TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Archives
• Young Voices
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Rep. Sanchez's official site
• Rep. Sanchez talks to Tavis on NPR
• National Society of Hispanic MBAs

E-mail a friend

Tavis: I'm delighted to have Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez with us here in the studio tonight. She represents California's 47th district, just south of us down the road in Orange County. She's a member of the House Arms Services Committee and the Select Committee on Homeland Security. Congresswoman, nice to see you.

Loretta Sanchez: How are you?

Tavis: I'm well. How are you?

Sanchez: I'm doing great.

Tavis: Before I get to the real business here, how's your sisterLinda? And I ask because I love this story. You and Linda are the only 2 sisters serving in the United States Congress.

Sanchez: To ever serve. The first 2 women related in any way to ever serve in the Congress.

Tavis: You've been there for a few terms.

Sanchez: I've been there 8 years.

Tavis: How's she like it?

Sanchez: She's in her second year, and she loves it. She actually is the first freshman on the Judiciary Committee. So that does civil rights, it does constitutional law, women's choice. She's really in the middle of everything.

Tavis: You guys ever see each other?

Sanchez: Oh, once in a while. When we're down there for votes, I go and, you know, ask her for a favor or vice versa.

Tavis: Ha ha ha ha! Let me jump from that wonderful story to what's not so wonderful, this mess that we are in in Iraq. Sorry for the abrupt segue here.

But I wrote this down on this card because I wanted to make sure I got this right: Mr. Barzani, who's the President of the Iraq Governing Council at the moment--the council that we're turning this over to, says President Bush, come June 30th--Mr. Barzani, President of the council, told the Associated Press here recently that Washington has allowed an army of liberation to become an army of occupation. Washington has allowed an army of liberation to become an army of occupation. 2 questions. Number one--do you agree with his assessment, and number 2--who's he really casting aspersion on when he says Washington? You folk in Congress who aided and abetted the President in doing this, or is he going after George Bush here?

Sanchez: Well, first of all, remember that I voted against crossing that line to go into Iraq, so I did not agree with the President or the Republican Congress and those other members that voted to do this. However, having said that, we are now there. Is it an army of occupation? Well, it's certainly not: be there for 18 months and let's get out. We are there for a long term now. Long term meaning maybe decades even, according to some of our generals. And it's gonna be very discouraging for the Iraqi people in particular because--you know, this is a process that just isn't about military. If it were just about how strong our military is and how capable they are, if it was just a military engagement, we'd have won by now. This is military and political. And the political side of things...understanding the mind of the people out there, understanding who is the real enemy against us, having a plan that effectively dealt with what might happen. I blame the President for not having had a good plan, for continuing to deny there are problems there, and for not getting this back on track. We're at a very critical moment right now out there in Iraq.

Tavis: Have we become an army of occupation?

Sanchez: Well, we are there occupying, in a sense. We actually only have about 135,000 troops. It's not a lot when you think about previous engagements that we've had. The problem is, previously, we've always brought in a lot of men and women--400,000 was what the generals really wanted to do this--and then quickly drawn many of them back. What we decided to do was go in on the cheap, go in only with about 110,000 men and women, and now we find that we're bogged down, and so we're beginning to bring even more in and we may get to a point where we need, you know, 250, 300,000 instead of coming in quickly with a lot and then taking control and then moving people out. We've gone the opposite in this conflict.

Tavis: I'm doing my own informal--clearly, it's not scientific--but my own informal survey of persons who come on this show who have anything to do with Iraq policy, and clearly you do, as a member of the House and on these 2 important committees. Is the President right or wrong to stick with this date of June 30th?

Sanchez: Well, that June 30th date doesn't mean very much. First of all, we're really not turning it over to this Governing Council. It's gonna have, I think, a Prime Minister, 2 Vice Presidents, and another sort of governing council. So we're sorta changing things. People are being hand-selected. There are no elections going on. What do we actually turn over on June 30th? We're still gonna be there. We still have the same problems. The number one thing any government does is to create an environment of stability because only when you are able to leave your home and go and conduct business and go to the market without a fear for your life does life move on and things begin to move in a positive way. Right now, if I were an Iraqi, I wouldn't leave my home. So, stability. And the Iraqis, by turning this over to them, they have no standing army. They don't--the police officers have fled. Some of them are in conjunction with the insurgents going after us. So the fact of the matter is, we will still have our military there, and we will still be in control.

Tavis: You made the point earlier--you were very clear about making the point that you did not vote for the President to cross this line to go into Iraq in the way that we are there now. As occupiers or liberators, you did not want to empower the President to do that. Most of your Democratic colleagues did. There's no way that we would be in Iraq right now had most of your colleagues not supported--your Democratic colleagues, that is...supported the President. How does John Kerry, then, and how do other Democrats around the country run, trying to distance themselves from a President and a policy that they, in fact, supported--repeatedly?

