Reprinted with permission.
"Hardball with Chris Matthews" transcript
MSNBC
December 17, 2004
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Good evening. I‘m Chris Matthews.
Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi joined the chorus of Republicans who are criticizing the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and said he wants the defense secretary to be replaced by next year. Speaking to a chamber of commerce in Mississippi, Senator Lott said, “I‘m not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld. I don‘t think he listens enough to his uniformed officers. I‘d like to see a change in that slot in the next year or so. I‘m not calling for his resignation, but I think we do need a change at some point.”
Senator Lott‘s comments came on the heels of criticism by Senator John McCain, Bill Kristol and Norman Schwarzkopf. But despite the growing number of critics, the White House gave Secretary Rumsfeld a vote of confidence today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a great job leading our efforts at the Department of Defense to win the war on terrorism and to help bring about a free and peaceful Iraq. And the president is focused on working closely with him on those matters.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: Retired General Wesley Clark is the former supreme allied commander of NATO. He‘s also a former democratic presidential candidate. General, what do you think the president should do here?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK, (RET) FRM. DEMOCRATIC PRES. CANDIDATE: Well, I think the president will not replace Secretary Rumsfeld. But I think Secretary Rumsfeld did cross the line when he was actually kind of disparaging to the troops. He wasn‘t respectful to the troops.
And one of the things you learn as a senior leader, you have to respect the men and women on the front lines doing the job. You have got to respect them, not only love them, not only order them to risk their lives, but you have to respect their views.
And I don‘t think that respect came through in what he says. And in the behind the scenes work, I don‘t think that respect is there inside the Pentagon with the chain of command. At least that‘s the feedback I continue to get.
MATTHEWS: What do you make of the wide variety of attackers, though? It is not just people who have question the war. Certainly not just Democrats, but he‘s being hit by not just moderate Republicans like Susan Collins but being hit by Hagel, of course, who is sort of a centrist. He is being hit by General Schwarzkopf, who is an analyst for MSNBC and a great military hero, maybe the greatest in many ways. And he‘s also being hit by the ideologue behind—or the ultimate ideologue, you could say, Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard. who has been pushing the war since day one.
Do you think people are trying to separate themselves a bit from what looks to be a problem come next January in the elections?
CLARK: I think people are celebrating themselves. But I think people have different motives in this. I think, for one thing, I think Secretary Rumsfeld did cross the line in his question and answer session with the troops and the comments afterwards. It wasn‘t just that he didn‘t know what was going on, he didn‘t seem to think it was important and he didn‘t seem to respect the concerns of the troops, and he seemed to kind of bristle at the criticism. And those are things that, whether you‘re a Democrat or Republican, it doesn‘t matter, I mean, your constituents don‘t like it.
Look, the National Guard and Reserve especially, their families are out there in the states. And their husbands and some of their wives and their fathers and their children are over here serving in Iraq. And they‘re unhappy about it. And when somebody doesn‘t respect the loved ones for the sacrifices they‘re making, and try to prevent those sacrifices, I mean that‘s not a partisan issue, that‘s just plain bad leadership. And that‘s what they saw.
But I think, you know, a guy like Bill Kristol, what he sees is that Secretary Rumsfeld‘s plan is not unfolding the way that the neocons thought it should unfold in the Middle East. This was supposed to be like a scaffold. You know, you just go in there and carve out Saddam Hussein, boom, the people are liberated. And they‘re all democratic. And then the Syrians jump on board and say, hey, by golly, come and save us too. And then the Iranians and the Lebanese.
It hasn‘t worked that way, because what the neocons didn‘t understand is, that you don‘t get the kind of Democratic reform you want in the Middle East at the barrel of a gun. And they‘re holding Rumsfeld responsible for that. But really, it‘s a flawed conception.
MATTHEWS: That‘s interesting. You‘re the first person I‘ve heard say that, general. Because a lot of people look at it much more narrowly and they say the reason we‘re getting criticism of the general is there aren‘t enough troops there. He said he had enough troops, when really in reality, it was the conception that justified the low troop level. Is that your point? That you did not need a lot of troops, because you weren‘t going to face much of an insurgency.
CLARK: There are two points there, Chris. One is the point of the neocons, which is not military at all. It is the point of the operation and the fact that you could sort of go in there and lance the boil of Saddam Hussein, get him out of there and everything would turn out OK. And it hasn‘t.
But, you know, there also are a lot of comments and criticism from the retired generals, because they know. And most of us knew at the outset that we did not have enough troops on the ground to do the full job of post conflict recovery that was required. And I think the people on active duty knew it, too. And they tried to tell Rumsfeld this during the planning process.
And of course, when you‘re arguing against the secretary of defense, and he keeps whittling on you and whacking you, it is real hard to hold your ground. And he just carved down the size of the force, from the 400,000, 500,000 of Desert Storm down to what actually went in there, which was like 90,000 troops, as far as I can tell, actually at the cutting edge of the force on the ground.
MATTHEWS: Look into your crystal ball, and I mean that seriously, you sense of vision about what‘s going to happen. We‘re having an election at the end of January in Iraq. The majority group are the Shia. They‘re led by the spiritual leader, the Cleric Sistani. They have a candidate, apparently, named Hakim. Do you sense that they‘re going to turn that country into an Islamic style republic since they have the upper hand, these are the fundamentalist Shia.
CLARK: No. Not right away. But what they‘ll do is make sure that they have got enough power to be able to set in motion a process that will take it in that direction. But the key thing for them in the election is to make sure they get legitimacy. So, there will be a few Sunnis who participate. And the United States will be wanting to work with the Shia to claim that the election is legitimate..
MATTHEWS: Can we give them leave? Can we do that old George Jaykin (oh), thing during Vietnam War, declare victory and leave at the point we have a government over there?
CLARK: Well, I think that‘s a possibility except for two things. Number one, we don‘t know the level of resistance is going to be from the Sunnis. We cannot walk out and leave a civil war.
And secondly, don‘t forget that Iran is developing nuclear capabilities. How far along they are? We don‘t know. Where the sites are? We don‘t know. But we do know this, we would take the military option, I think, if there were one available.
MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you very much, General Wesley Clark.
