INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

C-SPAN’S “NEWSMAKERS”

Guest: Senator Jim Webb (D-VA)

Reporters: Noam Levey, L.A. Times & Peter Hardin, Richmond Times-Dispatch

Moderator: C-SPAN

TAPE DATE: Wednesday, September 12, 2007

AIR DATE/TIME: SUNDAY, September 16, 2007 at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET

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PETER SLEN, HOST: Well, this past week, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have been grilled up on Capitol Hill.

One of the key members doing the questioning is Senator Jim Webb. He’s a Democrat of Virginia, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Services Committee.

He’s our guest this week on Newsmakers.

Her to question him, Noam Levey of the “Los Angeles Times,” and Peter Hardin of the “Richmond Times-Dispatch.”

Senator Webb, if I could start the questioning.

Is it fair to say that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq and has led to better security for U.S. troops and for Iraqi residents?

U.S. SEN. JIM WEBB, (D-VA): I think that’s quite a mouthful, actually, if we’re going to assume at the outset a certain number of facts.

I think it’s fair to say that, wherever the United States military has been put into play in Iraq, they have been able to control the tactical environment that they are in. And it’s also fair to say that this is a guerrilla war, so that the nature of the people who are going to be opposing us is going to be fluid.

Beyond that, I think what we need to do is take a step back – actually, let me do two things – take a step back, first of all, at what the announced goals of the surge were, and then to talk a little bit about the ramifications – and the way that the testimony was given, quite frankly.

When this surge was announced on January the 10th, I was on the Lehrer show that night. And one of the things that I said then is that this is not a strategy. This is not a change in strategy.

It’s a tactical adjustment in a military sense, and that it only becomes strategic, if there are other issues in play – the political issues inside Iraq and, particularly, an effort by this administration to do a lot more in the diplomatic environment, where the answers are really going to come.

And we have not seen that, sadly.

And the one inalterable truth of the surge, from all the charts and everything else, is that ended up accelerating the deployment cycles of the ground forces of the United States military. There was a rotational cycle that had been in place for four years, which in itself was taxing to the Army and the Marine Corps. But by accelerating the deployment cycles, we really have put the ground forces in a pretty dangerous situation.

They’re now, on the Army side, on 15-month tours rather than 12-month tours. And they’re only guaranteed 12 months at home, which is less a one-to-one ratio of deployments, when the British, for instance were a four-to-one ratio – six months in Iraq, two years back at home – when traditionally in the United States military we’ve had a two-for-one ratio.

So, that’s one piece of it. And that analysis goes to the way that this testimony was presented, which was very narrowly focused on Iraq. Any time – I spent 9.5 hours yesterday on these two different committees – any time a question was asked of either General Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker that was outside of Iraq – international terrorism, the implications of Pakistan, or even the surge, which – excuse me, the dwell time amendment as a result of the surge, which I just mentioned – they would decline to go there.

So, what we have is something of a kabuki here, in my view, where they are going to make these recommendations to reduce the troop levels 30,000. And that is the reality of what they actually have to do anyway, because of the accelerated deployment cycles. The president is, quote, going to accept these recommendations, and we’re going to be left – unless there’s some sort of outside pressure – with where we were at the beginning.

NOAM LEVEY, STAFF WRITER, “LOS ANGELES TIMES”: Senator, the general and the ambassador both talked about, as you mentioned, the redeployment schedule of gradually drawing down troops in Iraq.

Do you get a sense, or do you think that that in any way makes it more likely that the political goals that were outlined by the president when he announced this surge, in terms of political progress in Baghdad, is any more likely to happen because of what the president – excuse me – what General Petraeus testified?

WEBB: Well, I don’t think that we have seen the type of success on the political side in Iraq, or diplomatically, in terms of aggressively going about bringing in these countries tangential to Iraq into the formula. We have not seen that.

So, it’s almost two separate things here.

