Kerry on Hardball at the Citadel Talking about Iraq last fall:
KERRY: Soldiers who love each other and really fight for each other as much as for anything else, I think that that's what we want to make certain is what happens if and when we go into Iraq. I'm prepared to go. I think people understand that Saddam Hussein is a danger. But you want to go maximizing your capacity for victory, not beginning with deficits. That's one of the lessons of Vietnam. I think Colin Powell has spoken of that frequently. It's why he 's pressed so hard for international support. I want France. I want Arab countries. I want our allies, beyond just Great Britain, to be supportive of our effort, because the war will not just be the military operation to move the regime out and to take Baghdad. The war will be an ongoing process of how you then rebuild the country, how you build a democracy in a place that's never had it, in a place where violence is the tradition. And that is the challenge for all of us, and I want to think it through, Chris, so no one has to ask the question, was this a mistake.
MATTHEWS: Let's go-let's get to the cadets. You, sir, you're first.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator, I was wondering, do you think the language in the recent House resolution is a bit too liberal in giving powers to the president?
KERRY: Not if the-not if it is clear what the administration intends to do and how they intend to proceed. There is an ambiguity, particularly in the second paragraph, about the relevant resolutions. But if the understanding is that the resolution that is really relevant with respect to the commitment of troops is the enforcement of the inspection of weapons, which is the real legitimacy to go to war, a legitimacy which incidentally has existed since 1991, which we could have enforced in 1998 when he threw the inspectors out. So that, I think, is the key, is, is it limited to that or is it a broad-based...
MATTHEWS: (reads congress's war act reoslution) I'll read it again. Defend the national security interests of the United States against the continuing threat. Isn't that a blank check?
KERRY: Chris, that's why the debate is going to be so important and that's why the next few hours are so important. I went to New York and I met with the National Security Council Monday night, and it was clear to me that they take this seriously. They are prepared to pass a resolution that will set a new standard of inspections and will be tough. Now, that's... MATTHEWS: Would you give them a chance? Would you give Hans Blix and the United Nations inspectors another couple of months to try to catch the stuff, the chemical and biological weapons, perhaps nuclear materials in that country, or would you say let's just go get this guy, he's a BSer. He's just going to trick us again. We're wasting time and he's playing for time. Why don't we go in? That seems to be the president's view. Do you accept the view let's go in or do you say let's wait, let them try to inspect?
KERRY: It's not a question of wait. It's a question of exhausting the remedies that are available to you that create a legitimacy if you have to go to war. What we lost, for instance, in Vietnam, was the legitimacy. We ultimately lost the consent of the American people.
MATTHEWS: Right.
KERRY: We had a divided nation.
MATTHEWS: Right.
KERRY: That is not where you want to begin a war. And so...
MATTHEWS: How many-speaking of division, I want to take division right now. And-I'm going to ask a very general question, not whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or you support the president politically, but how many in this room support us going to war against Iraq right now? How many think we should try to avoid this war by inspections and try to get-and try to get a check and make sure he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction? Who wants to check first? What do you think of that? It 's about 95 percent to go now and not try to see if there's weapons of mass destruction. I sense there's a disagreement between you and the majority in this room.
KERRY: I think if we spent a little time working it through, we 'd probably come to be in the same place and I'll tell you why. Logistically, you can't go in tomorrow. Logistically, it's going to take you three or four months, three months anyway, to be prepared to be in a position, and there isn't one of you, I believe, who wants to go in there without the adequate support and logistical supply network set in place. I don't believe that. No one believes that a Special Forces unit alone is going to be able to go in to do that and if you don't want another Somalia, Mogadishu, where you haven't got your capacity to extract people if you need to or to pull reinforcements in when you need to and you haven't laid your plans...
MATTHEWS: Right.
KERRY: ... intelligently, you're in danger. I want to do what I think is going to protect the troops, but accomplish our goal. And I believe that under any circumstances, we have two to three months to put to test the question of whether or not we can satisfy the security needs of this nation. Do I have confidence that we'll do that? The answer is no. Do I think Saddam Hussein will probably live up to that? No. Do I expect that probably we'll have to enforce it? Yes.
MATTHEWS: OK.
KERRY: But I want to go through the process to guarantee we've done it right.
MATTHEWS: Senator, there's been a lot of talk about the manner of our president, his sort of cowboy style. The Europeans are apparently turned off by this kind of talk by the president. Let's take a look at it, listen to it. (BEGIN BUSH VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: How many people here like that kind of talk? (APPLAUSE)
MATTHEWS: Let me read you something from the "New York Times" today. I'll let the Senator respond to it. I'm sure he's read the column by Thomas Friedman in the "New York Times" today. "It is too bad that Mr. Bush's instinctive humility has given way lately to Texas cowboy lingo when talking about Iraq. I'm sure it helps whip up crowds at Republican fundraisers, but it doesn't cross the ocean well." How many like that? (APPLAUSE)
MATTHEWS: Got some Thomas Friedman fans here. Let's go to the next question. Go ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: William Osmar (ph) from Boston, Massachusetts. Senator, do you support President Bush's call for regime change and if not, why?
