Senator Biden is Interviewed on Hardball
February 15, 2007
Please note that this is a partial transcript
MATTHEWS: Thank you very much for joining us, Senator Biden.
BIDEN: Happy to...
MATTHEWS: The hell continues in Iraq. More people killed everyday. Is the solution still to find some way of separating the threesides, the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni to prevent more bloodshed?
BIDEN: Absolutely. It's the only way, Chris. There's onlythree ways countries like this have ever been dealt with. One, anempire imposes a possession. Two, there's a dictator. Or three, it'sa federal system. And more and more people from Henry Kissingerstraight though to the leading foreign policy experts are agreeingthat the federal system is the only way out.
MATTHEWS: What about your fellow politicians? Are you gettingany support from any Democrats on your side of the aisle who will comeout and say Biden is right?
BIDEN: Yes, starting off with liberal supporters like BarbaraBoxer, who has strongly, strongly been pushing it, to a number ofmembers on the House side, including a half a dozen newly electedmembers of the House of Representatives having run on the plan, toeven Republicans like Brownback and others who are embracing the ideaI put forward some time ago.
MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you how do you make it happen? Imean, we have a president who has his own plan. We have theDemocratic majority that wants to basically rebuke the surge plan andbegin to choke off the money. How do you work your thinking intothose plans that are already afoot?
BIDEN: Well, as you know, it's awful hard. First of all, theyare mostly tactics. They're not plans. I mean, one of the thingseverybody agrees when you push them -- I always ask my colleagues, ifyou got invited down to the White House and the president said, "Iwould do whatever you want to do to deal with Iraq," would you say capthe troops? Would you say reduce the number? Would you say leaveimmediately?
And almost all of them say no. They know it's much morecomplicated than that because acknowledges there are going to be sometroops left behind, if in fact there's a political settlement that isreached, to keep al Qaeda from occupying territory that the presentgovernment could not deny them.
And so it gets very complicated. So what I'm doing, Chris, isputting together -- I have put together a -- I'm going to complicatethis again in the minds of your listeners. But redefine whatauthority the president has to use force in Iraq. The originalauthority he had was to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, takedown Saddam Hussein, comply with U.N. resolutions. That's all done.
Now we have to define for him, "Mr. President, you're not allowedto get us in the middle this civil war. You're allowed to train Iraqiforces. You should be bringing in the international community to makeit their problem and get a political solution. And you should helpthem with their constitution.
"So it's a way -- but it's very hard, Chris, as you know, havingworked up here, it's hard for the Congress to lay out a foreignpolicy. It's hard to do that. And what we're usually left with istrying to stop bad ideas.
MATTHEWS: How do the American people grab your idea and run withit? I mean, you're in a field now fighting your way to the top with Hillary and Obama up there and maybe Edwards ahead of you. And you'retrying to get heard. But how does the hearing work? I mean, how doesthis campaign for president become a way for the American people tofigure this thing out in Iraq?
BIDEN: Well, the way I say it is, let's localize the problem.Everybody in America understands there's no possibility of a nationalpolice force in Iraq patrolling Fallujah and Basra at the same time.So let them have their local police. Let them have control over theirmarriages. Let them have control over their education. Let them havecontrol over things that affect their daily lives. Their constitutioncalls for that.
Back off this notion of having a strong central government whichthe Iraqis never contemplated. It's a matter of getting a debate onthe floor of Senate, continuing to flush these things out because ifyou notice, Chris, the tactical arguments put up by my colleagues,Democrat and Republican, have not gotten much bite with the public atlarge.
And what's happening is more and more of the experts are signingon and more and more of the commentators are signing on to my plan,which -- and Les Gelb, which is the only way to have what one reportercalled a soft landing here in Iraq, get our troops out without leavingchaos behind.
MATTHEWS: Let's step back for a minute. President Bush, soonafter 9/11 in that well known State of Union address of 2002, talkedabout an axis of evil -- Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Was that smart?
BIDEN: No, it was very stupid -- shouldn't say stupid. It wasvery ill-informed. Number one, because what it said was once wedeclared them axis of evil, we stopped talking. We stopped talking.We pressed the mute button in three areas of world where there's areal problem for us. Finally, after six years, he has re-engagedNorth Korea and he hadn't gotten us back to the point where we wereunder the Clinton administration in terms of curtailing the ambitionsof North Korea. But at least we're talking...
MATTHEWS: Well, we are not talking -- or the president's makingstrong statements but not engaging is Iran. Do you think thepresident is just simply protecting American soldiers in the field in Iraq? Or he's risking a larger engagement, a war with Iran?
BIDEN: I have no doubt he wants to protect American soldiers inIraq. But I think he's risking the larger war in Iran. And, if younotice, Chris, he has virtually no credibility right now. And it'sunfortunate. The fact of the matter is if you notice he's talkedabout this new group, this elite group of Iranians who are the conduitfor these penetrating devices.
Guess what? We arrested the No. 2 guy in that group, in thecompound of a guy named Hakim, who had just a month earlier beensitting down with President Bush and we let him go.
Two years ago when I was in Iraq, they told me about thesepenetrating devices. I sat in Fallujah with a young generalexplaining to me how they worked. Why is it we're only hearing aboutthis now? Why are we only talking about it now?
MATTHEWS: It seems -- Well, let me give you an historic example.Are you familiar with this? Back in 1940 Franklin Roosevelt rightlyor wrongly was trying to engage the Nazis. He set a perimeter up andhe dared them to go in and hit any of our shipping or allied shippingin this perimeter. He basically wanted to go to war with Germanybefore Pearl Harbor. Fair enough, we can argue that forever.
Is President Bush trying to do that? Is he sit setting up aperimeter or a standard where he's hoping the Iranians will break indo something we can justify as the beginning of a war with Iran? Ishe looking for a war with Iran?
BIDEN: The honest to God truth is I don't know. But it worriesme. If past is prologue, it's not beyond the realm.
And the truth of the matter is if he wants to go to war with acountry of 72 million people, he has an obligation to come to thepeople through the United States Congress and get permission. He doesnot have authority to initiate that war himself.
MATTHEWS: Do you think he knows that? Do you think he believesthat?
BIDEN: I think he knows it. But I don't know beyond that.
MATTHEWS: You don't know -- do you believe he is held byconstitutional principles to go to you guys first? I mean, Hillary Clinton aid this the other day. Senator Clinton said -- and she'spretty hawkish, generally. But she said the presidents has to come tothe Senate for approval of any action against Iran.
BIDEN: He has to come to the Congress for any approval against-- any action against Iran.
Now, look, that doesn't mean we can't be in hot pursuit. No one is saying that if you're chasing down a cadre of people who justkilled a bunch of Marines or attacked them, you can't cross the borderafter them. That's within the context of waging this war. But it's another thing if the president uses that as an excuse to use air powerto take out a nuclear facility.
MATTHEWS: Senator, that's how we got into a happy little warwith Mexico a long time ago and picked a place like California, NewMexico and Texas, so we knew how to face Pancho Villa...
BIDEN: You know...
MATTHEWS: Go ahead.
BIDEN: Yes, but guess what? We're not going to pick upCalifornia here. We're going to pick up a country of 72 millionpeople who will tie us down in a way against our interest and beyondmy comprehension right now.
