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CNN - Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer 
05 November 2006 


Representative Barney Frank discusses the verdict in the Saddam Hussein trial, the war in Iraq and the 2006 midterm elections

BLITZER: Welcome back to our special LATE EDITION, "America Votes 2006".

I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting today from New York.

Joining us now from Boston, one of the top Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, Barney Frank of Massachusetts.

Congressman, thanks very much for coming in.

REP. BARNEY FRANK (D), NEW YORK: Glad to be here.

BLITZER: Are you happy Saddam Hussein is going to be executed?

FRANK: Yes, he was a terrible tyrant. There are, of course, other terrible tyrants in the world. And, you know, it can't be America's mission to get rid of all of them if they're not causing us external damage. But obviously no one can have any sympathy for him.

The issue, of course, is the enormous price the American people have had to pay for that, it seems to me, for less than we could have gotten in return. That is, I think if you look now as to this great disaster that Iraq has been for the American people in terms of lives lost, destabilization politically in the Middle East, the opposite of what administration predicted, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, that it has simply not been worth what it has cost us.

And by the way, one of the things it has cost us -- and I hear Mr. Snow say, well, what's the Democrats' plan for the war on terror? I voted to go to war in Afghanistan. This Republican argument that the Democrats don't want to fight terror is, of course, just a lie.

We almost -- we voted to go to war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the place from which we were attacked on September 11th. And at first, the world was wholly with us and we were making progress, and were getting a genuine democracy there under Karzai.

And because this administration has so botched Iraq, it has had so much to transfer, money and manpower and attention and everything else to Iraq, that we are now finding things in Afghanistan deteriorating.

BLITZER: All right. Here's what the vice president, Dick Cheney, said earlier today on ABC, going after the Democrats, once again arguing that you don't have a plan, only a plan for defeat in Iraq, as opposed to a strategy for victory.

Here is Dick Cheney.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I come back to the basic proposition. I think we've got the basic strategy right. That is, the Iraqis have to ultimately take responsibility for their own fate both militarily, as well as from a political standpoint. That's the strategy. Our objective is victory, and that's the road we are walking down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right. Is there an alternative, a Democratic plan for victory, as opposed to simply retreat in Iraq?

FRANK: I don't see that we are going to be able to achieve victory, but that's because this administration unwisely invaded Iraq on false premises. There were no weapons of mass destruction, they were not the place from which we had been attacked. They have since then done it incompetently.

And I was struck by so many of the cheerleaders for the invasion that you were talking about with Tony Snow, deadly and dysfunctional. Mr. Snow said, oh, that was taken out of context. I want to see the context in which deadly dysfunctional is a nice thing to be.

You know, I learned in politics when some one says something was taken out of context, they really mean, "I wish I hadn't said it." Or probably in Mr. Perle's case, "I wish nobody knew I said it until after the election."

The fact is, this administration has made a terrible botch of Iraq. And part of the plan is, in my judgement, to put more resources in Afghanistan.

I mention Afghanistan for a very serious purpose. That was the major frontier in the war on terror. We are in danger not only of not being very successful in Iraq, but of losing the success in which we were reaching in Afghanistan.

BLITZER: But even if -- even if Iraq was not before 9/11, under Saddam Hussein, a haven for terrorism, is it today? Could it become the new Afghanistan given the current circumstances, the al Qaeda figures streaming into Iraq right now, and want to use that, in effect, as the new Afghanistan? FRANK: No. The major problem in Iraq today is not al Qaeda or outsiders. It is internal Iraqi fighting. It is Shia versus Sunni, with the Kurds playing I'm not sure what role.

The fact is that I believe it is the case, the national intelligence estimates suggests it. I think the longer we are in Iraq the harder it's going to be to defeat terrorism.

When we invaded Afghanistan, we were the recipients of support worldwide. And the Bush administration has dissipated that support. The sad fact is today that when Iran and North Korea threaten to go nuclear and when North Korea has an explosion -- and those are both terrible things, in my judgment -- this administration is helpless to do anything about it because they have so alienated so much of the rest of the world, that sadly America's influence is at an all-time low.

And the longer we are in Iraq and the longer things continue in this chaotic sense -- and there is no sign that they're getting any better -- the weaker we are, not the stronger.

BLITZER: All right. Listen to this exchange I had with the House majority leader, John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, earlier in the week in "THE SITUATION ROOM".

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R), MAJORITY LEADER: Let's not blame what's happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld.

BLITZER: But he's in charge of the military.

BOEHNER: But the fact is the generals on the ground are in charge. And he works closely with them and the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: He strongly supports Rumsfeld. The president says Rumsfeld is doing a fantastic job. But in this specific exchange, Boehner says it's the generals who are in charge.

And the president keeps saying, "I listen to the generals. They want more troops, I'll give them more troops. If they want fewer troops, I'll give them fewer troops."

Is it the responsibility -- do you blame the generals for the current predicament in Iraq?

FRANK: Of course not. I am disappointed in John Boehner. He should know better than that, to victimize the generals.

Remember, by the way, it was the chief of staff of the Army, General Shinseki, who at the outset of this said we're going to need a large number of troops. And when his term was about to expire, they let him go almost in disgrace.

For John Boehner, the political leader of the Republicans, to blame the generals for the mistakes of the Bush administration and of Rumsfeld -- you know, my colleague John Kerry got in trouble because he told a stupid joke and he told it badly. But what Boehner said is far more demeaning to the people in uniform, because he is blaming them.

These are very brave people who have put into an impossible situation by the unwisdom (ph) and incompetence of this administration. And have them blamed for what Rumsfeld and Bush have been doing is really just beyond the pale.

BLITZER: In these final days, the president and other administration officials and Republicans are going after you and Democrats with this warning to the American voter.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it is interesting to note that the person who wants to be the head of the Ways and Means Committee for the Democrats said that he can't think of one tax cut that he would extend. See, that's code word for get ready. If the Democrats take the House your taxes are going up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right. You're going to be -- if the Democrats are the majority in the House, you're going to be chairman of the powerful committee. Are you going to go raise taxes on the American people?

FRANK: No, the president makes things up. As a matter of fact, Charlie Rangel has said that we need to address the alternative minimum tax. That's the tax that's going up under the Bush administration with no real opposition for them on middle-income people.

Yes, I am going to vote against extending the tax that says that when Bill Gates dies -- and I hope it's a long time since -- he does great work -- that his children will not be able to inherit tens of billions of dollars and pay no inheritance tax on it. To say that the inheritance tax, which affects about one percent of America and could mean hundreds of billions of dollars, that that should be abolished, I think it's a mistake.

But in terms of taxes that citizens making $75,000, $100,000 a year are going to make, no they're not going to go up. And, in fact, the big difference between us and them is they have been promoting growth in an economy in which we have had an extraordinary degree of concentration of wealth. It is really unprecedented.

For the average citizen -- I'm talking 90 percent of the American people -- to get so little benefit, we're going to change that.

BLITZER: Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Thanks very much, Congressman, for coming in.

FRANK: Thank you, Wolf.

 

 

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