KERRY: I am not for a permanent base.

[ProSense]

March 19, 2007

Transcript: John Kerry on "Hardball with Chris Matthews"

MSNBC

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KERRY: Permanently, no. I have a problem with permanently. But I think, what I thought what Senator Clinton said was there would be some troops there for a period of time, which is what the resolution that the Democrats voted on allows for. It allows for the President to have the discretion to leave troops critical to complete the training, critical to chasing Al Qaeda and prosecuting the war on terror, and critical to protecting the forces and facilities. But that is, that is contemplating an enormous reduction in the numbers of combat troops because you have to turn the responsibilities over to the Iraqis.

MATTHEWS: Well, she’s more direct than that, and I think you do disagree. She said I think it’ll be up to me, that’s Senator Clinton, to figure out how to protect our national security interests in that area. She sees it as a vital strategic role we have to play, keeping our troops in Iraq to protect Israel and other interests in the region. Not simply to protect our departing troops or a tactical purpose.

KERRY: Well, I agree. There is, Chris, the resolution also allows for an over the horizon presence, which could be interpreted as being somewhere, somehow in Iraq. But not in the day to day, in the middle of a civil war, not going on pro-active patrols, knocking on doors, going into houses on a combat basis. I think there’s a great difference between some presence of an outlying airbase or something which a lot of people contemplate, for a period of time. But ultimately, what you need is a new security arrangement for the region. And a new security arrangement for the region could have sufficient rapid reaction forces in Kuwait or other places; hopefully the Gulf states and others are going to step up together with our friends, the Saudis, the Jordanians and others, in order to have a long term security arrangement. I don’t think that it serves the United States well, over the long run, to be deciding now that where that long term presence is going to be or not going to be. It ought to be done in conjunction with the arrival at this overall security arrangement for the region. But there will be some measure of American troop presence, somehow, to protect our interests in the region. I don’t question that.

MATTHEWS: But the American people, at least in the Democratic primary rallies where people show up, they’re being told in applause lines by people like Senator Clinton, they’re going to bring our troops home, and now we find out we’re not going to bring them all home, we’re going to keep some as a permanent base in Iraq. Are you for or against keeping our troops in Iraq in some form or other?

KERRY: I am not for a permanent base. I’ve said that during the Presidential race in ’04, and I say it now. I think the permanency is something that upsets a number of people in the region. I think there are plenty of ways to deal with the American security interests. But I do think, I don’t think it’s misleading at all because the Democratic position is that we should be setting a date, we should be leveraging the assumption of responsibility by the Iraqis, and we should be withdrawing our troops.

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KERRY: I think both. I think it was one of the greatest foreign policy disasters, mistakes that you can find in modern American foreign policy history. It was catastrophic on a number of different fronts. The lack of allies, the lack of planning, the misleading intelligence, a series of decisions that were made, the lack of adequate troops. On any number of fronts, that was disastrous. Now, not withstanding that, could a series of decisions have been made which took the mistaken entry and somehow made lemonade out of lemons? The answer is, I believe, one might have. But only by making the correct series of decisions, which began by accepting Secretary General Kofi Annan’s offer to help, and to have other people be involved immediately after the success of taking Baghdad. The immediate refusal of that offer of help, which was done out of a kind of anger and arrogance combined, pushed people aside in a moment that they might have been helpful, where we might have made the right decisions about debaathification, about the protection of the ammo dumps and how we approached the question of the civil structure of Iraq. But after those series of decisions were made, there’s only one thing left to do, and that is to get a political resolution now, diplomatic resolution, to the fundamental stakes issues between Sunni and Shia, and as General Petraeus has said, General Abizaid has said, Gen Casey has said, there is no military solution. And I’m asking, along with others, five years into this war, where’s the diplomacy, where’s the political lift to resolve what has to be resolved politically and diplomatically?

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KERRY: Well, they are, in fact, the lessons that many of us tried to apply, Chris, in the vote on the original resolution giving the President the authority. I mean, if you go back and read what I said then and others said it, I made it very clear that the President had to keep his word. If he was going to go to war, it had to be with other countries, with allies. Number two, it had to be as a matter of last resort. And number three, you had to do the planning necessary and have the forces committed necessary to make sure that you had a victory. On each of those counts – and you also had to exhaust the remedies that were available to you, i.e. the United Nations inspections, which they didn’t do. So on every count, they rushed to war without our allies, they rushed to war without the exhaustion of the remedies available to us, they rushed to war without the planning. On every front of the lessons of Vietnam, they broke the rules, and they’ve inherited their problem of this generation as a result. It’s extraordinary to me, and what many of us felt was was betrayed by that series of decisions that literally turned their back on the past, on history, and now they’re repeating it.

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