And what I hope Americans will think about and resist is the notion that bringing the troop levels down to where they were a year ago is somehow an indicator that we’re on the way to a better situation in Iraq.

It’s almost like, you know, the price of gas. When we began the Iraq war, it was probably, what, $1.50? I know it was $24 a barrel for a barrel of oil and it went up to $72.

So, the price of gas goes to $3.50, and everybody is supposed to be happy now that it’s down to $3.00, when it used to be $1.50.

That’s kind of the logic behind this surge, that we’re going up to 168,000. Now, if we bring it down to 130,000, everybody’s supposed to be happy.

So, there is not really a connection right now between the productivity on the ground, the tactical productivity of our military, and what should have been done, particularly on the diplomatic side.

PETER HARDIN, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, “RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH”: Well, (INAUDIBLE), senator. Do you think that Congress should mandate faster and broader withdrawals of the troops?

WEBB: Well, the Congress is in a pickle here.

And the way that I began my questions on the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, I really tried to go in that, because there are so many people – and this isn’t just a fringe issue, the way that the administration tries to present it – there are so many people with long experience in national security affairs, people like Brent Scowcroft, who was the national security advisor in Gulf War I, Tony Zinni, General Hoar, who were CENTCOM commander in that region, had that region, who were warning about the implications of a war.

There are so many people like that who have been stuck in a box here. They warned of certain implications if we invaded Iraq.

The warnings – and I was one of those people, by the way, as you know, Peter, who was warning about this – the same warnings that we were giving about the implications of going into Iraq are now the warnings that the people who got us into Iraq are giving us in the event that we leave – instability of the region, empowering Iran, affecting the United States reputation around the war, the inability to fight international terrorism. That’s exactly what we were saying was going to happen if we go in.

So, it’s a sad situation to be in, to start off with, in that we didn’t want to see this happen. We now have to come together in a way to carefully remove the United States from the region, and not contributing to greater instability.

So, when you play that into the Congress – which is your question – the tools that we have are fairly limited. We have the appropriations tools. We could redraft some language.

I think that the pressure coming out of the Congress has affected part of the debate. I think that the language that we were hearing from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker was really related to how we can resolve this situation. The question is the timeline.

And other than that, I think we need to get Admiral Fallon to the table. I think we need to hear from him. He is General Petraeus’ operational commander. He has given a number of indications that he would see a different timeline on this.

And we can do certain things in terms of legislative actions, but not that much.

LEVEY: What sorts of things do you think legislatively would accomplish what you’re outlining?

WEBB: I think the first thing that we need to do is to put into place this dwell time amendment that I introduced a couple of months ago, for two reasons.

One is that this political debate is going to go on for quite a while. And I think we need a safety net under the troops here.

When they have been used in a manner that causes them to have to be in Iraq more than they’re at home, even – by now, they’re spending a majority of their time in Iraq, a lot of Army troops and Marine Corps troops. And then when they’re home, obviously, you’ve got to refurbish these units, you’ve got to put together the leadership of them again. They’ve got to train and they’ve got to go again. And so, these people have no real life.

So, I think we should get an agreement across the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, basically saying that, as we resolve the levels of troop deployments and the missions, and this sort of thing, we’re not going to fall below a one-to-one ratio. The goal, as I said, is two-to-one.

And if we do that, then you’re going to see a realistic view from these field commanders about how many people they can have available to them to actually perform other functions.

LEVEY: Do you anticipate that that would actually accelerate the redeployment of troops faster than what General Petraeus outlined when he testified on the Hill?

WEBB: He gave that indication yesterday, that from his understanding that it would reduce the number of troops available to him.

I don’t believe – I haven’t seen the numbers. I’d like to see the Pentagon’s numbers on that.

But my strong belief, my personal belief, is that we need to dramatically draw down the troops in Iraq, that we don’t need to be doing the missions in terms of policing the sectarian violence, and that sort of thing, that we can still do the international terrorism missions and some of these other things, but allow the Iraqis to work these other problems out themselves. That’s my personal view.