KERRY: The policy of our country is regime change. I do support regime change. The question is how do you do it. Now, never before in the history of the United States of America have we just decided to go in and attack a country just to change their regime. If there's a national security threat to our country, a reason that we have to do it, which I believe are the weapons of mass destruction, and I think you believe that too, but I don 't believe that the oil being sold across the border is a rationale for going to war. I don't believe the lack of accountability in the POW situation at this moment is a cause for going to war. I think you have to have legitimacy in your effort to go to war that is in the best traditions of our nation. We've spent almost 100 years. We lost a lot of lives, many of them from right here at The Citadel, fighting for a standard of behavior. We tried to create the League of Nations. We then created the United Nations. Why? Because we believe that rule of law is important, that we need to have some kind of standard. And what I want to do is guarantee that the United States operates from the greatest position of strength. I'm prepared to order at any time to go in and take Saddam Hussein out if we have exhausted those possibilities, or if there's an imminent threat that requires us preemptively to do it because we are imminently threatened. But I have sat in on those briefings. My colleagues have sat in on those briefings. There is no one, Republican or Democrat, who's going to tell you that there's an imminent threat today, tomorrow, next week, next month. And many of us believe that in order to bring the Russians, the French, the Germans, the rest of the world community along with us, we need to go through certain steps. That may be trying some people's patience, but let me tell you something. When the bullets are flying, and the body bags are coming home, and the nation's resolve is being tested, we will be glad that we went the last measure of effort so that we understood when we look at a parent and say this is why your son or daughter died, we explain, we tried everything and this is what we...
MATTHEWS: We're back at The citadel in South Carolina near Charleston, and we're watching the cadets in action here. Let me ask you all a first question. How many think we should go to war with Iraq again? Let's hear it-let's hear it verbally this time. (APPLAUSE)
MATTHEWS: How many-how many of you want to go to Iraq and fight the war personally? Stand up. (APPLAUSE)
MATTHEWS: You know I don't understand, because less than half of you generally join the military. How come you're going to go? Are you going to fight in uniform or what? I mean, who's going? Are you really all going to go or is that just rhetoric? Because the fact of the matter, Senator, this is the problem in American life. Historically this school predicts about a third of the candidates will go to war. Another third go into business or something else, and yet everybody stood up when I asked. Is everybody really going or you just want to stand up to show support for the president? Will somebody explain that to me? Because there's a disconnect here in the numbers.
KERRY: Well I understand. I mean I-listen, I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I volunteered for duty. I completely understand when your country is challenged and you're called and you're young. That's history. But I think that as you said, Chris, I'd like to ask the question, how many of you believe that the next two months...
MATTHEWS: OK. OK. KERRY: ... might be worthwhile to see if you could accomplish it through inspections.
MATTHEWS: OK, we'll be right back with Senator John Kerry and his war record. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MATTHEWS: The HARDBALL "College Tour" is at The Citadel in South Carolina. For the next half-hour, I'm going to begin by asking Senator John Kerry why he would make a better president than George W. Bush. Right now, the news. (NEWSBREAK)
MATTHEWS: Let's get to the heart of it, Senator. You want to talk about trying to avoid this war and the bloodshed that would come with it and the hundreds and thousands of potential casualties and lots of American lives lost. Sir, I just want to give you a chance one more time. Do you think the war should be fought rather than an inspection program before and to try to avoid the war?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, he already took a seat because we thought you were moving on to another question sir. However, personally I do feel that we should go through inspections first.
MATTHEWS: How many people think that, that we should try to avoid this war by inspections and get the weapons of mass destruction, which is the reason for the war? How many don't think we should try to avoid the war, we should just go to war? Would somebody in that line or somebody come forward and make a case for why we should go to war without trying to avoid one if we can and still achieve the mission of the war, which is to remove the weapons of mass destruction? Somebody come up here and tell me why we should have a war without a purpose if we can avoid getting rid of those weapons of mass destruction without a war, which would remove the purpose of the war. Why would you want a war if you got rid of the mission by not going to war? Tell us why.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the reason is because we've asked Hussein many times for weapons inspectors. He kicked them out in '98. He's already said they're not going to allow them to inspect his palaces and the land around his palaces. How can we give him the benefit of the doubt? He's never been a friend. It's not like we're giving France the benefit.
KERRY: You don't give him any benefit of the doubt. There's no such thing as doubt. No such thing as benefit of anything. No wiggle room, no capacity for Saddam Hussein to play any games. You have to have literally, unconditional, unfettered, absolute access to all the palaces, to any place where choose. Now if we can't, then I'm ready to go to war too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's already denied that to the U.N.
