MTP Transcript for April 29, 2007

MR. TIM RUSSERT:  Our issues this Sunday:  Our Meet the Candidates 2008 series continues, an exclusive interview with Democrat Joe Biden.  He has represented the state of Delaware in the U.S. Senate for 34 years.  In January he became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president in 1988.  This morning Joe Biden joins us live only on MEET THE PRESS.

Welcome, Senator Biden, to our Meet the Candidates series.

SEN. JOE BIDEN, (D-DE):  Good to be back.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me start with the vote in the Senate on Thursday.  And here’s how it was reported:  “The Senate approved $124 billion Iraq war spending bill that would force troop withdrawals to begin as early as July 1.

“The 51-to-46 vote was a triumph for Democrats, who just weeks ago worried about the political wisdom of a veto showdown with the commander in chief as troops fight on the battlefield.  But Democrats are hesitant no more.”

Why did you vote for a bill that had a timetable for withdrawal?

SEN. BIDEN:  That language is actually the language that I—that Carl Levin and I drafted, which said that, “Mr. President, you got to start moving combat troops out of harm’s way now.” The whole function of this is to try to get this president to change his strategy.  He operates on the premise that, if we put enough troops in the middle of a civil war, we can give breeding room to a group of people in Baghdad to get together and form a strong central government that’s a democracy.  That will not happen in your lifetime or mine. I said that four years ago; I say it now.  The only rational purpose for troops in Iraq now:  train Iraqis, prevent al-Qaeda from occupying large chunks of territory.  and we should begin to decentralize the government. That’s the underlying essence of what the language in this bill is about.  It says, though, start now to redeploy and have as a target to get out by April 1^st the bulk of the combat troops.  I strongly subscribe to that view.

MR. RUSSERT:  When you were here in January, I asked you about some of these steps, and this is how you responded.  Let’s watch.

(Videotape, January 7, 2007)

SEN. BIDEN:  I think it is unconstitutional to say we’re going to tell you, “You can go, but we’re going to micromanage the war.” When we wrote the Constitution, the intention was to give the commander in chief the authority how to use the forces when you authorize him to be able to use the forces.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Aren’t you now micromanaging?

SEN. BIDEN:  Not at all.  Did you hear what I said?  I said “how to use the forces.” We have authority to tell him how to use the forces.  If you get in there, though, and once you tell him—we have, we have a responsibility to tell him what the mission is.  He does not have the authority to engage in a mission of the use of our force in a country or out of a country that we do not authorize.  And that’s the thrust of what we’re trying to do here.  We’re trying to fundamentally change what this president is using our forces for. He’s in the midst of a civil war with the objective of—a flawed objective of establishing a strong central government.  That will not happen, and we have an obligation to push back as much and as often and as thoroughly as we can.

MR. RUSSERT:  But, senator, there has been an evolution in your thinking because this is what you said in—to the Brookings Institution in ‘05.  “We can” tell it—“We can call it quits and withdraw [from Iraq].  I think that would be a gigantic mistake.  Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out—equally a mistake.” You’re now setting a deadline.

SEN. BIDEN:  No, we’re not setting a deadline.  Read what it says.  It says the target date, left up to the generals to determine whether or not it is appropriate to withdraw all forces.

MR. RUSSERT:  Well, a target date is setting a deadline.

SEN. BIDEN:  No, no, but it leaves forces behind.  We’re trying to change the mission, Tim.  The mission is all of us have been arguing one exception, in both parties, that you’re going to have to leave forces behind in Iraq while this new government—if we actually get one up and running—is trying to function and trying to set up.  The—look, the problem here is this is also a moving target.  I also called for more troops in Iraq.  I called for more troops on this program a couple years ago.  That was in order to stop a civil war.  Once the civil war began I was on the program after that saying all the troops in the world cannot settle a civil war.  So what I’m having to respond to, like everyone else, is the president’s initiatives and his failures that, that required difference circumstances and different answers at different times.  But the fundamental principle’s the same:  We have an obligation to tell the president of the United States if we disagree with the mission for which he’s using American forces.  And the mission that he has us on is to settle a civil war through establishing a central democratic government in Baghdad.  That mission is strategically flawed.

MR. RUSSERT:  But you no longer have a problem setting a date for withdrawal.

SEN. BIDEN:  I no longer have a problem setting a target, a target that is flexible.  There is no—there’s nothing in it says that every troop has to be out on April the 1^st.

MR. RUSSERT:  You said this back in October of ‘02:  “We must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after.” Do you believe we’ll be in Iraq for a decade?

SEN. BIDEN:  I said back then, before we went to war, I wrote a report saying the decade after, and everyone was talking about the day after.  And the point I was making was, if you went in and used force, which he should not have done when he did it, that we were committing and signing on to a decade.  That was the—that was the minimum requirement.  I also pointed out we needed more troops.  I also pointed out at that time we would not be greeted with open arms.  I also pointed out at that time oil would not pay for this.  It was a warning, a warning to the president.  “Mr. President, the objective of us giving you this authority is to get inspectors back in, bring the pressure of the world community—which remember, at the time, when we were sitting here talking about this, the—at that moment the issue was are we going to pull out of—are we going to lift sanctions on Iraq or are we going to put more sanctions on Iraq?  That, that was the context in which that debate was taking place.

MR. RUSSERT:  So when some of your opponents in the Democratic primary say there will be no residual force left in Iraq?

SEN. BIDEN:  They are mistaken.  They are making a mistake that is not practical.  I don’t know how that can work.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Reid, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Senator Feingold, the senator from Wisconsin, have joined together and introduced a bill, and here’s the operative language:  “No funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any provision of law may be obligated or expended to continue the deployment in Iraq after March” 31^st, “2008.” Do you support that?

SEN. BIDEN:  No.

MR. RUSSERT:  Why?

SEN. BIDEN:  For the reasons I just stated.  I think it’s—may—we may end—look, Tim, here’s where we may end up.  This president may so—make it so difficult to reach the objective, the only reasonable one I think’s available, which is to leave Iraq, leaving behind a country secure within its own borders, not a threat to its neighbors, that is a loosely federated republic. It may get so bad that we do not have that option, and all of the option we have available to us is to withdraw and try to contain the civil war inside Iraq.  We are not there yet.  And until we reach that point, I am not prepared to say there are no circumstances under which, after a date certain, we would not have a single troop inside of Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT:  So you will not vote to cut off funding for the war, period.

SEN. BIDEN:  No, that’s not what I said.  I just got finished telling you what I said, which was if, in fact, this president changes the circumstances again, where there lose all prospect of being able to achieve the goal that I’ve just set out, which I think could be achieved if we decentralize power in Iraq, if we have a limited federal government in Iraq, where we train the army, where they have control of the borders and their currency, where we give control over the fabric of the daily lives of the various warring factions—including their local police forces—their laws relating to marriage, divorce, the things they’re killing each other over, if we get to the point where that is no longer an option and the place has totally disintegrated—which it may—that’s a different circumstance.  You can’t—I don’t know anyone who can say—I speak for myself.  I cannot say for—with absolute certainty what I will do on every potential contingency because I have no control over this president’s foreign policy and the direction he’s taking us in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT:  But as of today, you would not vote to cut off...

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