But in terms of the political debate itself, I think we owe it, after 4.5 years, to the people who have put on the uniform and are going over there, a sound policy. I think we need an operational policy that’s based on the troops that are available, and not the other way around, which is what they’ve been doing with the surge.

HARDIN: Senator, your amendment’s not new. It went down in the face of a filibuster by four votes in July.

Has there been a change in the political landscape that you think might give it enhanced prospects, if it comes up again? And what would those changes be?

WEBB: I think that the amendment – which got 56 votes, as you said – I think that the understanding of the demands on our people is heightened now, after we’ve had these discussions.

The first time that I asked General Petraeus about the dwell time issue, he was fairly noncommittal. But by the evening, he was agreeing that he notionally would like to see something like this.

Here’s the dilemma, and here’s why I believe that legislation is important.

When the Army went to 15-month deployments from 12-month deployments, the chief of staff of the Army called me. And as you know, I’ve been around the military all my life. I grew up in the military. I served in the military. I covered the military as a journalist. I’ve been a defense official.

When he told me that they were going to 15-month deployments, I was stunned – literally stunned. I said, “I don’t know how you can ask these people to keep doing 15-month deployments with 12 months at home.”

And I said, “How can you as a general officer stand up and support that?”

His comment to me was, “We feed the strategy. We don’t articulate it; we feed it.”

And then we had General Petraeus for a couple of days. His basic comment was, the chief – “You have to ask the chief of staff of the Army about that. I tell him what I need, and then they have to get the people.”

Well, it’s kind of like hide the weenie here, you know. Somewhere in there there’s an answer.

And so, it’s appropriate with that sort of dislocation, I think, for the Congress to come in and to put a floor on the deployments.

A good precedent historically on this is the Korean War, when the Army was sending people into Korea at the early stages of the Korean War, who hadn’t been trained properly.

I had a guy who used to cut my hair when I was at the Naval Academy. He had been a prisoner of war in Korea. And he said, he landed in Korea and had never fired a weapon before.

So, the Congress stepped in and basically said, as a minimum standard, troops have to have 120 days of training before they’re sent overseas. That’s a proper role of the Congress – a constitutional role of the Congress. And I think this is, too.

HARDIN: Well, do you have any new allies, co-sponsors, anything like that?

WEBB: We do. We’ve been talking to a number of Republicans. I am hopeful right now that we’re going to have the support of Senator Murkowski. She has mentioned that she might support this.

Senator Voinovich has indicated – there was an article in the “New York Times” today that he was leaning towards supporting it.

And Senator Warner has stepped forward and indicated to me that he wants to work together to try to find language that would address this problem.

I think that one of the problems that we have in the Congress today is that, in contrast to 30 years ago when I was a committee staffer on the Congress, we have very few people in the Congress right now who have served in the military, and very few of them who have a personal connection, family connection, to these rotational cycles.

So, it’s very difficult to explain the emotional impact that this is having on people.

And Senator Warner is one who, I think has a great understanding of this. And I’m hopeful that he’ll continue to work with me on it.

LEVEY: Senator, you mentioned that this would be essentially a minimum ceiling. It probably though – and correct me if I’m wrong – would not accelerate the redeployment as quickly as you, as I understand, and a number of other critics of the current policy would like.

Democrats, ahead of the August recess, tried a number of times to pass some legislation that would get U.S. troops out of there more quickly. Those obviously failed.

In addition to the amendment, or the proposal that you’re offering, can you see any other vehicles that would accomplish what you’re talking about in terms of removing U.S. troops more quickly from Iraq?

WEBB: This is the – the difficulty in these areas, historically, has been that, once the Congress authorizes action, it’s very difficult for them then to weigh in. And we’ve seen this all throughout history.