KERRY: Well, he's denied everything. He says a different thing every single day while his own foreign minister is negotiating the very way to get out of it. All I'm suggesting to you is, all I'm suggesting to you, is that it's going to take two to three months anyway to build up properly to be able to do this right. Why not take during that period the effort to get our allies with us so that we're not-you know the cost of this is going to be extraordinary. Our economy is in the tombs in this country. We've got the lowest stock market we've had since Herbert Hoover was president. We've had less business growth, slowest growth in the country. We lost two million jobs in the last months. American people are wondering where their money is for their schools, the money for their cities. the money for a whole bunch of things we need to do. Social Security, Medicare, health care, prescription drugs. We're going to spend $100 billion over there in Iraq if you didn't have to?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's true, the economy is bad, but the economy was bad during World War II, too. But our grandfathers and your father rose to the occasion to defend freedom and it's the same circumstances here. If we don't do, it we don't know what might happen.
KERRY: But you see, it's not-I respect what you're saying enormously and I thank you for having the courage to stand up and engage in this discussion, because it's really important. It's not a choice between standing up for freedom or not standing up for freedom. It's a choice between how you stand up for freedom in an intelligent way that accomplishes the goal of standing up for freedom. I want to stand up for that as much as you do. But I want to do it in a way that guarantees your success. I want to guarantee that our country can do this with the least cost, most effective way, and one of the great lessons of the last 20 years in our country is, it makes sense to try to do that. This is not a choice between who's for freedom, who hates Saddam Hussein more. Saddam Hussein, you know, is going to find his confrontation. I don't question that. But I want to make sure the United States of America does this in a way that we gain, not are hurt by it.
To question about Saddam's defiance.
KERRY: Well, let me say, Bo. I don't disagree with you. We're not on a different wavelength. I don't believe he'll live up to it. I don't believe he's going to let us in to every single place because I think he has that stuff. But we've got a whole-as a country, we got a whole lot of people over there in Europe right now who don't support us, and they should. We've got a whole lot of allies around the world who are questioning how America is going at this because they think all we want to do is go in there and take him out. Now I think since we're inevitably going to get to the same place, unless there's some incredible change in his mind, why not get there with them, all of our friends, changing their minds and saying you know something, you folks were right. You were right all along. And now we're with you rather than just go crashing in and have them ask the question.
MATTHEWS: Senator, are you confident that the French, the Russians, the Chinese, as well as the British government, will support us once it's clear this guy is just dithering around?
KERRY: Absolutely. I am confident. I've heard that from the French authorities. They have no choice.
MATTHEWS: How much time will they give him before we have to move? In other words, how much time will you wait to hear from them and how much time will they take to decide that's hopeless, the guy is just covering up and has stuff?
KERRY: I think it has to be-you will know very quickly because you can go in with spot inspections early on, that challenge the most suspected places. You'll know within a matter of months whether he's serious in letting you in or not and that is the same period of time that it takes to build the logistics for a successful campaign.
MATTHEWS: You went to Vietnam without any international support. As I recall, the Vietnam war, growing up during it, the only people that supported us in that war were the Australians and maybe the South Koreans.
KERRY: South Koreans were with us.
MATTHEWS: We were alone over there, yet you went. These guys were willing to do alone. When did you change your mind over there, when you were commanding the boat over there and you were fighting the communists and getting shot? When did you decide that this was the wrong war for this country? When did you change from these fellows into who you are now?
KERRY: While I was there. While I was there, but those doubts and those questions were being raised in this country. We went through several years of transition back then, Chris. I mean, I volunteered like you. I was sitting there just the way you are, as gung-ho as every single one of you sitting here, and I still am. I'm going to defend this country tomorrow morning. Put on a uniform, leave the Senate, and go fight if I thought this country was threatened in that way. And I went over there then because we saw the world in east-west, communist versus freedom, American. It was a stand within the cold war, within at that time a hot cold war, and it was a surrogate superpower conflict. So we saw it differently. It was a very different kind of situation.
MATTHEWS: When you told me a personal story, you showed me that picture in your office one day of you up there looking like a million bucks, riding along in a boat just like in "Apocalypse Now," the rock music playing. You told me about it, riding up the Mekong Delta River, whatever it was, and it looked like a war that we were going to win it clean. We were going to come out on top with all of our guys back. What happened then? What happened there to change that optimism and hope that these fellows all have?
KERRY: It was a very different kind of situation, Chris. We became involved in a civil war in a jungle country with superpowers lurking in the background. You had the Soviet Union. You had China. You always had the capacity that they might involve their troops if we went too far. There were huge political calculations, very different from the calculations that we face in whether or not we go into Iraq and especially if you have the world community with you. But you know, we began in Vietnam where the French left off in 1954. We were there through the early 1960's. President Kennedy put early Green Berets in. That was the beginning of some of our special forces involvement. Then we went into 1965 when the Marines landed at China beach. The 1965, another three years went until the Tet offensive in 1968. That's when people began to question the strategy and capacity of the war. That's when I was there, 1968, '69. And we learned at that point in time that we weren't prepared to do the kinds of things that people feel today we need to do in order to guarantee success.
MATTHEWS: How many people here think the Senator was right to question the war after he did his service and came back? Hands. Wow. Almost everyone. Senator, I think you have won them over. (APPLAUSE and ovation) |
