MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: Islamic State Strategy

Interview

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SCHULTZ: It`s another great "I told you so" moment for the Republicans. We knew a lot more than the President but we didn`t stepped in and say anything. John McCain, he has remembered his intelligence vote on Iraq back in 2003 was all bogus, wasn`t it? McCain voted for a war on faulty intelligence that got us into this mess in the first place.

To McCain`s credit, he is calling for Congress to get in and vote on military action in Syria and in Iraq. On Friday, the Chairman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff as I said was predicting that they`re going to have budget problems here pretty soon. Isn`t that something we should talk about? Not really because the Republicans, you see they love budget problems when it comes to war because when they get to cut other stuff like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Got to privatize everything, you know?

Boehner hasn`t addressed this budget problem and he`s waiting until 2015 and basically is playing politics with National Security, Monday morning quarterback in every place he can go. It`s called the incompetence. And as a country as I see it right now, we`re all over the map and the President is trying to navigate through this as best he can and all hands don`t seem to be on deck because you see, we have an election coming up and the Republicans just can`t get enough of failure. Sad commentary, I know.

Get your cellphones out. I want to know what you think. Tonight`s question, do you think bringing in ground troops will end the conflict faster? Text A for yes, text B for no to 67622. You can always go to our blog at ed.msnbc.com. We`ll bring you the results later on in the show.

For more, let me bring in Congressman John Garamendi who was with us here in New York. He`s from California. He sits on the House Arm Services Committee. Congressman, great to have you with us.

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI, (D) CALIFORNIA: Good to be with you, Ed.

SCHULTZ: Your reaction to Boehner`s comment all of the sudden that we can`t get his done without ground troops?

GARAMENDI: Well, first of all, he`s dancing. He`s dancing around his responsibility. He`s the man that has the power to bring Congress back so that we can debate this and get the facts about what`s happened, if we need to know about whether we knew or didn`t know and what we should`ve known.

That`s how you do it through hearings.

But he didn`t. He didn`t call us back, hasn`t called us back and basically said he is going to ignore taking this issue up in the lame-duck session following the elections. That`s wrong.

SCHULTZ: What about the timing of that, John? What -- How troublesome is that?

GARAMENDI: Personally?

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

GARAMENDI: It`s very troublesome. This war goes on. December the 11th, we run out of money. The continuing resolution that funds the government only goes to December the 11th, at that point, yeah, our gates has a problem. There`s no more money. So we have to take this issue up and in taking up the money issue, we must take up the issue of this war.

SCHULTZ: So we could be invest of a major conflict, not knowing how to pay for it. No -- by the way, there might be a shutdown, the government talk again.

GARAMENDI: Absolutely, it could happen.

SCHULTZ: OK. Do you think the President should step out and say, "Congress, get back to work"? Should he do that?

GARAMENDI: It`s not his place to do that.

SCHULTZ: It`s not his place to do it but...

GARAMENDI: If he could, yes, he should ask us go back. "Come on, we need to talk about this. We`re going to need talk about paying for this thing. How much is this going to cost? How much of the deficit is going to increase

"We spend a trillion already in Iraq, here we go again."

SCHULTZ: What about the Kurds saying now -- and there`s -- they`re our allies, OK. They are a big linchpin to all of this.

GARAMENDI: Absolutely.

SHCULTZ: . as far as ground troops and resources. Now, they`re upset because we`re not hitting ISIS hard enough in Northern Iraq.

GARAMENDI: We should expect that. We should expect that from every side because there`s not enough that we could do to save them, to advance their military. If we bomb everyday, that still wouldn`t be enough. That`s just the way this is going to work out.

SCHULTZ: What do you make of three quarters of the American people think that eventually we`re going to have boots on the ground here?

GARAMENDI: I pray they`re wrong. I don`t want those boots on the ground. We`ve been down this path, Ed.

We`ve seen lives lost. We`ve seen hundreds of billions of dollars spent to what effect? To a continuation that`s something that`s going on for 1400 years.

SCHULTZ: Congressman, stay with us. I want to bring in Michael O`Hanlon with us tonight and also Heather Hurlburt, Program Director for the New America. Great to have you with us.

Michael, what`s the danger in putting this up for a vote at this point? I mean, we`re -- and clearly, if Boehner says he`s not going to address it until 2015, hello? We`re out of money in the middle of December. Where does that take us?

MICHAEL O`HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION SENIOR FELLOW: Well, I guess what I worry about is that the vote could be No. And I don`t see any alternatives but to address this threat and I think that`s the main worry. I`m putting it very simply but it really boils down to that. I guess, you know, Congress is already voting as the Congressman well knows on the funding for the Syrian opposition. It`s already done so.