So, the number one lament that I have was how quickly the Congress authorized this war, when there were so many questions out there among the American people. And I was one of them.

One of the reasons I ended up getting into elected politics is, as I said yesterday, I watched these hearings go, and the administration witnesses were not forthcoming about what the endgame was.

So, I have voted for a number of these provisions that would change the mission, and these sorts of things. But I haven’t seen a magical formula here.

The one thing that is going to change the structure of our relationship in Iraq is an administration that will aggressively pursue a diplomatic solution among the countries in the region. And this administration is not even talking to most of the players.

Now, right after the Afghanistan invasion in ’02, this administration did that. They brought all the countries that were tangential to Afghanistan – including Iran – to the table – Pakistan, India, who normally don’t talk to each other that much, some of the Western powers. And they came together. They cooperated in a way that we ended up having the Karzai government and support for the Karzai government.

You have a situation in Iraq right now, where the countries that have long-term relations with different ethnic groups in Iraq are playing under the table. We stand up and we scream about Iran all the time. The Saudis are providing at least a plurality of the foreign fighters in Iraq right now.

These countries have historical ties, cultural ties, and could have economic ties to Iraq, as well as a number of others. And we need to get them above the table. We need to get them to participate overtly in a solution.

And I think you can do that.

LEVEY: Congress can do that? How can Congress do that?

WEBB: No, I think – that’s what I’m saying. Congress can’t do that.

HARDIN: Well, senator …

WEBB: But that’s the way that this is going to have to be resolved.

HARDIN: I believe Ambassador Crocker may have addressed part of that yesterday. You heard him for many hours. Did you get any indication from Ambassador Crocker, did you hear any indication, that his talks with his Iranian counterpart were bearing fruit?

WEBB: Ambassador Crocker was very careful about that. He didn’t say that they weren’t bearing fruit. He really broke ice on that issue.

I met with him before his confirmation hearings. He and I had a very substantive discussion, and he was firmly in agreement with what I just said, by the way, that the only way to get a proper solution on this is regionally. And the question is how you go about that.

And, you know, he – this is a sterling public servant. Ambassador Crocker has spent literally his entire adult life in that region. And I can tell from the things that he was saying that he’s trying. The question is, how free is he to try different things? How much support does he have from the Secretary of State?

And I think Secretary Rice early on was trying. I met with her twice to discuss this. I’m not sure what her suasion is right now inside the administration vis-a-vis someone like Vice President Cheney, who obviously is not trying.

But Crocker did mention a number of fairly small successes – the Saudis thinking now about opening up an embassy, and these sorts of things.

But whether it is sequentially or in a regional meeting, we need – we’re seeing – people talk about how successful we are in the Kurdish regions. We’re seeing enormous potential difficulty with Turkey.

Public opinion toward America in Turkey is extremely low. The Turks are worried about a Kurdish guerrilla movement emanating out of the Kurdish areas of Iraq.

Jordan is suffering from an enormous amount of refugees. Syria has a refugee problem out of Iraq, and also a border question. I think Syria has been trying to get to the table. We need to break Syria away from Iran.

The Saudi regime is a fragile regime, but we need to confront it, get them overtly onto the table, get some investment into the Sunni areas out of Saudi.

And that leaves Iran. And the fact of the matter – and I was saying this in 1990 – is that, if you destabilize Iraq, Iran becomes more powerful. That’s a reality.

And we have to deal with it head-to-head rather than refusing to talk to them.

LEVEY: Does that essentially mean then that the reality is we have to wait until there’s a new occupant in the White House for the kind of diplomatic initiative which you’re outlining?

WEBB: I would be happy to try to find other ways. I think that we’re doing everything that we can in terms of – or at least I’m doing everything that I can to encourage the right sorts of oversight. There’s just – the nature of the Congress is slower unless you want to totally pull the plug.

And this is a fragile situation that was created by a war that never should have been fought. And I’ve said many, many times that we got into this recklessly, and we need to get out of it carefully, in a way that can bring greater stability in the region.

