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American Morning

Interview With David Obey

Aired September 08, 2003 - 09:06   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's turn to congressional reaction to the president's speech from last night. Representative David Obey is a Democrat from Wisconsin. He joins us this morning from our Washington bureau.
Congressman Obey, thanks for joining us. Nice to see you.

REP. DAVID OBEY (D), WISCONSIN: Thanks for having me.

O'BRIEN: It is my pleasure.

You wrote a letter where you have asked the president to ask for the resignation of the secretary of defense, and we're going to sort of highlight some parts of that letter in just a moment. But, President Bush has shown nothing but support for his secretary of defense. Why, realistically, do you think that he would take your advice on a matter like this, sir?

OBEY: Because it's important that the president succeed in this endeavor. We're in big trouble, and we need to have credible spokesmen, and credible planners for our program in Iraq. And right now, in the person of the secretary of defense and his chief deputy, I don't think we have them. If you take a look at the list, these are the fellows who decided they didn't like the intelligence they were getting from the CIA and from the Defense Department.

So they set up their own intelligence operation to get more comfortable intelligence estimates. Then, using those estimates, they engaged in a series of major miscalculations. They told us everybody's going to welcome us with open arms, so they said we only needed a much smaller number of troops than the military leadership wanted. They pushed aside the State Department that had been planning for over a year for the post-war event in Iraq, and again, had planning light, and the result is what you see in Iraq every day. There may have been decent planning for the war but there's been terrible planning for the aftermath.

O'BRIEN: But in his speech last night, the president sounded very confident. He said, in fact, criticism like that is sort of short-sighted, that we have to look further down the road to see any long-term prospects, because, of course, what's actually being undertaken, according to the president, is the rebuilding of the Middle East, essentially.

The president, of course, as you well know, asked for $87 billion. You are the ranking minority member of the House Appropriations Committee. Does that figure, first and foremost, surprise you? And two, are you inclined to give that money?

OBEY: Look, if the president's speech was an admission of gross miscalculation on their part. If you want to know the absolute truth, they're going to require a whole lot more money than he asked for last night. The Army is stretched incredibly thin. We don't have the personnel to respond if we had other problems in the world. And so in my view, we have a serious question about whether the Army is large enough, if we're going to be following these policies, because so many are tied down in Iraq. We have very little coverage of the Iraqi border with respect to Iran, so you can have all kinds of bad characters drifting in there. We've turned Iraq into a magnet for terrorism. And so I think we've just seen the president's request is the first down payment. We're going to see the rest of them on an installment plan.

O'BRIEN: You have asked for the resignation, as I said, of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and also Wolfowitz, as well. I'm curious, do you think that the president will actually, realistically, even consider your request? And if not, you know that going in, why bother to write a letter like this?

OBEY: Well, the question is will our government look at things that are realistic? My problem with the secretary and his assistant is that they pose as these hard-headed realists when, in fact, they might as well be permanent presidents of an optimist club, because they're always making optimistic assumptions which wind up not being fulfilled. I desperately want this policy to succeed.

I mean, we made the decision to go into the war. So that's behind us. The question now is how we maximize our opportunity to come out of this well in the end, and I think we need to have, I think the State Department ought to be put back in its rightful position, as the people who do the post-war planning in something like this, because they have the expertise. It's obvious from the results that the Pentagon civilian leadership doesn't. They've even made it tough for the military leadership to get the manpower they needed, and they've only now, after seven months, told us what they think the cost is going to be, and it's an underestimation in my view.

O'BRIEN: Congressman David Obey, Democrat from Wisconsin. Thanks for your time this morning. Nice to see you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired September 8, 2003 - 09:06   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's turn to congressional reaction to the president's speech from last night. Representative David Obey is a Democrat from Wisconsin. He joins us this morning from our Washington bureau.
Congressman Obey, thanks for joining us. Nice to see you.

REP. DAVID OBEY (D), WISCONSIN: Thanks for having me.

O'BRIEN: It is my pleasure.

You wrote a letter where you have asked the president to ask for the resignation of the secretary of defense, and we're going to sort of highlight some parts of that letter in just a moment. But, President Bush has shown nothing but support for his secretary of defense. Why, realistically, do you think that he would take your advice on a matter like this, sir?

OBEY: Because it's important that the president succeed in this endeavor. We're in big trouble, and we need to have credible spokesmen, and credible planners for our program in Iraq. And right now, in the person of the secretary of defense and his chief deputy, I don't think we have them. If you take a look at the list, these are the fellows who decided they didn't like the intelligence they were getting from the CIA and from the Defense Department.

So they set up their own intelligence operation to get more comfortable intelligence estimates. Then, using those estimates, they engaged in a series of major miscalculations. They told us everybody's going to welcome us with open arms, so they said we only needed a much smaller number of troops than the military leadership wanted. They pushed aside the State Department that had been planning for over a year for the post-war event in Iraq, and again, had planning light, and the result is what you see in Iraq every day. There may have been decent planning for the war but there's been terrible planning for the aftermath.

O'BRIEN: But in his speech last night, the president sounded very confident. He said, in fact, criticism like that is sort of short-sighted, that we have to look further down the road to see any long-term prospects, because, of course, what's actually being undertaken, according to the president, is the rebuilding of the Middle East, essentially.

The president, of course, as you well know, asked for $87 billion. You are the ranking minority member of the House Appropriations Committee. Does that figure, first and foremost, surprise you? And two, are you inclined to give that money?

OBEY: Look, if the president's speech was an admission of gross miscalculation on their part. If you want to know the absolute truth, they're going to require a whole lot more money than he asked for last night. The Army is stretched incredibly thin. We don't have the personnel to respond if we had other problems in the world. And so in my view, we have a serious question about whether the Army is large enough, if we're going to be following these policies, because so many are tied down in Iraq. We have very little coverage of the Iraqi border with respect to Iran, so you can have all kinds of bad characters drifting in there. We've turned Iraq into a magnet for terrorism. And so I think we've just seen the president's request is the first down payment. We're going to see the rest of them on an installment plan.

O'BRIEN: You have asked for the resignation, as I said, of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and also Wolfowitz, as well. I'm curious, do you think that the president will actually, realistically, even consider your request? And if not, you know that going in, why bother to write a letter like this?

OBEY: Well, the question is will our government look at things that are realistic? My problem with the secretary and his assistant is that they pose as these hard-headed realists when, in fact, they might as well be permanent presidents of an optimist club, because they're always making optimistic assumptions which wind up not being fulfilled. I desperately want this policy to succeed.

I mean, we made the decision to go into the war. So that's behind us. The question now is how we maximize our opportunity to come out of this well in the end, and I think we need to have, I think the State Department ought to be put back in its rightful position, as the people who do the post-war planning in something like this, because they have the expertise. It's obvious from the results that the Pentagon civilian leadership doesn't. They've even made it tough for the military leadership to get the manpower they needed, and they've only now, after seven months, told us what they think the cost is going to be, and it's an underestimation in my view.

O'BRIEN: Congressman David Obey, Democrat from Wisconsin. Thanks for your time this morning. Nice to see you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com