That amounts to a partial endorsement, a part of the strategy. And for those of us who are nervous about the possibility of a No vote, one could argue, that`s already adequate, a role for Congress at this juncture especially since the 2001 and 2002 votes arguably apply. I think that`s the counter argument. I admit to being torn on this subject but if you want to put it out there, the danger is that Congress might vote No and stop an operation and its tracks that is essential I think for our broader security and first...

SCHULTZ: What about that, Congressman?

GARAMENDI: It could happen. It could happen.

SCHULTZ: And you think Boehner is afraid of that, possibly?

GARAMENDI: I`m not sure why he is afraid of but I know he has the responsibility for us. The Constitution of the United States says that we have the responsibility to declare war. This is a new war. Syria is new. I mean you can get legal...

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

GARAMENDI: ... arguments here and that -- those legal arguments don`t come to the reality that this is a profoundly important issue for the American public.

SCHULTZ: Heather, how can the Speaker of the House on one hand say we`re not going to have a vote on until `15 yet. We don`t have the money for it yet. We`re going to have to put boots on the ground. Eventually, going to get involved here. What do you make of that?

HEATHER HURLBURT, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION PROGRAM DIRECTOR: Well, look he doesn`t control his own party. He`s afraid of being embarrassed by his own party and so he`s trying rhetorically to shift embarrassment and attention to the President while avoiding the discussion that is both my colleagues have said, we should be having and, you know, what`s not worthy is a number of members of Congress mostly Democrats, a couple of Republicans have put forward different proposals for how do -- how should Congress vote on this, how can the American people understand what we`re doing, what should the limits of what we`re doing be.

And, you know, that Boehner is afraid that one of our two parties in this two part system, we have can`t show up responsibly to have that conversation, you know, that`s a pretty terrible commentary on the state of American democracy.

SCHULTZ: Well, Michael, was it wrong to the President to say, we as a country underestimated the power, the ability of ISIS?

O`HANLON: No. I greatly appreciated that comment. You know, I think this is a very difficult situation clearly and we`re all worried about it and none of us can fully forecast Middle Eastern politics and what they will spun (ph) even when we study that East politics for years. So I appreciated the President`s honesty and I think it`s always good to look forward at these debates and say, "What`s the right next step?"

That`s part of why I`m also glad there`s a little bit of murkiness around the expression, "boots on the ground". You know, you`ve mentioned the polls that you`ve been discussing. I don`t think there is any clear definition of what it means to have boots on the ground or if there is, we`ve already got them on the ground. We`ve already got 1500 Americans in Iraq. So, you know, that`s an example of where I would like to see some flexibility, not just to sneak in...

SCHULTZ: I guess my feeling on boots on the ground is that means we do Iraq the way we did Iraq before, the first and the second time, an overwhelming force. I mean that`s the intent of boots on the ground that I think the American people understand.

O`HANLON: Well, I think the intermediate option now is five to 10,000 American Special Forces in combat advisory teams that are out in the field with the Iraqi army, not to fight but to advice.

That`s a very difficult, to me, it`s an important middle option to consider but I`m not sure where it fits in your framework and I think, the language we used tends to overlook that middle ground scenario.

GARAMENDI: I think what we`re going to see here is if there`s a resolution, authorization to use force, then it`s tightly following what the President said in his four points that he made about a month ago and I think that that will pass that if you`re looking at an open-ended option in which you could have infantry, artillery and armor on the ground, I don`t think it`ll pass nor should it pass.

We should have a very limited role in this. We cannot win this war. We`ve already tried to win this once. We cannot do it. You need to have Iraq.You need to have the neighboring countries to win this war. We can support them. I don`t know about Special Forces and so but we can debate where that numbers. And finally, there`s got to be an endpoint. You cannot go back to the 2001 Afghanistan resolution and say it applies here.

SHCULTZ: Well, I mean, candidate Obama would have never said that the President could do something like this. Heather, what about that? I mean, we can pull out the old tape. Candidate Obama would have never said that the President would be authorized to do something like this and he have to get Congress on board with it.

HURLBURT: So, first point, Ed is the reason that we shouldn`t be authorizing ground troops at this point is we don`t know ground troops for what. You know, if we learned anything from the last 10 years is that we`re much better at breaking things than we are at building things and until there`s something on the ground that you could say, we are securing this, we are helping this functioning government. There`s no role for U.S. ground troops.

So that`s point one, point two, candidate Obama, I think candidate Obama in his worst nightmares didn`t imagine a Congress that would be afraid to debate an authorization for the use of military force.

SCHULTZ: He do right now.

HURLBURT: Congress, in his worst nightmare didn`t imagine a Congress where you would have members come in and say, the whole world is the battlefield who would introduce resolutions saying, the U.S. should be able to use any kind of force, any place at any time. So in fairness to what`s changed, I think a lot of that is what`s changed.

SCHULTZ: OK. Congressman John Garamendi, also Michael O`Hanlon and Heather Hurlburt, great to have you with us tonight here on the Ed Show.

Appreciate your time.

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