And I think that’s doable. But the Congress can’t pass a bill and make it happen, unfortunately.

HARDIN: Senator, yesterday during one of the hearings you mentioned, you volunteered the experiences of the 1st Battalion …

WEBB: Sixth Marines.

HARDIN: … 6th Marines in Anbar. And you mentioned that your son fought there. He has come back.

What’s the latest? What’s next for Jimmy? And how do you balance your dual roles as policymaker and parent of a soldier in Iraq?

WEBB: Well, let me say two things about the comments yesterday.

General Petraeus was advancing the success in Anbar province as evidence that the surge was working. And I thought it was very important in terms of the facts of the matter to point out that the successes in Anbar began well before the surge.

And my son’s battalion – the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines – basically took Ramadi back, block by block and street by street, September, October, November, December of last year. And it does not in any way diminish the command perspective of General Petraeus, but it’s wrong to say that that was due to the surge.

I also mentioned a situation with my number two daughter, by the way, talking about people getting burned out by this process, where her longtime boyfriend of seven years did two tours in Afghanistan, left the Marine Corps as an infantry corporal, had been out a year-and-a-half, and all of a sudden got orders on Friday, calling him back to active duty as a member of the Individual Ready Reserve. And he’s on his way back to Iraq.

And I just don’t think there are enough people who are in these policymaking positions who are seeing the realities of these policies. And we need to shape the policies toward the people who are there.

And my son, I’m very proud of him. And he continues to serve with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines.

LEVEY: Senator, you mentioned that you’ve had conversations with a number of Republican lawmakers on your readiness proposal.

Do you get any sense since the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker that there may be more interest on the other side of the aisle in some of the other proposals that are being talked about to essentially challenge the White House policy in Iraq?

WEBB: I would hope – and this is really early on now – I would hope that, given the fact that General Petraeus has said that he doesn’t see that this troop level is going to drop down below 131,000, even after all these surge activities, that there will be people who will want to come together and get a different formula, because we need to reduce the presence of the United States combat forces on the streets of Iraq.

And General Petraeus’ predecessor, General Casey, had that policy. And I happen to agree with that policy, that the Iraqis need to take responsibility for maintaining that kind of order in their country.

Admiral Fallon, who is General Petraeus’ operational boss, when he testified in front of the Armed Services Committee on his confirmation hearings, basically said, it’s not the number of troops in Iraq, it’s what you have them do. And I think we have them basically doing the wrong thing now. I think we need to get them further out.

And hopefully, the fact that now the Congress has been told that there’s going to be 131,000 after all this, that there will be people wanting to come together and find a different way to solve the problem.

HARDIN: Has the vote-counting begun, senator? Do you have a prediction as to how this will come out in the end?

WEBB: I don’t know. Although I will say, I do believe the first step in this is the dwell time amendment that I put in as a response to the surge. I think that if …

HARDIN: Do you expect it to come up next week?

WEBB: I am expecting that it will. And I think we’ve got a very good shot at passing it.

And once we do that, once we put a safety net under the wellbeing of the troops, then we can start arguing the rest of the future.

SLEN: Senator Webb, we’re almost out of time, but let’s finish with a political question.

Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia, is retiring. Governor – former governor – Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, is going to announce for the Senate seat. What do you think about that?

WEBB: I’ve heard that Mark is going to announce. We’re waiting to see if he will. But I think Mark Warner would be a tremendous senator.

SLEN: Do you think there will be a primary competition in that race, for him?

WEBB: I doubt that on the Democratic side. I think it’ll be interesting to see what’s going to happen on the Republican side.

SLEN: And finally, a lot of references to Vietnam yesterday in the hearing. You bring a rather unique perspective from that war.

Is it fair to compare General Petraeus to General Westmoreland?

