E-mail a friendRep. Ellen Tauscher
airdate December 7, 2005
Before her election to Congress in '96, California Rep. Ellen Tauscher worked in the private sector for 20 years, 14 of them on Wall Street. She was also an advocate on child care issues and founded the ChildCare Registry - the first national service to help parents verify child care workers' backgrounds. Tauscher is a member of the moderate Blue Dog Democrats and the New Democrat Coalition. Her fiscally responsible, bi-partisan, independent brand of leadership was coined "Tauscherism" by Time magazine.
Rep. Ellen Tauscher
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher back to this program. The California Democrat is a member of the Armed Services Committee, and recently returned from a six-day trip to the Middle East, a trip that included Iraq. She joins us tonight, though, from Washington. Congresswoman Tauscher, nice to have you back on this program.
Rep. Ellen Tauscher: Always good to talk to you, Tavis. How are you?
Tavis: I'm well, and yourself?
Tauscher: Good, thank you.
Tavis: Glad you're back home safely. Let me go straight to some of the news of today. President Bush, as you know, is giving four speeches between now and - wait, a total of four speeches before the December 15th elections in Iraq. Specifically about the situation in Iraq. So today was speech number two of the four that he has said he is going to give. Let me give two quotes if I might right quick from today's speech.
He spoke today, as you know, at the Council on Foreign Relations. The President said, and I quote, "The terrorists in Iraq share the same ideology as the terrorists who struck the United States on September the 11th.' So the President still drawing conclusions and drawing connections, I should say, between Iraq and September 11th. Second quote, quoting the President today, "It's real and it's important, and it's unmistakable to those who see it up close.'
What he was talking about was his steady, quiet progress, not quiet, but certainly steady progress in Iraq, stay the course, that line he uses all the time. But he is saying it's real, it's important and it's unmistakable to those who see it up close, that we continue on mission. So, let's take those quotes one at a time. To the first one, what do you make of the fact the President is still drawing links between September 11th and Iraq?
Tauscher: Well, it's deeply disturbing that the President continues to mislead himself and the American people. There is no connection between Saddam Hussein and what is going on in Iraq, and September 11th. There are now terrorists in Iraq, international Jihadists, they weren't there prior to our attack in March of 2003. They weren't there when Saddam Hussein was in power. They are there now, because of the failures of the Pentagon to provide enough troops to stabilize the country after Saddam's government fell.
But it is deeply disappointing to still have the President still rely on what I guess he believes, which I don't think anybody else does, that this is about the war on terrorism. What I saw on Friday, and what I have seen on my five trips to the region is a distinctly different point of view. I believe what you have going on in Iraq right no is an Iraqi civil war between the Kurds and the Shi'a. But we are the proxy fighters for them.
And we are working against the Sunnis, fighting the Sunnis who feel disaffected, are part of this larger group that effectively believe that either we are occupying the country, or that they are the former Saddamists whose don't really want anything but Saddam back. And that group has nothing to do with international terrorism. These are Iraqi Jihadists. Many of them have adopted some of the points of view of Osama bin Laden and al-Zarqawi, but they are distinctive from the foreign Jihadists that are in Iraq right now. Who are there, and only came there, to kill Americans in the last couple of years.
So the President is trying to, I think, create an atmosphere where he joins the American people in a fearful campaign to try to get them to support what he still can't justify. Because if they can find an excuse and stick to it for five minutes, we could have been out of Iraq after the original mission, which was to contain Saddam Hussein, depose him, and make sure he didn't have weapons of mass destruction that he could use on his people, on the neighborhood, or the American people.
That ended right around the time the President was on the Abraham Lincoln. Then we had this counter insurgency start to build because many Sunnis believed that we were occupying holy land, that we were occupying their country, that the jig was up, that they were going to be suppressed by both the Kurds and the Shi'a, who are the majority in the country. But since the Sunni were really with Saddam and running the country punitively for so long, they were not surprisingly afraid of what would happen in a sense of retribution.
So it is deeply disappointing to have the President continue to mislead the American people. This was an opportunity today to get the message to the people that really need the message. The message should be to the Iraqi people about this election. And they have a chance to deliver a government that is hopefully inclusionary and nonsectarian, and one that will offer a political solution for the Sunnis.
Tavis: To the second quote that I referenced the President making earlier today, where he suggests that were you to see it up close, I'm paraphrasing here now of course. But were you to see it up close, suggested the President, you would understand why we have to stay the course, why we have to have this quiet, steady progress. So right quick, you've seen it up close, I take it that you don't agree with the President on that point?
Tauscher: Look, I believe we need have a phased withdrawal of our troops as soon as we have an Iraqi government stood up, that can have a fighting force that can begin to replace us, and I hope that's as soon as this spring or summer of 2006. I think that this debate has been a false debate. I think it is important that we understand that we should not be fighting a civil war for Iraqis that either A, don't want to fight themselves, or believe that they should not have the kind of westernized democracy that apparently we are going to deliver to them.
Tavis: But Congresswoman, you say that we ought to get out the minute they have a force that can protect themselves. As I read the news every day, Americans are clearly being attacked, but so is the Iraqi police force that we have allegedly or apparently trained. So if the police force is being attacked while we are still there, how do we know that there is a time when we should get out based upon their ability to protect themselves?
Tauscher: That's why this December election is so vitally important, Tavis. We have to send a signal. The President had an opportunity today to speak to the Iraqi people, to speak to the disaffected Sunnis. To make it clear first and foremost that we are not going have a permanent presence in their country. That we are not going to basically take their oil revenues. That we are not interested in establishing permanent military bases.
And that we invite everybody in Iraq, especially the Sunnis, to take this opportunity to elect their permanent government on December 15th, one that is hopefully moderate, nonsectarian, and inclusionary. And that if the Sunnis can have a political solution delivered to them by voting and taking their national proportional number of seats in the national assembly, maybe some ministries, that they will put their arms down. That will leave then the fight among the Saddamists who perhaps there is no solution for them, and the international terrorists.
That is the fight that we should be on. The international terrorists. And then we can have a government that lifts up an Iraqi military quickly. They have trained 100,000 troops, while only 7,000 of them are fully equipped and can operate independently. I was assured when I was there on Friday that they can have as many as 50,000 really operating independently, and well trained and well equipped by the spring. Then we can replace ourselves with them.
Tavis: I've got less than a minute to go here, Congresswoman. But let me ask you right quick, since you just came back from there. We are having this debate internally inside the US, that is, about whether we should stay or leave or when to get out. What do the Iraqis say? Do they see us as liberators still, or do they see us as occupiers and they're ready for us to leave? What are they saying to you?
Tauscher: I think that the Iraqi people and the American people have congruency, they want to us come home sooner and safer. The Iraqi people that I talked to, the government officials, including the prime minister that I talked to on Friday, agreed that the American people want their troops home, and that we should leave as soon as we can. The problem is that we have this paradoxical situation.
We are at the same time, the stabilizing force, at the same time we are the destabilizing force in Iraq. And that is why we have to begin to turn over power to Iraqis. Have a government that is inclusionary, have the Sunnis put their arms down, because they're part of the political process, and have them begin to fight their own domestic security issues.
Tavis: Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, now six trips to the region since the war started. Glad again you are back home safely. Thanks for your insight on the program.
Tauscher: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Glad to have you.
Tauscher: Thank you. Good to see you.
Tavis: You to. Up next on this program, actor Burt Reynolds. Stay with us.
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