 billion -- to come to a vote soon. $20 billion of that is for Iraqi reconstruction. The administration wants it to be a grant. Many in Congress would like to see it be a loan or a loan guarantee.

Where do you think the Senate's going to come out on that?

MCCONNELL: I think it's going to be a close vote, but I think the grant proposal's going to win. After all, who would we loan the money to? There's no one there to pay it back. I mean, we are the guarantor. We'd be loaning it to ourselves.

Beyond that, turning it into a loan, it seems to me, plays into the hands of those who suggest that we went into Iraq to get their oil, to encumber their future.

Of our delegation that went to Iraq, five senators, two of them were opposed to making it a grant before they went.

HUME: Who are they?

MCCONNELL: Well, they can speak for themselves. But they're now in favor of making it a grant.

HUME: Why is that?

MCCONNELL: Because they are now convinced that it does not make sense to encumber this country.

Secondly, the key is to get on with it. Get the reconstruction down the road so we can get the troops home.

If you look at the package, Brit -- $20 billion for reconstruction, $66 billion for troops -- it's a lot more expensive to keep troops there than it is to get the country in a condition so that the troops can come home.

So the $20 billion is nothing compared to what it would cost to keep this complement of troops there long term.

The way to get the troops home is to get the reconstruction done, get the Iraqi army up and running and the Iraqi security forces, and that's growing every day. That's how we get out.

HUME: Senator, part of your mission, you said, was to find out how things are compared to what you're seeing here.

A number of members of Congress, in addition to the delegation you were with, have come back and said they can't recognize the place they see from the place they've been reading about. What are we missing?

MCCONNELL: Well, what you're missing is all the good thing that are happening: the 60,000 Iraqis army that's up and growing, the 1,300 schools that have been refurbished -- 13,000 construction project that have gone on, 1,500 schools that are being refurbished. Most of the country is rather calm. Great progress is being made every day.

I visited an actual elected local council up in Mosul, up in the north. They actually had an election, chose their own officials.

Much progress is being made. Iraq is dramatically better today. The suggestion that it's somehow worse today than it was when Saddam was there is absurd on its face.

HUME: Now, they had this explosion this morning.

MCCONNELL: Yes.

HUME: Whatever damage it may have done, one thing it is going to do is make news.

MCCONNELL: Yes.

HUME: It will be a bigger story, almost by necessity of the way news works, than any of the things you just described. As long as this kind of thing persists, isn't support for this policy there likely to continue to erode, as polls suggest it is now?

MCCONNELL: It complicates the problem, there's no question. I guess all of you guys were taught in journalism school that good news is not news; except in Iraq, good news is news.

HUME: Well, we never said -- it's good news is dull news, that's the axiom.

(LAUGHTER)

MCCONNELL: But in Iraq, good news is news. Because nothing happened there except bad things for 35 years.

Now you have a small percentage of what's going on is terrible, like that truck bombing this morning. But a very large percentage of what's happening there is good.

So that's why I would argue that in Iraq, good news is news, because it's the unusual.

SNOW: Let me ask you a question related to that. Do you think it was a mistake for the military to stop the embed process, and also the daily press briefings on what's going on around the country shortly after the takeover of Baghdad in April?

MCCONNELL: Yes, I do, and I think we ought to get the reporters back in these units so they can go out and talk to these soldiers who are hearing the reports from back home and are extremely frustrated that all the good work they're doing is going unreported.

I think, get the reporters back in the units, do the briefings more frequently, let's make a major effort to get out what's really happening in Iraq.

HUME: Senator, last week, Condoleezza Rice and the National Security Council did something. Some of us have been trying to figure out for the past week what exactly it was.

What is your understanding of what the National Security Council will now be doing that it hasn't already been doing with regard to the policy and execution in Iraq?

MCCONNELL: I was somewhat confused by that story myself.

I assume it is the national security adviser's job to coordinate this, and the announcement seemed to underscore that that's what was going to occur.

HUME: Do you detect a loss of authority here or any kind of a slap at Donald Rumsfeld? I do.

MCCONNELL: All I detect is the kind of relationship between the Defense Department and the State Department that seems not be uncommon in administration of both parties.

SNOW: OK, final question: You mentioned reconstruction before, and how it will be cheaper than war. But as Senator Rockefeller pointed out, we got a figure, but we don't necessarily have a plan.

Do you think the administration should be presenting a plan, "We'll spend this much on roads, we'll spend this much on pipelines," much as it must do when it comes up with a budget for operations in the United States?

MCCONNELL: I recommend Senator Rockefeller and his staff read the proposal. It is a plan for exactly how the money will be spent. And if there are objections to certain parts of it, then offer an amendment to delete it. But it's right there in black and white for anybody who will open their eyes and read.

SNOW: All right, Senator Mitch McConnell, thanks for joining us today.

MCCONNELL: Thank you.