WEBB: You know what I did yesterday when I asked my first question was, I literally – yesterday morning when I woke up, I was looking at the reports of his testimony on the House side the day before. And I started thinking about General Eisenhower.

And I read from a speech that General Eisenhower had made after two years of the Korean War, when he basically said, when the enemy attacked, America did what it has always done. It asked for the courage of its youth, and it got it.

And now, they are asking, when does this end? Will there be an end?

And if I were General Petraeus, I would be thinking very hard about that.

SLEN: Senator Jim Webb, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Services Committee, thank you for being on “Newsmakers.”

WEBB: Good to be with you.

SLEN: We’ll be right back with our reporters.

(BREAK)

SLEN: We are back with our Newsmakers reporters’ roundtable – Noam Levey of the “Los Angeles Times” and Peter Hardin of the “Richmond Times-Dispatch.”

Mr. Hardin, Senator Webb brings somewhat unique experience to both the Foreign Relations and the Armed Services Committees.

Does he – is he well respected on those committees?

HARDIN: It’s early in the game. He hasn’t been here that long. He’s a freshman senator. But as far as I’ve seen, he is commanding respect.

He is put forward by his Democratic colleagues as a leading figure on defense matters, and he is playing quite an influential role there, in both the Foreign Relations and the Armed Services Committees.

And I think when we see his dwell time amendment return to the Senate floor, if it does in the near future, he’ll be in the spotlight once again.

This is all rather surprising, a departure from the tradition of the rule that freshman senators be seen and not heard.

SLEN: Noam Levey, how important is this dwell time amendment that we focused on?

LEVEY: Well, I think it’s very important. Democrats are clearly struggling to recapture the momentum of their push to challenge the White House. As we talked about, they failed a number of times before the August break to pass anything.

Webb’s amendment, I think, offers a chance to actually get something past the Senate that is a very clear challenge to the White House Iraq policy.

SLEN: This week we had the Petraeus-Crocker hearings. We had President Bush’s speech.

What’s the significance of all of this? Is there going to be actual policy change, because of all we saw this week?

LEVEY: Well, I think that’s – I mean, that’s very hard – it’s very hard to say.

I mean, I think, in advance of this testimony, there was an expectation, certainly, that this would be a watershed moment in the Iraq debate. I don’t think it’s quite shaped up exactly the way people thought it was going to.

But nonetheless, I think the proposal to continue to have the number of troops in Iraq a year from now may actually help move some Republicans to challenge the White House more directly. And that may, in fact, have some impact. But in what way, I think it’s difficult to say.

HARDIN: I would add that, Peter, we excepted perhaps greater change from the Congress after the election of a Democratically controlled Congress. And it hasn’t happened yet, to the frustration of many of the voters who brought in the new Congress.

I would not hazard a prediction about what will happen in September, either.

SLEN: Senator Webb seemed to indicate that there was no diplomatic relations going on behind the Iraq war. Do you agree with that?

HARDIN: Do you have a sense?

LEVEY: Judging from what Ambassador Crocker said this week, it does seem there is certainly some diplomatic efforts underway. But it has been a longtime critique of the administration by foreign policy professionals, as well as by members of Congress who have experience with foreign relations, that that’s not been sufficient.

Certainly, if you look at the facts on the ground, I think, in Iraq, the cooperation from our traditional allies, both in Europe and in the region, probably has left, I think, something to be desired, I think it’s fair to say.

What would you say, Peter?

HARDIN: I would agree.

And I’d like to point out to your viewers, Peter, that I covered Webb’s announcement for the Senate more than a year ago, and he was taking up this theme at that time, of arguing for a more robust regional diplomatic engagement.

Whether you disagree with him or agree with him, he has been sounding that note all along.

SLEN: Peter Hardin is with the “Richmond Times-Dispatch,” Noam Levey with the “Los Angeles Times.”

Gentlemen, thank you for participating in “Newsmakers.”

LEVEY: Thank you.

HARDIN: Thank you very much.

END