Sanchez: Because a leader doesn't look behind him and what he does is look to the future. What we are talking about in the Presidential election is the future of our country. Look, we are there now. The question is what do we do from here forward?

Tavis: But--but we're there because y'all Democrats supported him in going there.

Sanchez: Well, again, I did not.

Tavis: That's what I'm asking, though. How does your party, though, distance itself?

Sanchez: Actually, there were about 120 of us in the House, so that's a little bit over the majority of the Democrats who said no, we don't have the information that would tell us this is an imminent threat to us. Now, having said that, I do believe that some of my colleagues made a mistake by going there, and some of them have admitted to me since, you know, "If I had known." I said, "We knew." I mean, if you really looked at the information, the dots never connected, but you know, we can't--right now, we're in a period where we can't look at that. That's for future study. What we have to look at now is what do we have there, what is the plan for the future there? We have a moral obligation to these Iraqi people. I mean, we went over the line. You know. Their life has been disrupted in a very negative way because we are there. They have no electricity, they have no economy. They're scared to go out of their homes. We have an obligation to give them a future as a people, and we also have an obligation by military treaty--somebody who goes across a line in an aggressive way and breaks a country--as Colin Powell said, "You break it, you own it." We need to fix this.

Tavis: Let me ask you 2 questions. I'm sitting here listening to you now, and something occurs to me. I want to ask you 2 questions relative to your constituency. Most people who know the fascinating part of your story--it's not just that you and your sister are the only 2 women ever who are related to serve in Congress. You were there first, and you defeated a very, very popular, very, very well-known, very long-running, very outspoken Republican named Bob Dornan. They called him "B-1 Bob." We all remember Bob Dornan. You represent a district in Orange County. Most of the country, politically astute, knows that Orange County is a very, very, a very strong Republican enclave within the party, not just here statewide, but indeed around the country. 2 questions with that said. One, how does your constituency feel about your position on this war in Iraq, number one? Let's start with that. How does that square up?

Sanchez: Well, let's just say that it is the most Republican and conservative area in the nation. It's known as that.

Tavis: Absolutely.

Sanchez: Having said that, I voted against going to war. We have a big military history, also. We had the U.S. marines there at El Toro for years and years. Initially, I mean, people doubted--doubted me, quite frankly. And I kept telling them, you know, I have to think about the moms and the daughters and the wives, husbands of people who are killed. Does it justify soldiers' deaths to go over that line? And the information wasn't there. It wasn't an imminent threat to the Americans.

Tavis: Were you scared? Between you and me. Nobody's watching. Just between the 2 of us. Were you scared to cast that vote?

Sanchez: There was a lot of pressure. There was a lot of pressure. People told me, you know, you're headed for the White House, and as a woman, if you vote against a war, politically you're going to end your ability to be in the White House. But, you know, there's something more important than that, than politics. There is again, can I look at a mother and say your son's life was needed to save you and me? And for me the answer was no. The information didn't warrant that. And so, quite frankly, it was an easy vote for me to cast. You know, even if--if I had been wrong, then I would've accepted, you know, people can vote me out and I would've said I was wrong. But as time has gone on, I think every issue that I raised about why this wasn't a good idea at that time has come to be.

Tavis: Are your constituents in this conservative enclave, you being a Democrat, are your constituents seeing it that way? Because I'm always fascinated, as you may very well be, I don't know, but I'm fascinated by the fact that President Bush isn't worse off than he is right now because of these stories that keep coming out, the books that keep coming out, the controversy over Dr. Rice testifying. I'm surprised that he has any popularity in the polls right now, any approval ratings whatsoever. Are your constituents coming around to seeing it the way you saw it some time ago?

Sanchez: You know, I have had a lot of them come forward and say to me I disagreed with you, but the more I see, the more I realize that you took a very heroic vote and one that you felt was important to make. Many of them are coming around. The problem is that President Bush and the administration, you know, they are on the airwaves. They get to discuss this on television much more than a handful of Democratic voices or other voices. And so they are able to spin the story of Iraq in the way they want over and over and over again, and that's a very powerful tool. I had Undersecretary Wolfowitz in front of our committee the other day, and I finally had to say to him, "You know, you don't have a grasp on reality. My soldiers are fighting street-by-street."

Tavis: I hate to say to you that I do have a grasp on reality and reality says I'm out of time for this conversation. You got to come back and do it again.

Sanchez: OK!

Tavis: Nice to see you.

Sanchez: Thank you.

Tavis: Latinas are making history all across this country. We've got Loretta and Linda in Congress, and on television, they are representing. Coming up next, from the PBS series "American Family," actress Constance Marie. Stay with us.